How to Edit an Interview Without Making Your Guest Sound Fake

There are two ways to ruin an interview in the edit. Do nothing, or do far too much. The second is more common among people who care.

Cut without hesitation

• False starts and restarts, especially any the guest asked to retake.
• Technical failures, dropouts, the dog, the doorbell.
• Long dead air that was a system problem rather than a thought.
• Anything the guest asked to have removed, without negotiation.
• Your own throat clearing and overlapping noises.

Leave it alone

Thinking pauses. The small hesitation before a real answer is the evidence that it is real. Strip it and the answer becomes suspiciously smooth.

Some of the ums. Removing every single one produces a strange, machine-like fluency that audiences find subtly unpleasant without knowing why.

The line you do not cross

Never reorder material so a guest appears to answer a question they were not asked. Never splice two halves of separate answers into one. Never remove a qualifier that changes the meaning of a claim.

This is not a stylistic preference. Any of those turns editing into fabrication, and the person whose face is on the video carries the consequence, not you.

The removal request

When a guest asks for something to come out, take it out. Do not negotiate, do not explain why it was the best part, do not ask them to reconsider.

The willingness to do this without friction is what makes people candid in the first place. Every guest who hears you honoured somebody else's request gives you more.

A useful test

Play the edited version and ask whether the guest would recognise it as what they said. Not whether it is flattering. Whether it is accurate.

If somebody would listen and think that is not quite how it went, you have gone too far, no matter how much better it sounds.