How to Focus, Interview, and Get the Story Told

In “How to Focus, Interview, and Get the Story,” I liked what Regina McCombs said about storytelling. She said, “In multimedia storytelling, or any story for that matter, it’s so easy to get off track…but when working on a tight deadline you really need to be clear before you know what you’re going for.” I think that this is very important because I have been the who has gone into an interview with no idea what I was going to ask the interviewee or what my story was going to be about. Sometime I could pull it off, but sometimes I could not. When I could not pull off the on the spot interview, I ended up with a crap interview and a crap package. Once I realized what my story would be about after the interview, I realized I did not have the rights shots for the package and sometimes I would have to re-shoot the package. If I would have spent some time framing my questions in a way that encouraged feedback, ask unusual questions, thought of a theme for my story and other things I would not have been embarrassed asking my interviewee to allow me to interview again.