Video Transcript
OK, so in the last video, I talked about face-to-face interviews. And as I say, if you get a chance, I would certainly give them a go. What I really wanted to give you there was a bit of a grounding in how they work and the pros and cons of them. But the priority for this module, in this section of the whole course, is to get you up and running.
So what we’re going to do now is focus on making that first interview and getting it, as they say in the movies, in the can, right? The fastest way of doing this, if your podcast is about guest interviews, is by doing a remote recording. What I mean is quite simply that you and your guest are in different places.
But how do we do that. Well, one of the most popular methods right now is Zoom. If you’re involved in any kind of video conferencing at all, then you’ve probably used it in the current climate. If not, then it is a really simple, easy to use, and most importantly free form of recording videos and chatting to people and recording that as you go along. I’m actually being interviewed as a guest about journalism, my background in journalism, on two podcasts over the next week on Zoom.
So it’s very popular. It’s used by a lot of podcasters. And this is why I want to use it today because it’s simple, easy to use, and so many people have heard about it or are using it. And also, the other factor as well is that a lot of people who are afraid of tech don’t mind using Zoom as well because it’s very easy to install and get going with too.
Even better, Zoom has inbuilt a recording system. So you can just click “Record” – make sure you do click “Record” when you do your interview. Sometimes, people forget. I don’t know – I can’t think of any examples. But some people do occasionally forget to click “Record” when they do this. And the great thing is that that will record it all for you. And then I will show you in the next video how to actually process that. But it does the recording, it gets that interview in the can for you.
It’s free up to 40 minutes with multiple guests. A 40 minute interview is fine. You can also pay for an upgrade and carry on unlimited with multiple guests, or it’s free for absolute ages with one guest using Zoom.
Now Zoom, as I say, isn’t the only option. There is like Skype, FaceTime, Google Meetings, Zencastr and loads more. And they’ve all got their pros and cons. And as you starting more episodes, I really urge you to have a look around and try these different platforms.
But to avoid going over lots and lots of different platforms and trying to show you how to use each one, which is going to get very boring, let’s get on with making podcasts which is what the priority is here. So let’s stick with Zoom, and that’s what I’m going to focus on in this video today.
And why video communication, you might be wondering, because mostly with podcasting, we’re talking about just audio only. But for the same reason as I said in the last video, because video allows you to see your guest. It allows you to see their reactions and see when you can dig a little bit deeper into their story, and keep that sort of focus on the really interesting – I don’t know. It’s really hard to describe it. But it allows you to see into their soul and pull out those stories that will really make a great podcast. It allows you to develop that report more easily and really turn this stuff into great content.
And also the other thing as well with video is that when things do start to go wrong, people tend to get a little bit less frustrated when they can see you too. They can see that you’re smiling. They can see that you’re laughing and that you’re moving around or that you’re trying to sort something out. So instead of them just sit there and kind of wondering, why has it gone quiet? What are they doing? They can actually see that you’re sorting stuff out or trying to put things together.
So before I show you how to do the whole process on the Zoom recording with a guest, which I’m going to do with a guest I’ve lined up for us in just a few moment – I’m trying to run through the whole thing so that you can see everything as I do it. I do want to run through a few technical points you might want to think about before you actually do this first one.
Now, obviously, unlike a face-to-face interview, you no longer control the environment that these people are in. You can’t just stick your hand through the computer and move their microphone for them, sadly. So you can’t make sure that that is exactly the right place. So you need to be prepared to help your guest and get set up when you first connect. Don’t just connect with them and say 8 o’clock and expect them to be ready. Because in a lot of cases, they won’t be.
Some people may have loads of experience, they’ll be ready with a professional microphone in front of them and ready to go, awesome sound and set up. But a lot of people aren’t. So one thing I suggest is writing a little guide for your guests before they actually join your interview. And this gives them a chance to just first of all be told a little bit about the show. You can obviously thank them for appearing, thank them for agreeing to appear, and a little bit about what they can expect when you do the interview. But it also gives you an opportunity to give them some pointers on getting themselves set up.
So if they have an external mic like the ones we were talking about before, then fantastic. Then you’re going to have a lot easier time. But if not, then the most important thing is to get them to sit as close to their microphone as possible. You know, I was talking about how many computers – maybe yours has got a little microphone built into it maybe into the monitor or maybe into the computer itself. If that’s all they’ve got and they’re a great guest, then you might want to still want to consider it.
But if they are sitting back for me – so I mean, if I move away from my mic like this, OK? Imagine you’re listening to a podcast where I’m at a distance. This mic might still be picking up OK. If I move around, it should sound even worse. But if you’ve got a podcast sounding like that, people are going to get really fed up. So you’ve got to get them in to that microphone.
