When planning a talking head video, clients often ask which talking heads interview style we recommend – using an autocue or interviewer?
Autocue is generally best if:
- the content is instructional
- there’s a lot of detailed information to present
- there’s a short time slot to film in
- the content is subject to approval by the presenter’s peers or regulatory bodies
Here’s an autocue shoot with Westminster Council’s chief executive; we had a few hours’ notice to shoot this, and a few minutes to shoot it in, so autocue certainly helped!
And here’s another autocue shoot that came in at short notice – the system enables the presenter to relax and get it right, first time:
The interview approach works better if:
- a conversational style is required
- there’s more time to shoot and edit
On this page you’ll see clients talking without autocue, to an off-camera client interviewer – often a more ‘natural’ result but also more time-consuming.
On some shoots we take the off-camera client interviewer approach, but bring along the autocue as a back-up.
Whichever route we take, clients invariably tell us we made it much easier than they were expecting!
PS Lighting-wise we’ll always use a key light that mainly illuminates one side of the face slightly more than the other, to create some shadow and definition.
