Mama I’m on TV!
5 things I learned from being interviewed for ITV News
Last November I had my 15 seconds of fame, well more like 26 seconds to be exact! ITV News came to my university (London College of Fashion) to cover their big move to the new campus in East Bank. This move gained a lot of media attention since the Mayor of London had invested £1.1 billion into the developments in East London, which is deemed the new cultural capital of London.
How did the day go:
November 1st 2023, in the morning, I met the Mayor with a few other members from UAL including my sister who is an alumni from LCF, as well as other new organisations to the area such as UCL, Sadlers Wells and BBC. We took photos while we toured the area and introduced ourselves.
Initially, that’s all I had planned for that day before the opening event in the evening. However, since ITV News were there, they wanted to interview a student - which happened to be yours truly. Of course I agreed and of course I was nervous.
You can read about that day on the features page as I wrote an article for LCF’s blog page. Here I want to reflect on what I learnt as an aspiring journalist about how to interview.
Lesson 1: SET THE SCENE
The first thing we did for the interview was find a location. I noticed what their requirements were, somewhere that reflected that we were in a fashion uni and captured student life in the building, while not being too loud with unexpected background noise. Once we found a suitable area, they asked for a few design mannequins to have in the background to use as non verbal storytelling. The visuals in the background also tell a story so it is important that you curate what story it tells in your favour.
Lesson 2: CONFIRM DETAILS
We had introduced ourselves when we met, however as we sat down, I had to confirm my name twice verbally on recording devices as well as spell it out in full so that the interviewer could write it down. This makes sure that there is no confusion post production in regards to getting details correct. There have been times in the media where such mistakes happen and have opened up the discussion to wider topics based off of this mistake. For example, Burna Boy was misidentified in the recent Grammy Awards for another black artist which led people to speculate whether this hints at racism as a result of The Recording Academy’s failure to correctly identify him.
Lesson 3: RELAX
Notice how the first two points are done before the interview even started, well this is to allow for this next point. You have to be relaxed. You will not be able to produce a good interview if you are not relaxed. Notice, I didn’t say you can’t be nervous, but you have to welcome a sense of calm so that you can dominate the pace and flow of the interview; that way, the interviewee can also relax. A good tip is to think of it more as a chat rather than an interview. As they were setting up, the interviewer asked me what I had for breakfast and that random question took me by surprise, but relaxed me instantly so by the time he started asking the more in depth questions, we had already relaxed into a natural conversation.
Lesson 4: REPHRASE QUESTIONS
Talking about in - depth questions, there were a few that I felt like I didn’t answer correctly. When that happened, I noticed that the interviewer quickly rephrase the question so I had time to think and respond better. When interviewing, it works like a conversation, you should pick up on when your subject is slightly struggling and respond accordingly. Rephrasing the question also allows you to tell the interviewee roughly what type of answer you need. For some interviews such as profile features, you will be surprised with answers, but for more general articles, you should have an idea of the type of quotes you need and guide your interviewee to respond in their own way that puts their ideas across in a way that’s useful to you.
Lesson 5: HAVE MORE THAN ENOUGH CONTENT
However, there might be times when the interviewee just doesn’t get it. Not all interviews will be smooth sailing. Sometimes you will have to dig deeper when you are met with short answers. Other times you might have to cut the interview short as the answers are long but not concise. No matter how long your feature is, always have extra questions prepared for those surprise moments. I knew that the segment on ITV News that I was in wouldn’t be too long, but I was still asked many questions so that post production, they were able to pick and choose the responses they liked. Similarly when writing out an interview, you don’t want to start a feature and realise you don’t have enough information on a topic, or wish you went in deeper with something the person said. Good questions allow for even better answers.
Watching myself on ITV News with my family being my biggest supporters!
Take some time for these tips to simmer because they have already helped me in my practise. I have had the opportunity to interview some very interesting people and these 5 tips are golden rules that apply for almost every interview situation. Check out my tiktok page where I summarise these points for you!.
I have other tips and tricks brewing for you all, until then why not sip some other pieces across the blog!
