How to Get Real People to Be Good on Camera

Almost every corporate film depends on someone who has never been filmed before. An engineer explaining what they built. A customer describing why they stayed. A founder talking about the early years. But the quality of what they say is usually the difference between a film that works and one that doesn't.

Yet the preparation they get is often a calendar invite and a vague reassurance that it'll be fine.

What Actually Goes Wrong

Preperation - the wrong way. Told they're being interviewed, most people write out what they want to say and try to remember it. The result is recitation, eyes going up and to the left, phrasing that belongs on a page rather than in a mouth, and a visible sense of relief when they reach the end. Everything that made them worth filming disappears into the effort of recall.

They perform a role. People being filmed at work often default to a version of themselves they think is appropriate, more formal, more careful, more corporate. The person who explains their work brilliantly over coffee becomes, on camera, someone saying "we're very much focused on delivering value to our customers".

Nobody told them what the film is for. Without context, people guess, and they usually guess that the answer is promotion. So they promote. A contributor who understands what the film is genuinely trying to achieve gives you something far more useful than one trying to be helpful in the dark.

The aim is not to get someone to say the right thing. It's to get them to say the true thing in the way they'd normally say it.

What Makes the Difference

Tell them not to prepare answers

Counter-intuitive and the most effective single instruction. Give people the topics, not the questions, and explicitly tell them not to script anything. Thinking about an area in advance is useful. Memorising sentences is what produces the recitation.

Explain what the film is for

Including who will watch it and what you'd like them to understand afterwards. People give better material when they know the purpose, because they can judge for themselves what's relevant, and they stop trying to sell.

Spend the first five minutes not filming anything useful

The opening answers are almost always discarded. Treating that as expected rather than as a problem lets someone settle. Starting with easy, low-stakes ground, how they ended up in the job, what they were doing before.

Let silence sit

The most useful thing an interviewer can do is wait. People finish an answer, pause, and then - if nobody fills the gap - add the sentence they were hesitant about. That second sentence is frequently the one that ends up in the film.

Ask the same thing twice, differently

A first answer is often the rehearsed version even when nobody intended to rehearse. Coming back to the same ground later, from a different angle, tends to produce something looser and more honest.

Keep the room small

Every additional person watching makes a contributor more self-conscious, and a line manager in the room changes what gets said more than anything else on this list. Fewer people, further back, is almost always better material.

Choosing Who to Film

Seniority is a poor selection criterion and the most commonly used one. The best contributor is usually the person closest to the actual work, who talks about it with some enthusiasm, and who doesn't mind being filmed. Worth being honest internally about the difference between someone who should appear for reasons of hierarchy and someone who will be good. Both can be accommodated; conflating them produces films where the most senior person delivers the least convincing material. It is also worth inviting them to the production prior to the interview slot to see the space they are coming into.

It's also worth asking people whether they'd genuinely like to do it. Reluctant contributors rarely relax, and there is usually someone else who would.

The Thing Worth Protecting

Most of the advice above comes down to one idea: the reason to film real people rather than actors is that they know things. A person who has done the work for fifteen years carries detail, judgement and conviction that no script can manufacture. All of that survives only if the process lets them speak as themselves. Over-preparation, over-direction, a crowded room and a request to hit particular messages will reliably strip it out.

The craft is mostly in getting out of the way.

Planning something that depends on people who've never been filmed? A lot of the work happens before anyone turns a camera on. Get in touch and we'll talk it through.

FAQs

Should we give contributors the questions in advance?

Give them the topics, not the questions. Knowing the territory lets someone think usefully beforehand. Knowing the exact questions invites them to write answers, which is what produces stiff, recited material. The distinction sounds small and makes a noticeable difference.

Can we use a script or autocue instead?

You can, and for certain content - a precise announcement, a regulated message, it's the right choice. But scripted delivery by a non-performer tends to read as scripted, which undermines the credibility that filming a real person was meant to provide. If the material must be exact, consider whether a presenter or voiceover would serve better.

How much footage do we need for a short piece?

Considerably more than the finished length, and that ratio is normal rather than wasteful. Unscripted material has to be found rather than captured.

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