Angela Blake won this year’s “I Love It” contest with a funny and movie short piece–“Mother.” You can see her winning entry here. We wanted a video interview with Angela. Unfortunately, she lives in Australia and we’re in California. Fortunately, Angela agreed to interview herself.

The result is a 13-minute self-interview video that does a beautiful job of taking us behind the scenes of “Mother.” You’ll learn how Angela got the idea, scripted it, shot it, recorded the narration, and edited the movie–on her iPhone!

But as they say: “Wait, there’s more.” In creating a video about her winning short, Angela also demonstrates how to produce a self-interview video. She explicits touches upon such basics as lighting and getting clear sound using an external microphone (a rode). But if you read between the shots, you’ll discover the more important lesson of casting. A good interview requires someone who has presence, who is confident, who has something worth learning about, and who enjoys being on camera. Angela the director was lucky to have Angela the interviewee, someone who comes across as having a very good time talking to the audience.

This kind of self-directed interview could be categorized as a kind of selfie. And while people sometimes make fun of selfies, this Angela’s interview shows that the genre works well at delivering information.  It’s easy to think of ways we all can use the self-interview.  For example, if you’re producing a family documentary with relatives who live far apart, you could invite each one to shoot footage and get it to you for editing. If you’re doing a blog and want to include an interview with a distant expert, now you know how to do it. If you’re selling a product or service, you might arrange for a customer to talk about it.

We hope you’ll experiment with this form. If you come up with a video that you want to share, tell us about it at info@mobilemoviemaking.com.