If they’re using, say, a webcam – here’s an example of a webcam. If they’re using one like that, then again, don’t have that microphone halfway across the room, the microphone on the webcam. Make sure they’re up as close to that as they can be so that we’re getting as good a sound as possible. So you want to focus on that. Make sure that they are as close to that microphone as possible.
Number two, headphones. They must wear headphones. Especially if they’re not using a high quality mic. The reason I’m not wearing them right now is because I don’t need to listen to my voice as I’m recording this. But as you’re doing an interview over Zoom, they’re going to be hearing you and you’re going to be hearing them. And we need to get rid of that distortion, that possibility that the software is going to try and cut out background noise and then make the sound sound even worse. So they’ve got to wear headphones.
Now as I said before, these don’t need to be expensive headphones. They can quite simply be some ones that you plug into your phone or into your music system or whatever it is. But that is really important that they wear headphones. So add that into your note to them as well. Close to the microphone and headphones.
And finally then, ask them to install Zoom in advance which they can do. And then they can test their webcam and their microphone with that. They’ll see the settings as soon as they go in there, and they can check it’s all working beforehand. Offered to do a quick test for them as well if they’re not familiar with it or if they’re a little bit nervous.
Taking five minutes a few days beforehand and say, yeah, no problem. we’ll just do a quick connection check and make sure it’s all going to work on the day. For anyone who’s a little bit nervous, it’s going to help for you to develop rapport with them to break the ice, to get them reassured and more comfortable, give you a chance to have a smile, a little bit of chat with them. And you’re going to have so much better interview.
Now some people get very nervous, if the first time they ever speak to a presenter or an interviewer like yourself, is at the start of the interview. I’ve been on studio. I actually did a guest appearance last night on a podcast talking about journalism. And I had never spoken to the presenter before. And the first time I did was quite literally as we were about to start doing an interview. It was – I just didn’t – I didn’t go straight into it because I felt like I need to know something about them first. I’d heard their podcast before. But I hadn’t connected with them directly. So I actually kind of forced the pace a little bit and spent the first five minutes just getting to know them. And I was the guest.
So it’s always good to spend a bit of time developing some rapport with your guests, whether you do that in a little test a few days before or whether you’re doing it at the start the actual interview. But be prepared to jump on the phone or on the internet messenger, or talk to them by any other means that they like to use to help them get set up on the day, because a lot of people do have just little questions or little niggles to sort out, and so you can develop rapport.
The other one as well is a connection issue. And particularly when you’re using video – and as I say, I really recommend you use it – is that it does take a lot more demand on your internet connection. And if someone’s using an unreliable Wi-Fi connection in their house, then that could lead to the sound being distorted as well. And if they’re dropping out, it’s going to sound awful and be a nightmare to edit as well. So try and get them to go into a wired connection if you can. Or move around until that signal improves on the Wi-Fi.
As I say it’s an opportunity for you to develop rapport with them, but also to help improve that quality of the recording that you’re going to get to. But a basic rule of thumb – so these are the things if you want – if you’re going to remember anything, this is what I want you to do is get them set up on Zoom, get them as close to the microphone as possible or webcam, whatever they’re recording the sound of their voice, and put some headphones in their ears or on the ears.
So we got him set up. How do we record all this? Well, what I want to do now is to show you this process from start to finish. And I’ve got a guest who I am now going to get onto Zoom. And we will run through that process. So let’s do that right now.
So the first step we need to do is to send an invitation. We need to boot up Zoom on our computer, obviously. And then we need to send an invitation to our guest. So let’s do that now on my computer. So we got to go to Zoom. Let’s get that started.
And you’ve got a couple of options. You can either set up a new meeting straight away and do it instantly. But far better – as I say, we want to get our guests set up. So what we’re going to use is Schedule. I’m going to click on Schedule there, and I’m going to pick a time.
So we’re actually going to do this today on the 7th of October. And let’s say we’re going to do it at 7 o’clock. So I’m going to change my time on there if I can. There we go. And the duration, let’s say we’re going to do 30 minutes. As I say, with Zoom, the free with one on one person – which is how most podcast go, frankly – you can keep going. If you’ve got more than one person, then you’ve got a 40 minute time limit at the moment. You might want to check that just in case it changes.
So I’ve got all the details I need. I don’t need to work out any sort of meeting IDs myself. So I’ve got generate all the stuff automatically. You can set your preferences, whether you want the video on straight away. So, yes, why not. Me and the participant. And you can integrate it with different calendars too.
But the most important thing now – so we set a time, we set the duration, roughly. It doesn’t cut you off at the end of it from my experience – is you click ‘Schedule’ then. And that’s now created an invitation which we can send to our guest. And this is the key – it’s this link in here that we want to be sending. Now you can quite literally copy this to your clipboard, as it says there, and put it in an e-mail and send to them. Or sometimes you do, you can send a WhatsApp or any other kind of Facebook Messenger or something like that with that particular link it. And they can use that to then join the conversation.
