The Art of Interviews



An effective logo animation promotes an impactful company product. In the case of my DAT Capstone project, this "company product" exists as multiple interview videos of staff members from the local nonprofit, Americana World Community Center. 

These interviews capture the impact that Americana has had on their clients and the Louisville community at large. The organization provides educational, physical, and emotional resources for immigrants and refugees in the city. However, in order to tell the stories of love, passion, and service from staff members, the interview footage must be compiled into digestible and effective snippets that are intriguing to viewers. This is done through the process of video editing.

According to the NPR article, "How to decide what to cut (or not) in an interview," several editing strategies are outlined in order to help editors remember key rules of editing interviews and achieve professionalism. As I am scrubbing through hours of footage from conducting these videos, obtaining guidelines for make the process quicker, more efficient, and of higher quality is imperative. 

  1. "'Cleaning up' tape"
    1. This refers to the first step of editing: reducing filler words and pauses. Professional videos limit the amounts of "um" and "uh" to ensure that only the testimony is highlighted. However, it is important to listen back to the story in context to catch if any filler words have significant meaning, such as if the interviewee was emotionally struggling to respond or obviously caught off guard. These responses can also hold meaning for the interview and communicate something new to the viewer. 
    2. It is also important to remember that the goal of cleaning up footage is to make the testimony sound smoother, your interviewee sound better, and the clip sounds natural. Keeping some of the raw conversation intact can be beneficial to achieve these ends.
  2. "Internal edits and wholesale removal of Q&As"
    1. Removing extra, tangential stories is acceptable. It is okay to remove footage in order to stay on topic. In the same vein, it is also standard practice to remove entire questions if the response or direction of the story does not fit.
  3. "Rearranging questions"
    1. Moving the chronological clips of questions and footage is also acceptable as long as it is not altering the meaning of the original testimony. If editing the timeline can increase the impact of the story, it is okay. Simply be cautious of removing important context that may have originally appeared beforehand.
A few other points that were very helpful to me in my editing journey included NPR's recommendation of combining questions, keeping "the moment" as the true purpose of the interview, and maintaining the conversational tone. These notes have assisted me to stay on task and remember the importance of editing during the process. 

Video editing can take hours, and it can be a struggle at times to recall the purpose of the story and the most important elements to include to make something truly striking! Having the guidelines and reassurance from NPR's article motivated me to continue with my project and remember the calling of creating something "truthful and listenable" (Socolovsky, 2019).

Works Cited

Socolovsky, J. (2019, November 12). How to decide what to cut (or not) in an interview. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-training/2025/05/29/g-s1-65686/how-to-decide-what-to-cut-or-not-in-an-interview


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