Pro Tip: Adding Zing to Lifeless Interview Subjects

Some pro tips I’ve held close to my vest over the years. One of them is this trick I use to add energy to lifeless interviews.

We all know that they happen. You get someone in the chair who’s maybe not all that jazzed to be there or just plain tired. There’s only so much you can do, and still, the notes on the material will come back about how the subject “seems very low energy.”

No kidding.

My secret sauce? Just compress the clip length by somewhere around ten percent. If speeding the footage and audio up by that amount doesn’t appear too obviously doctored, it can add a little bit of life — sometimes enough to keep you from having to pick up the interview content, hoping to heck that your subject is more awake the second time out.

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