Say Your Name and Spell It

Here's a simple, yet often overlooked technique that will make your editors love you, save you and your clients time and energy, and will make you irresistable to members of the opposite sex. Okay, that last one's an exageration (and by exageration I mean "lie").

When doing on-camera interviews, roll tape (or start capturing to your memory card, as the case may be) and ask the talent, "Could you please say your name and spell it for me?"



This does several things for you. First of all, it gives you a record of the correct pronunciation and spelling of the person's name, specifically, the way they prefer to be identified. Your editors and graphics people will thank you for this, since they won't have to chase down this info for lower thirds, and they won't end up making last minute changes because no one knew that Sir Richard Dovington the Third preferred to be called "Skippy."

Perhaps more importantly, though, making this "no brainer" your first question sets the tone for the interview, and puts the subject at ease. They're thinking, "Hey, this is easy! I can answer that! Maybe this won't be so bad!"

In fact, when interviewing someone who's visibly skittish about being on camera, it's often best to have a few soft-ball questions lined up to use first, to help establish repore and give them time to get comfortable.

Interviewing is a skill, and the more you do it, the better you'll be. You'll develop a sense for what you need, what you don't and how to guide your subject toward the content you're looking for through the clever formulation of your questions.

Oh, one more thing - We've found it much more effective when dealing with non-professional talent to use an interview technique, rather than having them read from a prepared script. They tend to come across much more naturally when having a "conversation" with the interviewer (even though the interviewer is never seen) than if they are reading prepared copy, usually written by the folks in marketing and gutted by the folks in legal.

What do you think? Got any lower-third nightmares to share?

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