As some of you may know, I lead a double life. In one of my 'other' worlds (yes, there are multiple ones), I am one of the webmasters for rustysmith.com. This opens me up to a lot of great opportunities.

Last year, I went to the Short Track World Cup in Salt Lake City, and Rod, Rick and Rusty decided to have a documentary. So I was lucky enough to be chosen as the interviewer, since I like to ask questions and I had some knowledge of the sport. Basically my job was to interview a lot of the athletes about Rusty, as well as Rusty himself. Which made me a little giddy, since this would be the first time I met these people who I had only seen on TV before that.

But I was pretty nervous, too. I'd never really interviewed anyone, much less on camera (except for that one drunken American Idol night with the cop) I've had acting experience, but all of that was on stage, and I had never watched any tapes of it.

So I did it, got a lot of practice and experience, and I have to admit, I was nervous for most of the interviews. Except for the few that I did when I had a couple drinks in me. Some of you out there probably remember that. Actually, those were my better ones since it loosened me up a little. There were some that I was prepared for, some that I just made up questions on the spot. We were busy all weekend, so I rarely (ok, never) got a chance to review the tapes and make adjustments. So I made a couple mistakes, that I'll share with you right now. Because I know you care. Ok, you don't. Just skip this post then. But if you want to read on...go ahead.

1) Uh...Um...You know...I mean...So... <- 80% of my vocabulary when interviewing. Don't start a sentence with uh's!
2) If you HAVE been drinking, don't tell them. They'll make fun of you.
3) Let them finish their answer before moving on to the next question. It doesn't look good when you're talking over each other in an interview.
4) If using a mike, make sure to hold it up to YOUR mouth when you're talking. There were times when I'm talking and I've got the mike pointed towards them.
5) Don't chew gum! You look like a cow.
6) If a crowd gathers around you and the person you're interviewing, don't freeze like a deer caught in headlights.
7) If you're interviewing someone's dog, make sure to have treats handy.
8) DO NOT ask them 'How much tail have you gotten since the Olympics?' They don't seem to enjoy questions like that.
9) Don't talk a million miles an hour. You sound like you're speaking in Japanese.
10) When listening to the answer being given, start formulating your next question, rather than getting lost in eye contact and forgetting your first name.

To see several of these in action, rs.com had posted a couple clips from our upcoming documentary (available before 2010! Start saving up now!) To save them bandwidth, I'll post them up here...

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Just right click and 'save as'. They're about 1MB each. The quality is crappy (you can get a nicer version on the other site) but hey, I'm stingy with my bandwidth.

You know, seeing myself and listening to my voice on camera makes me want to bash my head into a wall. It's a wonder that no one has shot me yet because of the annoying squeakiness of my voice!

Posted by Yano at June 10, 2004 05:25 PM

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