Interview Postproduction

[RZ-1]

Hi - what are your thoughts about cutting material in interviews. I am interviewing a non-native english speaker, and I would like to move his sentences around to make his thoughts more clear and succint. Is it wrong to cut away pauses, and cutaway my questions?

I would hide the cuts by inserting material that he is talking about.

How much liberty do you think you can take in editing interviews?

 

[MarkG]

Is it wrong to cut away pauses, and cutaway my questions?

No. The only thing wrong is to change their answers to pretend they said something they didn't, or perhaps to remove an important point they wanted to make which goes against your viewpoint... removing unneccesary detail, pauses, etc, and re-ordering answers is normal when editing interview footage.

If you're doing the interview yourself, try to choose the questions so that the answers will set up the context so you don't need to include yourself asking them: in particular avoid questions where they're likely to answer 'yes' or 'no' .