So let me send that to my guests right now. And we will get him on to Zoom. And hopefully, that will happen in a few seconds of time. So I send that invitation to Adam. And he came up on Zoom a few moments ago. And when he did, when he first arrived on there, you can actually see on the screen that it said the word admit.
And I mean one thing I love about Zoom, it is a very simple platform for you to use. So I literally click that, and he’s appeared here in the list of participants. And I’m going to click to ask him to start his video there, and ask him if he could connect so that we can see him.
Hello, Adam! Thanks so much for joining us this evening. Now I have asked Adam to do several things wrong here because I think it’s going to be really useful for you to actually see the difference that it makes when we do some of this setup. So the first thing, as I say, when you get your guest on is you can expect a few little problems.
One thing I’m going to do so that I make sure that I do not forget this, because I might have done this before, is click record on Zoom like that. Now that now is recording. You can see it up at the top of there. And I know that I’m going to be recording this stuff. And remember, I can edit out the stuff I don’t need. So that’s not a problem.
So looking at Adam, we can see there’s a few problems straight away. As I said, lighting – if you want to get some screenshots of you and your guest, we need to sort this out. So Adam at the moment has got the light behind him which is creating this sort of silhouette, almost like a mystery secret agent guest who’s being interviewed on TV and you’re going to distort their voice.
So the first thing I’m going to ask my guest to do is – could you move the light around so that it’s in front of you, so that we can see your face, please? And you’ll see – you’ll see the difference as Adam moves the light, how much difference it makes to his camera and how it picks it up. You can see already we can actually see now what he looks like. He doesn’t look very happy, but what he looks like. Superb.
Right. So the next thing then, Adam, is just – could you talk to us just a little bit just so we can hear what your sound is sounding like? For example, what did you have for breakfast this morning?
Adam: Yeah. I had a few beans on toast with –
OK. I’m going to stop you straight away because – next thing – you can hardly hear it. It’s very distant. So what we need to do is get his mouth right near to the microphone. So, Adam, could you move up as close as you can to the microphone on your computer?
Adam: Yeah, if you like me to do. That’s better. Is this better?
Yeah. So that’s definitely – can you tell us a little bit again – just say anything you like just so we can hear your voice.
Adam: Yeah. So I’m just adjusting the lighting as well. There we go. Is that better with the lighting?
The lighting is better. And also, the sound is slightly better. But it’s still a bit distorted. And remember, what it’s doing at the moment- you’ve got the speakers sort of producing the sound, the microphone’s picking up that sound. And the software is trying to get rid of this sort of feedback loop of hearing it and then playing it and hearing it. So it’s distorting the sound.
So how do we get rid of that? Headphones. Adam, do you happen to have some headphones with you?
[CHUCKLES]
I know you do. Could you put them on?
Adam: Yes. Just allow me a moment, please.
So he’s got to plug them in as well, obviously. That’s going to help. And as soon as it’s plugged in, let’s hear you now.
Adam: How’s that? Does that sound a bit better?
So straight away – still sounds a little bit distant. But straight away, we’ve lost all that distortion, that sort of squeakiness to the sound, which is fantastic. But there’s one other thing I’d like you to do as well. Could you hold onto that microphone – and I can see which is connected your headphones there – and move it nearer to you as you talk so that we can hear the difference as you move it in and out towards your mouth.
Adam: Um, OK, yes. So talking really close to the microphone. And now I’m talking quite away –
So you can hear there’s a massive difference for that. So when we get underway, I’m going to ask Adam to hold that a little bit closer to his mouth, because we’re going to get a far richer, fun, nice sound for people to listen to. Thank you so much for doing that initial setup. This illustrates the point about the fact that you’re not going to necessarily get on there and say 8 o’clock start and it’s going to be straight off. You’re going to need to help your guests often to set up a little bit to get that best sound out of it.
Now what I’ve asked Adam to do now is I’m going to ask him a couple of questions about a website that he works on. And I’ve asked him to deliberately do it wrong the first time which will give us an opportunity to see how to edit this stuff out. But also some of the issues that you might come up against. And then I’ll ask him a similar question again so that we can do it slightly differently.
Let’s try it, first of all. So, Adam, just very quickly, just tell us a bit about your website, please.
Adam: Yeah, so my website is a – it’s called Carrot Tops – carrottopsallotment.com and it’s a gardening – it’s a gardening blog. And – yeah, I like to write about gardening and –
I’m going to stop you there. And I think you can see straight away what I’ve asked Adam to do there. Lots of um’s and uh’s which we’re going to look at how to edit those out. And also, we’re just not really going anywhere with the interview. So I asked him to be deliberately vague.
