How to cut interviews into a two-minute explainer, with B-roll and lower thirds

The company explainer is the most common video a small team makes and the one most often put off. You have the interviews. What you do not have is the afternoon it takes to find the thread through them, cover the cuts, and name everyone on screen.

Here is one that was built in Narrative from five interview recordings, and you can open it on its timeline without an account. This guide is about what went into it and how to brief your own.

What came in, what came out

Five recordings, 720p, between one and four minutes each, twelve and a half minutes in total: two people from an energy company talking about opening their thousandth charging point, including a passage about the tenants of the buildings it serves. Each recording was transcribed when it was added.

The finished piece is 112 seconds. On the timeline it is ten cuts: B-roll to open (5 seconds), the first speaker twice (17 and 17 seconds), the second speaker four times (13, 9, 16 and 12 seconds), the tenants (11 seconds), the first speaker to close (6 seconds), B-roll to end (6 seconds). Six B-roll clips cover the joins between the talking. The speakers are named with lower thirds, the whole piece is captioned, and a music track runs under it.

The three decisions in an explainer

Every interview-based piece is the same three decisions, and a brief that makes them gets a first cut worth reviewing.

The thread

Twelve minutes of interviews contain several possible videos. The piece above is about one thing, the milestone and what it means for the people who use it, and everything in it serves that. When you brief, say the thread in a sentence: “This is about the thousandth charging point and why it matters to residents.” The editor reads the transcripts against that sentence; you get the moments that belong.

The cover

Two clips of the same person, cut together, jump. The classic fix is B-roll over the join, and the piece above uses six pieces of it. Put your B-roll in the project alongside the interviews and say what it is for: “cover the cuts between answers with the site footage.” If you have none, say so, and ask for the cuts to land on natural pauses instead.

The names

A lower third with the name and the title, the first time each person speaks, then never again. Give the names and titles in the brief exactly as they should appear; the editor will not guess a job title, and a transcript will not spell a surname reliably.

How to ask for it

Make a two-minute explainer from these interviews about our thousandth charging point and what it means for residents. Open and close on the site footage, cover the cuts with it. Lower thirds for each speaker the first time they appear: [Name, Title]. Captions on. Music under, quiet.

Then review in this order. First, does the piece say the one thing you named, start to finish? If a section is off-thread, name it and ask for it to go. Second, are the strongest sentences in, and are they whole? “Use the full answer about the residents, not just the first half” is a one-line revision. Third, the joins: any jump cut still visible, any B-roll that does not match what is being said. Last, the names, spelled and titled exactly.

Two things to keep in mind

• The transcript is the outline. Because every recording is transcribed, “the part where he talks about the tenants” is a request the editor can resolve to a timestamp. Name moments by what is said in them.
• Every change is a version. The explainer you are looking at is the current version of a conversation. If a revision made it worse, step back to the one before rather than asking for a fix to the fix.

See it on a real timeline

Open the explainer. The ten cuts are on the timeline with their names and the B-roll sits over the joins. Scrub to a join and see what covers it. Then ask for one change, “open on the second speaker instead” is a good first one, and watch what moves. The first three prompts are free; the editor runs on desktop today.