I get that it’s an odd thing to complain about, given my profession, but I’m getting a little sick of video interviews on the Internet.
To be clear, I’m not talking about a well thought-out documentary, or even a longer-form interview piece, such as Mario Muth‘s excellent series with some lesser-known faces from the world of Formula 1 (if you’re an F1 fan, they’re excellent viewing).
I’m talking about actors and directors doing press for a movie and just sitting there with the interviewer for ten minutes. No cuts, no B-roll, no clips from the movie, just the interviewer and interviewee sitting there. It’s one thing to watch an interview like that in the context of a bigger program or news show, but on its own it just makes it more difficult to consume the content because it takes over your life for those minutes in a way that a written article just doesn’t – it’s far easier to read a little and come back to it if necessary.
If you’re going to do a video, make use of the medium for crying out loud. Big productions have teams of people shooting behind the scenes features for just this sort of reason. Having a director talk through a clip of a film can be enlightening.
I want people to use video, obviously, more and more. I just want video to be used well, for what it’s good for.
If all you’re going to do is have someone sit and talk for ten minutes, it might as well just be text. At the very least, that way it would be easier to digest.