So let’s try that again. We’re going to use his whole audio as stuff to show you how we can edit this stuff. So this time, I’m going to ask Adam a little bit different question. A bit more of an open ended question. Ask him to tell us a little bit more.
So, Adam, just – I think what our listeners really want to hear about is what kind of motivated you to come up with this website. So it’s carrottopsallotment – but why did you create it? What was your thoughts behind this?
Adam: Well, I did train as a journalist originally. And I was doing WordPressing and blogging on the site. And I was looking for a niche at the time way back when to try and hone those skills. And I was into gardening, so I focused on gardening. And this has snowballed into a very, very tiny phenomenon about what I get up to at my allotment, at my garden, what I grow, the trials and tribulations of such. And it’s kind of come from there, really.
I’ve taken – it really is a grassroots – excuse the pun – view at how to grow your own produce and flowers and things. And I’m not producing anything new. I think gardening and this kind of information has been around for decades and centuries. I think it’s just my view on it, basically.
Well, you’ve certainly made an impact though, because you’ve got quite a lot of followers now on your side as well.
Adam: I know. I didn’t realize. It’s a very tough – it’s never gone out of fashion, I don’t think. I don’t think gardening has ever gone out of fashion. I think, and especially now in these times, I think people are going back to simple hobbies like this. And people are getting garden boxes and people are visiting green spaces locally to them. So it’s always good to share that kind of experience and how I started and where I go from that.
Superb. Let’s stop you just for a moment. As you’re listening, as you’re doing the interview, you want to be listening, well, what are those soundbites? What are those bits that are going to be the most interesting bits that you can pull out at? And I’ve asked Adam here to sort of talk around the topic so that we can use this and we can pull these bits out.
One final thing that I should say – and I must give Adam the opportunity for this – is that whenever you have a guest on, most people want to plug their site a little bit. So go on, Adam. Just give us the website so that people can visit if they’re interested in your allotment stuff.
Adam: Yes. It’s carrottopsallotment.com and you can visit that to see how I garden and what I grow. You can also check out some recipes on there, green spaces I’ve visited, and my different experiences with anything kind of outdoors and green. And, yeah. I hope you enjoy it. And check it out if you’ve got a spare five minutes.
Thank you very much, Adam. Now, most important thing. We’ve been doing our recording, we need to stop that recording. And you will see the recording will be converted to an MP4 when the meeting ends. So I’m going to end that meeting.
Thank you very much, Adam. I will talk to you again very soon, I am sure. We will end that. And then you will see on here that this is now converting to that MP4 file. And I will join you back in a second once that has finished and it’s on the computer.
So we have an audio file on our computer. It is not quite ready to be used yet. And we’ll cover what to do with that file in the next video. But I want to pause at this bit here because I would like you to do an exercise now to practice using Zoom.
Now you do not need to interview the prime minister or the president of your country or whatever. What I want you to do is to find someone to do a fun interview with. It doesn’t need to go out. So find a friend or a member of your family, maybe someone in your family or relative you haven’t spoken to in ages. So use it as an excuse to ring them up and have a chat with them on Zoom and record it. Don’t forget to press that record button.
And once you’ve got some audio, then we’ll move on to the next video. But take this opportunity now to connect with them on Zoom, record the audio, make a file. And then we will use that file in the next video as part of our editing practice to make our sort of first podcast episode.
There’s one final tip I do want to actually leave you with in this particular video. The one danger of using a video chat to record a podcast particularly when you’re making something in audio, or for audio more correctly, is that it’s very easy to say things like, as you can see, or the way I look right now. Some kind of visual reference. Now when that converts to audio and someone’s listening to it and they’re sitting in a car and they’re going, what? What are they talking about?
So you do have to be a little bit careful that if someone is describing something visually and talk about it, they get it in a hand or they’re showing you, that they describe it, that they say what it looks like. So – I don’t know – let me say I’m – it’s pretty obvious this, isn’t it? But I’ve got a phone in my hand. And I could say, as you can see on my phone, it’s got a blank screen, and it says a time on it. so you’ve got to use those descriptions to actually say what people are seeing.
So on the phone that I’m looking at now, it’s got a picture of a sunset over a hill on the sea, surrounded by Sandy beaches. And it’s giving me the time and the date. By that way, if someone’s listening on audio, they know exactly what you are looking at. You’re providing that visual picture to them. That’s my final tip on that.
But now, head off. Get in contact with someone. And do a recording on Zoom so that we can use that for the next section of the course. I’ll speak to you very soon.
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Learning Action
Interview someone using Zoom and record it.
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