Being Interviewed in Front of Cameras

This is an exercise in being interviewed.  I apologize for the length of this video.  It is eight minutes long.  You will not need to watch the entire video.

The first thing I want you to do is to turn off the sound on your computer.  Turn it completely off.

Notice the downward direction of his glance?  You will see two klieg lights reflected in his glasses as his head bobs. At 1:26 you will see a brief head bob when a klieg light directly above his head and to his right is reflected.  At 2:13-2:15 you can see there is also one to his left.  He is in the middle of a Hasbro Easy-Bake Oven.  Toast is on the menu.

His eyes are watering at 2:39.

By 3:40 he is channeling Richard M. Nixon as his forehead and cheeks start to glisten with sweat.  What do you expect when you have 1200 W of lighting pointing at you and you are wearing a suit and tie....perhaps suggested by the interview team.

The interviewer emotes reasonableness and impartiality.  Later events transpire that suggest he has a vested interest in the event.  But by then the interviewee is but a minor footnote in history.

The interview is not going the way the interviewee hoped.  He sees that he is trapped.  His pupils are still large.  Maybe he had a little bit of medicinal you-know-what beforehand to calm down.  Maybe one of the sympathetic stagehands even offered it to him and stood watch so he would not get busted.  Those large pupils are destroying him in that lighting.

Or perhaps he is just highly charged from an emotional standpoint.  That will also make your pupils large.

4:44.  He is screwed and he knows it.  The region between his eyebrows is sheeting sweat.  He is melting.

5:30.  The interviewer is going in for the kill.  He is interrupting every sentence.  The interviewee has a message and it is constructed of well honed sentences.  The message is demolished when he can not finish a complete thought.  The interviewee's frustration grows.

6:44.  The interviewee just wants it to be over.  He knows that he is the designated whipping boy.  But there is no way he can gracefully exit.

7:10.  Pictures of the saint that the interviewee was bullying.  Inset of interviewee with flushed, sweating, angry looking face, struggling to make eye contact with the camera.

7:21 Interviewer pummels interviewee with a 20 second question.  Interviewer owns the camera.

THAT is why one should only grant video interviews to outlets you KNOW are sympathetic.

Mr Shirvell, the interviewee, lost his job and was sued for $4,500,000 in Federal court on the basis of that interview.

As a sidenote, I wonder if Mireille Miller-Young will receive equal "justice".