Workshop: How to conduct a successful master interview

Being able to interview contributors for documentaries and fact ent shows is a real skill and a key part of being a successful producer. Experienced producers Gilly Goshawk and Michelle Kirschner-Grant will guide you through conducting a successful master interview, offer top tips and advice on getting the most out of your contributors and signpost common pitfalls to avoid. Followed by audience Q&A.

This session is aimed at any aspiring or working documentary or factual entertainment producers looking to perfect their interviewing techniques.

Speakers

Gilly Goshawk is a senior producer director with over 30 years of experience in factual and factual entertainment. She’s worked on some of the most popular series on TV. She worked for over 10 years at the BBC in specialist factual, where she made an award-winning series about brain surgery and returned to make another award-winner, Astronauts: Do You Have What it Takes? with astronaut Chris Hadfield.

Highlights of her career include early series of The Apprentice (BBC1), Bake Off (BBC1), The Island with Bear Grylls (Channel 4). She’s worked on multiple series of First Dates and First Dates Hotel (Channel 4) and has been responsible for making love happen on numerous occasions! She was nominated for Best Director, Constructed Documentary at the prestigious Grierson Awards for First Dates. And was part of the team that won a Grierson two years later for First Dates Hotel.

Michelle Kirschner-Grant is a series producer who has spent much of her career making people feel comfortable in front of the camera: from singletons looking for love on First Dates, to families in harrowing circumstances for Children in Need, to a plethora of famous faces from Simon Cowell to Yoko Ono.

Having started her production career at CBBC, and then at Disney, Michelle moved to Australia to become a producer for Nickelodeon. Whilst there, she also produced 2 series of Big Brother and 4 of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here... Then it was back to the UK to work on The X Factor and, at the BBC, help Andrew Lloyd Webber find his Joseph!

A few years in New York followed (doing US X Factor and AGT), and upon returning to the UK, she produced Noel and Sandi on Channel 4’s first series of the Great British Bake Off. Michelle has been series producer on two series of How to Lose Weight Well for Channel 4 and is currently chomping at the bit to get back to work to make the first series of First Dates: Teens!

This event is supported by the ScreenSkills Television Skills Fund which invests in training for the freelance television workforce thanks to contributions from the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

It is part of a ScreenSkills programme managed by the Indie Training Fund to support freelancers to upskill and stay connected, helping keep the industry resilient in these difficult times.

This session will take place online via Zoom. Click ‘get ticket’ to reserve your place: you must login or register before you are able to get a ticket for this event. A booking confirmation with a joining link to the session will be sent to you via email.

If you are no longer able to use your ticket, we ask you to please contact support@screenskills.com  so that we can release your place. Our sessions are often oversubscribed, so we’d like to give other freelancers the opportunity to fill available spots. Thank you for your consideration.