![\"fixed-adobe-prelude\"](\"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/fixed-adobe-prelude.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen planning\/shooting an interview based video, there\u2019s (generally) two ways I\u2019ve seen people go about it: Just a few people who talk for quite a while and are asked different questions or a large number of people all being asked the same questions. Either way, you end up with a ton of content<\/strong> that, as an editor, you need to know inside and out<\/strong> to find the right elements to piece your story together. This is where Prelude comes in<\/em>.<\/p>\n Using Prelude, you can watch your interview footage, add markers<\/strong>, and add content<\/strong> to those markers that automatically shows up<\/strong> in Premiere! This last point is one of the coolest things about it: the comments are stored in the file\u2019s metadata, so there\u2019s no XML<\/strong> to export to get the markers. Any changes automatically show up, even if you have both programs open at the same time. If you import that footage into another project, the marker info comes with it<\/strong>. Click to enlarge:<\/em> Prelude has great keyboard shortcuts that let you watch the footage, set the in-point of a marker, add your comments, and set an out-point for the marker. If your cursor is in the comment box, you can type while it\u2019s playing back<\/strong>, allowing you to add live notes<\/strong> instead of having to stop over and over again. Check out this page<\/a> for a basic run-down of how to add markers. The video on the page shows a mouse driven workflow, but the keyboard shortcuts<\/strong> really make this a more pleasant process.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found that you really need to change your approach to logging clips<\/strong> depending on what you footage is like. One or two longer interviews with a ton<\/em> of questions needs to be approached differently than several interviews with roughly the same questions asked of each person.<\/p>\n The key to logging longer interviews with a ton of questions is phrases and keywords<\/strong>. Mark things that stand out to you, like quotes that you\u2019ll want to be able to find later. Sometimes you might want to log the general topic<\/strong> of what they\u2019re talking about..sometimes you\u2019ll want to mark just a sentence. Also mark things like second takes<\/strong> of answers or stumbles so that you don\u2019t bother with looking at a section when the content is repeated in a better way later on.<\/p>\n Even things like transitional statements<\/strong> can be good to mark to help you move from one subject to the next. As the editor, you should have a general idea of what parts are important to the story, so focus on those areas. Make these parts easy to find later! You can see below how on this project we made all sorts of notes that focused on key phrases and topics<\/strong> to help us find what we needed. Click to enlarge:<\/em> I edit a lot of videos in this style. There may only be 15 minutes of interview content per person, but there are like 6\u201310+ people, all touching on the same things! The approach that I found works best for me here isn\u2019t focusing on what they\u2019re saying (at least as far as markers are concerned), but focusing on what question is being asked<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll go through and make the marker the entire duration of their answer, and title the marker with the question asked. If you want to go further, that\u2019s fine, but just that little bit helps a lot. Usually you\u2019re working on a specific content section informed by one of the questions, and you really feel like you need a better ending or transition, or maybe the content is a bit light. Having the questions marked lets you quickly jump between interviews without having to find that specific section over and over again for each person.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found that I\u2019ve got a pretty good memory for things like, \u201cI remember that woman in the black shirt having a really good answer to that question,\u201d but I often spend way too long trying to find where she answered said question!<\/p>\n Just to show you how this might look, below is a project where we interviewed over 20 people involved with a school, and asked them all roughly the same questions (with only a little variance depending on whether they were a teacher, student, administrator, parent, etc.). Having the questions marked in Prelude<\/strong> was invaluable to finding the content that I needed quickly to fill in each subject area I needed to cover. Click to enlarge:<\/em> You can actually watch a timelapse of me working on this project:
\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nLogging one or two long interviews with a ton of questions<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nLogging a ton of interviews that ask roughly the same questions of everyone<\/h3>\n
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