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Remembering Childhood

October 24, 2014 by Andrew Seltz Leave a Comment

DSCN0080Most people develop a sort of amnesia about the events of their early childhood. Before the age of 4, most people’s memory is spotty at best. According to research, the events that stick best in the memory are ones where a parent helps the child shape events into a meaningful story. That insight is the key to approaching the early childhood memories of an interview subject.

Discussing a person’s early years involves a certain amount of facts and dates. Once you pass the preliminary information, try asking about the stories that parents and friends told about when the subject was little. Parents tend to have a number of stories about when their children were little and often repeat them. These are the stories that anchor the details a person will remember from their childhood.

As your subject recalls a story told about them, listen for interesting details about people and places that you can ask about in a follow-up question.

What are your favorite questions and techniques for interviewing people about their childhood memories? Leave a comment below and share.

Posted in: Interviewing Tagged: childhood, shared memories

Psychological Priming

October 24, 2014 by Andrew Seltz Leave a Comment

PrimeThePumpWhen you conduct a Reel Histories™ interview you have a tremendous amount of influence over the responses you get from the people you talk with. One tool you can use to shape the interview process is called psychological priming.

The best way to explain psychological priming is to give you an example. In his book, Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely describes an experiment where a group of researches asked a group of people to work out a set of word scramble puzzles. Some were given words that are associated with being elderly (like ‘bingo’, ‘ancient’, and ‘Florida’.) When they finished, the subjects left the building – and that is when the real experiment began. The researchers were actually interested in timing how long it took for people to exit the building. The people whose minds were primed with ‘elderly’ words walked significantly slower than the control group. All the subjects in the study were New York University graduate students, but the priming had a marked effect on the next thing they did.

As a verb, the word prime means ‘to prepare’. That is what psychological priming does, it prepares the mind to respond in a certain way.

Sounds interesting, but how can you use it in real life?

Next time you conduct an interview, try this approach. Ask your interview subject to think of three words that describe their childhood. When they think of the words, ask them to talk a bit about why they chose each word. Then, begin asking the typical childhood questions you would normally ask in an interview.

The chances are their recollections will be shaped by the words they chose. They may even go into details about how each thing they remember fits into the larger themes they identified. If things go really well, they will start to connect the events of their childhood together in a meaningful way that relates to how they perceived their childhood experience.

Another way you can use psychological priming is to suggest emotions when asking a question. Instead of saying “where were you when JFK was shot” you can start by describing some of the reactions that other people had when they learned that JFK had been shot. Then ask the question. Chances are you will get a more vivid, nuanced, and emotional response after priming the subject.

Do you have a favorite technique to psychologically prime an interview subject? Leave a comment below and describe what you do. If you decide to try it on your next interview, leave a comment and share how it worked for you.

Posted in: Interviewing Tagged: psychological priming

Pros and Cons of Virtual Backgrounds

October 24, 2014 by Andrew Seltz Leave a Comment

Greenscreen SetupIn many interview situations you will not have a good location for filming. Sometimes the problem is location noise and other times you might not have enough space to setup all of your equipment. Setting up a greenscreen and using a virtual background can be a tempting solution to the problem.

Before you decide to use a greenscreen on your next video interview, let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons involved so you can make an informed decision.

The Pros of Virtual Backgrounds

Shooting on greenscreen and replacing your backgrounds in post production can give you a lot of freedom when planning your project. If the perfect location is too noisy or inconvenient, just take a series of stills or background videos and add them in later. Then, you can find a convenient location to shoot the interview.

With the exception of high-end video cameras and DSLR cameras, most mid-price cameras and smartphone cameras tend to have the background in sharp focus. This is the opposite of the look we commonly associate with professional productions. Those tend to have softer focus on the background to draw attention to the subject. Using a virtual background lets you blur backgrounds to taste and create a very high-end look for your finished video.

Virtual backgrounds also give you the freedom to be creative in editing. Why not place the photo or video someone is talking about in the background. You can create the impression of having shot interviews in multiple locations bay swapping out the background. Or, get artistic and change the color and tone of the background to match the mood of the story being told – sort of a mood ring on steroids.

Flexibility and options are the key benefits of shooting on greenscreen.

The Cons of Virtual Backgrounds

The cons of shooting interviews on greenscreen come down to two major issues. The first is quality and the second is time.

Creating a high quality result using green screens requires a higher level of planning and better equipment. The quality of post production tools for greenscreen work has improved tremendously in recent years, but you still need to do a decent job of lighting the screen and use a camera that captures enough image detail to create a natural looking image. The key to success here is testing. Work out the entire process from beginning to end and try it before using it with an actual interview subject.

Another quality issue that needs consideration is planning your lighting. If the lighting of your subject doesn’t match the lighting in the background, the resulting video will be unsatisfying. If this balance is really bad, the video will look cheap and amateurish. So, plan ahead and make notes.

The second con is that virtual backgrounds add an extra step to the post production process which requires more time. The editing system will take a little extra time stitching everything together when you export the video. You will spend time tweaking settings and color correcting to get the composited shots to look right. And, because you have options for what appears in the background, you will spend extra time making decisions in the editing room (and clients love to change their minds when they know they can.) Be prepared for a significantly longer post production process.

The Bottom Line

Choosing to use virtual backgrounds will always be a judgement call. You will have to weight the pros and cons and determine whether shooting on greenscreen makes sense. For personal projects, make sure the extra work won’t slow you down to the point where you lose interest in the project and never finish. For professional projects, make sure you budget for the extra time so you don’t lose money on the project.

Posted in: cinematography, Lighting, Production Tagged: greenscreen, virtual backgrounds

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