What Interview Scene Outlines Cost and What Moves the Price

When people ask what a scene outline for an interview costs, they usually expect a single figure. In practice the cost is mostly time: the hours someone spends turning a loose idea into a plan that a camera operator, a sound recordist and an interviewer can all follow without a phone call. I teach this as a module, so I see where beginners underestimate the effort and where they overspend.

A good outline covers where the interviewee sits, where the camera stands, which questions come in what order, and which cutaways you will need to cover edits. Each of those decisions takes thought, and thought is what you buy, whether you pay an instructor or spend your own evenings doing it. The sections below separate the parts that drive the price from the parts that do not.

A single interview in one chair with one camera angle is the cheapest thing to outline. The moment you add a second angle, a wide shot and a close shot, or a second interviewee, the outline roughly doubles in detail, because every position needs marking and every change needs a note about light and sound.

Think of a setup as one fixed arrangement of camera, subject and lamp. Three setups in one morning means three floor sketches, three sets of lens choices and a plan for how long the move between them takes. Reduce the setups and you reduce the work. Many factual reports are perfectly well served by one strong angle and a handful of well-chosen cutaways, and beginners often add angles out of nervousness rather than need.

• One setup: simplest outline, shortest planning time
• Two angles on one subject: roughly double the detail
• Second interviewee: a new sketch and a new question set

Each extra location brings its own checks: who owns the space, whether you need permission, what the noise is like at the hour you plan to film, and where you can plug in a light. An outline for an interview in a quiet meeting room is a short document. The same interview in a working shop or on a street corner needs notes on access, background activity and a fallback.

This is why I ask anyone enquiring about planning help how many locations they have. Two locations are not twice the price of one in every case, but they are never the same. The outline has to account for the order you visit them, the light at each time of day and the gap between them, all of which belong in the filming schedule as well.

Intended video length matters more than people expect. A three-minute report might use ninety seconds of interview, which means you need perhaps four or five strong answers, not forty minutes of material. Planning the question flow for that is quick, because you are choosing carefully what to ask.

A twelve-minute piece with several voices needs a longer outline: which question goes to whom, how answers link, where a cutaway will cover a jump. The longer the finished video, the more questions to sequence and the more cutaway ideas to list. If you can tell me the target length at the start, I can tell you roughly how deep the outline needs to go, and that is the clearest way to predict effort.

• Short report: a few focused questions, light outline
• Longer piece: sequenced questions across several voices
• Cutaway lists grow with running time

The cost that surprises people is revision. A first outline is rarely the last: the interviewee changes their availability, the location falls through, the editor asks for another angle. Each change touches several parts of the plan, because the camera position, the light and the schedule all depend on one another.

Budget a little room for this. I suggest one round of changes after a site visit, since seeing the real room usually reveals something the sketch missed, such as a window that floods the face with light at midday. Skipping the visit saves time on paper and costs it back on the day, when a crew of two stands in a corridor waiting for cloud.

You can control most of these drivers yourself. Decide on one angle plus cutaways before you start. Settle the length of the finished piece. Visit the location once, with a notebook, and photograph the corners you might use. Write your questions down in the order you would like them answered, then cut a third of them.

Doing that before any outline is drawn means the planning itself becomes short and clear, whoever does it. In the course we practise exactly this on the interview module, using your own project as the exercise, so the time you spend learning is also time spent on a plan you will genuinely use.

• Choose one angle and a short list of cutaways
• Fix the intended length first
• Visit the location once and note light and noise