A tour of the back lot

I've now completed three 'Webcam Interviews' - of Tom Kuhlmann, Patrick Dunn and Cathy Moore - and a number of people have asked me about why I'm doing them, how they're put together and how much work is involved. So, I thought I'd use this opportunity to take you on a tour of the back lot at 24 Clermont Terrace, Brighton, so you can see for yourself just how easy this is to do for yourself.

First of all, why do the interviews. Well, I've always been told that there's nothing more interesting to people than other people, and I believe this for myself. Textual blog postings provide a great insight, but don't always reveal much of the person behind the pen - you need the face, the voice and the body language before you really feel you've got to know someone. Of course, there are always conferences and meetings, but some of the people I find most interesting are not necessarily on the conference circuit or are otherwise inaccessible because of geography. And even if you see them speak at a conference, it's unlikely they'll reveal much about themselves beyond what they feel about the topic of their talk. So that's why.

My original intention was to record the interviews online through Skype, using the Pamela add-on, but tests showed that the audio and video quality wasn't going to stand up. This was a shame, because live interviews are relatively easy to do and sound so much more natural. So, second best option was to discuss the interview in advance over the phone and agree the questions, then the interviewee record their responses to the questions using their webcam, at the best audio and video quality available. I've been surprised so far how at how natural the interviewees' responses have been and at the technical quality they are able to achieve with low-cost equipment.

Once I've received the interviewee's video files, I record my questions using my own webcam and edit the lot together. So far I've had no problem editing together video material recorded in different TV systems (PAL, the European format, or NTSC, the American one), at different sizes (320x240, 640x480, 576x432) and saved in different formats (MPEG, MP4, WMV). My video editor will load just about anything and adjust all the sizes and frame rates as necessary. I use Adobe Premiere, which is expensive, but I'm sure the much cheaper Elements version, or its competitors, would do all this just fine.

A few tweaks are usually necessary, like trimming the starts and ends of scenes and adjusting volumes so the interviewer and interviewee are comparable. I've added a few niceties, like a logo and audio 'sting' at the beginning (luckily one of my sons is a sound engineer so he came up with the sting, although I expect you can find these free online) as well as a caption showing the names of the parties involved. None of these are that important. I create a separate movie for each question and then export these in a format that's suitable for YouTube upload (I use Windows Media, but there are many options).

My final task is to upload all the movies and organise them into a YouTube playlist. You can then embed the playlist URL into a blog posting. YouTube's playlist format makes it possible for viewers to jump directly to the questions that most interest them, without loading the individual movies.

I estimate that this represents about five hours' (unpaid) work, which is quite a commitment, but does help in creating an archive of interviews that people seem to enjoy and which is likely to have legs. Most importantly, I enjoy doing it and so far, so do the interviewees.