How To Produce Video Interviews For Your Blog Using Skype
Videos are everywhere lately, specially interviews. I mean bloggers are really taking it to the next level and why not, it’s a great way to engage your visitor and make them stay a little longer. Are you asking yourself if this is hard to put together?
I’m going to show you how to produce your own video interview guerilla style… I mean, without losing an arm and a leg and without hiring anybody. First let’s review the ingredients:
The Ingredients
- Webcam
- Screen capture software
- Skype
- Basic video editing software
- Video sharing website
Record A Little Intro
With just a simple webcam, record yourself doing a short introduction for your guest, tell people what they are about to see. Make it short because your viewer will not stick forever to see you hook it up.
When you are done save it, you will need it later to edit the final piece.
Screen Capture
When doing an interview you will face two possible scenarios, is the person you are interviewing physically reachable or on the other side of the planet. In this case we’ll talk about a long distance interview and since this is going to happen over the internet, what we need to record is what’s happening on the screen, this is called Screen Capturing. This software will also take care of the audio part.
I personally like iShowU from ShinyWhiteBox, but there are plenty of options out there. Depending of your choice, you should expect to pay up to $100, don’t pay more than that (iShowU is about $30).
Skype
Oh, the beautiful and FREE Skype… If you don’t have an account you should probably make the time to get one, today. In my opinion, the only thing Skype doesn’t do is record, that’s why you need to use screen capture software. Other than that, it makes everything much more simple. Setup your appointment, make sure you have a good connection for the call, make a couple of tests and you are ready.
Consider that your interview should probably not exceed the 10 minutes but try to record more material to play with at the editing stage.
Editing Your Video
The term “Video Editing” is probably the one that scares everybody, but don’t complicate things. Remember that you are producing something for the Internet, not for TV. While there are many options in this field, I recommend you stay in the lower end, the basics. I’m using iMovie but if you are on the PC side, Windows Movie Maker should be the equivalent.
These programs are very easy to learn because they are meant to help beginners like you and me. If you take a couple of tutorials, you’ll be on your way pretty fast (These links are for tutorials on both iMovie and Movie Maker).
During the editing stage, you want to play with adding different elements like pictures, text, effects and music. You will also be able to chop the raw video in pieces and paste them together.
Video Sharing Service
Now that you have your video edited and saved on your computer (usually on a MP4 format), you need to share it with the world and for this you will need to create an account with a service like Vimeo or YouTube if you don’t already have one. I prefer Vimeo but that’s just me, there are plenty options out there for you to find a good fit.
Once you have your account setup you just need to upload your file, be patient, it’ll take a while. Set up a title, a description, tags and whatever you can do to make it a little more friendly. Publish your video and make sure everything is looking good.
Embed To Your Post
The last step is to bring it to your blog, where you want to place it on your next post. Wherever your video lives now (Vimeo, YouTube or other…), copy the “Embed Code” (read my post: “Mini-Tutorial: How To Embed A You-Tube Video On Your Blog“) and insert it into your post. Preview and test everything before hitting the “Publish” button.
It’s A Wrap!
It’s not rocket science, anybody can do a video interview and while the technical part is very important and entertaining at the same time, make sure the main focus is on delivering good quality in the content. People will forgive a technical difficulty if the content is of value.
(2 mentions before I go: Sorry Andrea for using you as an example… and thanks Glenn Sakamoto for the idea for the post).
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