media training Archives - Clapperton Media

“No Comment” is something people often say when they don’t want journalists to write anything.

It doesn’t work. When lead trainer Guy was a very young journalist the chair of a major technology company told him he didn’t want to comment on something and he didn’t want to see that coming out as “NAME declined to comment” either.

At the tender age of 24 or so, Guy allowed himself to be pushed into this and didn’t put it in. Which was wrong as stating that the chair had declined to comment would have been a perfectly accurate statement of what took place in the conversation.

The chair in question was presumably savvy enough to realise that “no comment” never sounds completely neutral. Here’s a short video with another example – seriously, try never to say it. It really doesn’t work.

So many people think media trainers will help you to become fundamentally dishonest but lying rarely works. No good media trainer will help you to do so and here’s why.

You know when they told you at school that in an exam you should include the question within the body of your answer? Here’s why it works in media interviews too.

A prospect told us last week that they might want media training but would record the thing on their iPhone rather than engage a camera operator. It is, they said, the “modern way”. It’s happened before. A year or so ago a client, who’d found the training room was double booked so we were moving somewhere else, told camera expert and documentary maker Paul Michael Angell that he should be travelling lighter rather than hulk all that kit around, there was no need for all this substantial equipment.

In truth a lot depends on your objective. When we media train we can do it with a trainer and nobody else by all means, but if you or your client wants the full experience as if a reporter and a camera operator were visiting, it’s no use expecting a smartphone to do the job.

There’s no problem with smartphone cameras, by the way. When we’re out we happily use them to record video tips and also take pics – and very frequently you’ll see the results on our PowerPoint slides (here is a dramatic pic of the Pont du Gard Guy took, edited to appear in mono).

If you go into a TV studio or invite a professional into your office or a location of your choosing, however, you have the right to expect more. In “real life” you’ll have a purpose-built camera pointing at you. They will have brought a light and it will be shining on you, they will be interfering with your clothing to attach a mic or waving a boom at you (actually if they wave it that’s bad, but you get the idea).

You’ll need to be comfortable with all of this if you’re serious about going in front of the cameras and that’s where media training can help. You can save money by using a smartphone if that’s what you want and that’s fine; you can bring (or our trainer can bring) a hand-held digital SLR if you want to capture the interviews but focus exclusively on content because you’re not aiming to go into a TV studio anytime soon.

But if you want a proper media experience then you need the full rig – and that’s something we offer. Get in touch to find out how we can help.