Video Interviews: Rabbiting on in the headlights

“You have got to talk to Hudson!”
“Yeah, Hudson will be sooo great, he knows just what to say.”
“And he loves to talk, boy does he love to talk.”
“He’s a great guy, like totally the life and soul of the party.”
“Hudson is partaaay!”
“Go Hudson! Go Hudson! Go Hudson! Go Hudson! Go Hudson!....”
“No but seriously Matthew, Hudson knows the issues, has a relevant story to tell, and is very self-confident and eloquent – if there’s one person I feel confident about it’s Hudson.”
I am at a recce at the corporate headquarters of a major client.  We will be creating a microsite carrying an important piece of internal communication in video, slideshow and downloadable forms. I am having lunch with the commissioner of the project and some of the potential interviewees.  And I am beginning to worry about Hudson.
We believe the most important person in effective communications is the receiver:  It is vital to make the message resonate with the people it is intended for, and personal testimony from someone the audience can relate to is a very powerful tool.  So at DVA, we have got a lot of people talking, in interviews, statements, pieces to camera, voice tracks – you name it.  With that kind of experience you develop an instinct about how people will be in front of the camera.  We have learnt how to deal with it; working with people in the right way to bring the best out of them for the piece with the minimum of fuss.  Hudson is ringing bells with me – and not in a good way – because often the people who act like they were born to do it, can’t. 
I know a sound man (he’s sound in every respect) who has a theory about this:  People who are totally comfortable and self-confident in social situations, and completely relaxed with themselves, are not used to the stress others may feel just walking into a room full of people – let alone talking to them.  So when they sit down and the camera’s on them (and there’s a boom-mike and clipboards and muttering and jargon and stopping for batteries or tape or water or a funny buzzing noise coming from somewhere – I’m sorry but shoots are like that; they just are) gregarious people are confronted with a pressure they have no experience of and therefore no coping mechanisms for; and this scares them.  And then you get a rabbit in the headlights.
I go to meet Hudson, and I am looking at classic rabbit material.  He’s a nice guy, a fun guy.  But Hudson is not just comfortable in himself, he is luxuriating in himself.  For Hudson, being himself is like lying back in a Jacuzzi on a terrace overlooking Monte Carlo, Megan Fox is in there with him giving him a back-rub, and as he sips on the dry martini that Scarlett Johansson has just brought him he ponders which nightspots he will visit that evening.  Hudson likes being Hudson. 
This could be tricky.
I brief him on what we want from him, and how it will be on the day.  I am sure that he is going to find it difficult.  I do not tell him so, but I do emphasise the strangeness of the situation he will be in, in the hope that he will not be too surprised when he finds he can’t cope as well as he expects to.
A week later I am back in the USA for the shoot.  As we do the interviews, as usual, some people thought to be dull, shine, some people can’t think of anything to say, and some can’t stop talking, some people bring notes, but not the glasses they need to read them.  It is part of my job to get the best out of these people.  I have a duty to them as well as the client:  I have to get these people to perform - as themselves.  “Just act natural” is a difficult enough direction for a professional actor, for anyone else (and I would include myself in this – and I’m used to it) it is pretty much impossible.  By reading the individual, and giving the right balance of encouragement and criticism; familiarity and authority; information and white lies you get what you need.
Then there’s Hudson.  The crew and I chat to him as we set up, and he’s loving it; being with the video guys.  But as the camera turns, Hudson loses the power of speech.  I can see white all around the iris of his eyes, but the pupils are smaller than pinheads.  It’s rabbit time,  Hudson is not just nervous, he seems to be in shock.  He can’t cope, and can’t cope with the fact that he can’t cope.  Cut. 
We pretend we aren’t shooting, and try to get him to talk.  But Hudson’s newly acquired rabbit ears are so sensitive he picks up the sound of the camera motor.  Bright eyes again.  Cut.  And so on, and so on.  We get there in the end, but Hudson knows it has not gone well:  “Guy’s I don’t know what happened”. 
“Don’t worry” I say, “we get this all the time”.  Actually we don’t get it all the time, not like that, but getting the best out of interviewees always takes more than frame, focus and quiet please.  In Hudson’s case it felt like dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.
We’ve dropped the out-takes from the rushes now and done a compilation edit and, as always, you begin to see how the material will fit together to tell the story.  And in the end I think Hudson’s contribution is going to help us do it.
Names have been changed to protect the reticent.