Video has become an important part of how we share stories. It gives us something that a written article, report or social media post cannot always provide. A different way to hear directly from the people who hold knowledge and experience in a way that shares emotion, personal affliction, excitement and joy. While written words can be powerful, a visual account picks up these emotive nuances. 

This is what makes videography such an interesting part of communications work for us. A participant does not only tell you about an experience. You hear how they tell it. You see where they are, how they respond to a question and which parts of the conversation bring out something more personal. There is information in all of this and the camera gives us a way of retaining some of it.

But getting to that point depends on what happens before we press record.

Without a doubt, the most important part of a videography or film project, are the relationships you build with the people you are filming, before you press record.

Important side note: let’s not call them ‘subjects’. This is very impersonal, which is completely counter to the relationship you need to establish when filming a personal moment with someone. 

Maybe small talk matters after all

In unfamiliar settings, between people who have only just met, small talk can ease the formality of an interaction and create the familiarity from which a more natural conversation can develop. Small talk should not start with the topic of the project. 

There is something potentially extractive about meeting someone and, within minutes, placing a camera in front of them and asking them to tell you something meaningful.

Extractive storytelling can occur when the story becomes more important than the person telling it. The interaction is organised around what the production needs – a quote, experience or emotional response, with little attention given to the relationship through which that material is being shared.

Moving away from this requires us to pay attention to how the story is gathered in the first place. People need enough context to understand what they are contributing to, but they also need room to introduce what they consider relevant, explain themselves in their own language and take the conversation somewhere the interview guide may not have anticipated.

Following the conversation, not the questionnaire

An interview guide gives the production direction, but the conversation itself cannot be mapped in the same way. Conversations can be layered, with an idea introduced at one point gaining meaning from something said much later. Following these threads and knowing when to bring them together requires active listening.

It’s not to say don’t prepare questions to guide the conversation; but be open to explore different areas and conversations that emerge.

The interviewer needs to stay with what is being said instead of listening primarily for the moment to ask the next prepared question. Sometimes an answer needs another question to draw it out. At other times, a pause gives the participant room to continue, or something discussed earlier provides a way back into the conversation from a different angle.

This is why the process cannot be linear. The interview may move away from the guide and find its way back, with unexpected directions becoming part of how the conversation develops. Knowing what a production needs to communicate is important. Prescribing exactly how the participant should get there can limit what the conversation is able to reveal.

What makes it into the final story

The relationship built during filming ultimately influences the material you have to tell the story. Editing can restructure a conversation, connect different moments and bring in supporting visuals, but it cannot create context or depth that was never captured in the first place.

That’s why we need to see relationship-building as part of the storytelling process, not something that happens alongside it. The understanding developed through conversation helps the production team recognise what holds meaning and provides important context when a much longer conversation has to become a much shorter story.

That relationship also carries an element of trust. Participants hand over a degree of agency over how their words are selected, placed alongside other material and ultimately presented to an audience. The camera may be the tool that records the story, but it’s not where the story begins. It begins in the conversation before it, in the trust built around it and in how carefully we listen once someone decides to share.