How To Make Yourself “Media Friendly”

Six quick steps to make you and your company more “media friendly.”

The details: Step two Build A Media Room

Build a media room. A room designed to make it easy for you and the press to conduct an interview at your offices.

The media room is a quit place where interviews can be conducted with members of the media. For a room ready for television/video interviews this is what we would recommend:

Windows- The room should have no windows. Television cameras are not like the human eye and do not take well to mixed types of light. (Need more info the technical aspects of this? Just email us and we can go into the details with you.)

Room Lights- While we are on the subject of lights what should you do for lighting in your new media room? Most importantly make sure the overhead lights in the room can be switched totally off and on from a switch in the room. If there are several sets of lights in the room then each set should be individually controllable and even better if they could also be dimmed.

Media Lights- Should you install media lights? That will be up to you. If you do enough media interviews or do video recording in the room for internal purposes then you may want to. If you decide not to then each television crew will bring in their own lights. If you decide to install media lighting ask a local videographer that you have worked with for their suggestions on what lights to get. (Note the lights used by camera crews are different then normal room lights in the type of light they make. If you put lights in your media room make sure they are the correct type.)

Access- Being handicapped accessible is critical so the video crew can roll in their cart of gear with ease. No steps. If the crew has to carry heavy equipment up steps they will quickly cut back on the gear they bring into the interview. The potential result- your spokesperson may not get the crews best lighting work. Thus may not look as good on video as they could have.

Walls- As we said above no windows on the walls. What we recommend would be for one or two walls to have a blue curtain on an overhead track so it could be moved back if desired. Other walls could be carpeted with a blue/gray color material. And it would be great if there were a bookcase in the room also. The various material described above will give the videographer several looks to choose from. Also several people could be interviewed in the same room and still have it look as if they were in different locations.

Chairs- The room should have straight back chairs that do not swivel. This will keep the person being interviewed from nervously swings side to side during the interview. The room should contain not much more then four chairs and an end table or two. No big table taking up half the room. Put a table in the room and it’s no longer a media room it’s a conference room. Keep it simple don’t crowd the room the crew needs space to work.

And lastly something your media interview room should not be- a storage room. Resist the urge to store everything you are not using in the media room.  Keep your room as a ready to go resource.

Any questions please ask. Comments welcome.

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