A version of this blog appears on the ASL Productions blog.

Video Interviews are the backbone of any corporate video. Don’t get me wrong; animations, special effects, and graphics can be great, but without rock solid interviews to drive your content, they will almost always come up short. Whether you’re looking to make a testimonial, recruitment or company culture video, few things predict the success of a project more than professionally produced, highly focused and well-executed interviews.

In order to achieve this though, it’s important to first understand the various roles interviews can play in setting up the structure of your corporate video. Like all aspects of video production, having a great plan is critical and deciding the tone and purpose of your interviews is no exception. In this article, we will explore why interviews are so important to corporate videos and how to best utilize them in order to set your production up for success.

Interview Bring Products to Life

Video provides visual context, but when you’re trying to inform your audience about something new and unknown, you often need more. Educating through the use of animation, graphics, and diagrams can be a great way to visualize a product or service, though those methods lack a personal perspective. Interviews allow experts to explain and educate audiences about a product or service while touching on elements that can’t be reached through visuals alone.

Interviews are often seen (and heard) doing this in product videos. Historically, product videos were used to highlight a good you could hold in your hands, but now they have also grown to include things like apps, software or any service your company provides. Frequently, you’ll see them featured on company landing pages, YouTube channels, social media accounts where they are used to launch a product and introduce the audience to something new.

Interviews are especially useful with products that are hard to understand at first, either because they are complicated or so new that people haven’t been exposed to something like them before. Reading a textbook can convey information, but seeing and hearing someone talk about the subject in an entertaining way can often make retaining and understanding the information simpler. The same is true for interviews in product videos. Listening to experts, employees and consumers talk about a product often add a level of human touch that would otherwise be hard to replicate.

They Build Trust With Your Audience

Video endorsements in commercials can risk coming off as disingenuous. Putting faith in the hands of actors to build the audience’s trust in a product requires a lot of faith. Luckily, in corporate videos, actors are often jettisoned for real people with real stories. Gaining the trust of the viewer begins with interviewing a subject that the audience can identify with.

In testimonial videos, your interview subjects are the heart and soul of the production. The goal in these videos is to remove the company who is trying to sell their services from the equation entirely and allow happy consumers speak to people just like those watching. By interviewing real customers and allowing them to tell their story, testimonial interviews aim to connect with the audience on an emotional level.

Accomplishing this requires more than just choosing an interview subject that feels strongly a particular product or service. These interviews must feel authentic and genuine. Helping the customer deliver a heartfelt and compelling interview is a big reason that a professional production team can add a level of value to your project that is otherwise hard to obtain.

A relaxed and confident interview within a testimonial video can charge it with an authenticity that, if done right, will gain the viewer's trust, and inspire them to action.

TIP: Preparation is vital in getting exceptional sound bites from your subject. Coming with bullet points and a script is the first step but listening to the subject and building a genuine conversational tone will make your testimonial video interview a memorable one.

Interview Capture The Moment

Whether your company is throwing an event for its employees, using your office space to host a panel of speakers or holding a launch party, corporate events are special occasions. It takes a lot of time, money and energy to plan and throw these events, so more and more often companies are choosing to document them with video.

Interviews in event videos play a critical and double role. They allow those who were not in attendance to feel as though they were part of the action by hearing from those who were in attendance and help the attendees relive the emotions they felt while they were there. Capturing that moment in time for all parties is a great way to cement a great event in everyone’s memories.

Having sponsors, attendees, hosts or speakers of the event on camera allows everyone to tap into the emotion that was being felt that week, day and moment. Even if you attended the event, it’s great to hear how others’ experiences may have been different than your own and is often a great marketing tool for future events and a way to approach potential speakers and sponsors in the future.

In the long run, attendee interviews play well for social media stories; while, the more substantial interviews with the faces of the company are conducted as more formal pieces. A great corporate event coverage video interview manages to speak on the event with authority, and to a corporate video, that can make a powerful difference. A production crew can leave a minimal footprint filming interviews at your event but can provide immense value to your corporate event video.

Connect with ASL Productions on LinkedIn, Instagram and their blog.