SIDEQUESTIONS

Yes, there off to the side, you had a question about questions? That’s very meta of you. I just so happen to have lots of questions. For a few years I was actively collecting them.

🦌 TLDR: Just SKIP to the list of questions. I won’t be offended. None of what follows will be particularly new or revolutionary. Y’all are busy. I get it.

For the rest of you brave souls, let me take a long time to explain:

Interviewing is hard. It’s an art. It’s particularly hard to ask questions of strangers. But as a producer and creator of video content for television shows, you find yourself having to quite frequently interview strangers. Some folks are naturally gifted at this. Alan Rast is gifted. Cynthia Copeland is gifted. Putting talent at ease so they open up and be personable is what these folks can do. It’s fascinating to observe them in action working this magic.

And these are no ordinary strangers you’re trying to engage with – these are semi-famous or even famous people. Famous people sorta make me nervous. Less so now, but still. They’re famous! They have no idea who you are, but you’ve seen them on tv and in the movies and the magazines and the internets and now you have to talk to them in real life! What!? That’s crazy.

It’s already strange circumstances, and our particular variety of interviewing for marketing purposes adds to the weirdness. Let me explain. Actually, better yet, let Martha Plimpton explain:

Martha’s right. Here I’m asking questions of somebody, but for the sake of the editing afterwards, I have to remain very quiet like an alien so I don’t step on their audio with my interjections of encouragement and agreement that would actually give the talent something to energize them. I have to put in these long pauses instead of laughing, instead of reassuring them, instead of helping them along, instead of being a real human. It’s weird, right?

To add even more fun, most of the time I already know the answers to the questions I’m asking. Good interviewers load up on researching whatever is available about the show and the auspices, but we have to play dumb so that the talent will tell us what we already know so that we have the talent saying the thing rather than some no-name like myself saying the thing. I know all about their character beforehand. I’ve sat in on the producer’s tone meeting and read the script and seen the table read and watched the first episode’s dailies and rough cuts. Sometimes I’d know more about their character’s arc then they did, but I still need to ask them to tell me about their character.

So now the talent thinks that not only am I a terribly untalented alien conversationalist, but I’m also unprepared and stupid to boot.

THE ONE RULE OF AN ALIEN CONVERSATIONALIST

But wait, there’s more. We also put this weird rule in place – saying that they need to not only think of a coherent response but rephrase our question into their answer so we’d have a setup that made sense in editing that wasn’t an off-camera voice. A question for the answer, but…

Now they have to think rather than just be conversational.
Now they’re self-conscious.
Now they’re nervous.
Now they’re tripping over their words.
Now they’re scowling.
Now they’re testy and confused.
Now they think they’re bad at interviews.
Now they’re cursing under their breath.
Now they’re texting their publicist.
Now they’ve up and scurried off somewhere but “will be back later.”
They’re definitely not coming back later.
They’re just being polite.

I could solve all of this by being on camera. By sitting opposite them in another chair and having a normal back and forth conversation. But there’s no reason for me to be on camera. I am not Between Two Ferns. I provide no value whatsoever in that situation. Nor would I want that. To be famous.

No.

SELFISHLY UNFAMOUS

My selfishness to not be famous, to keep the focus on the talent has consequences.

For example, doesn’t it feel strange when you watch an interview and someone is talking to some unseen person off camera? Who is that person? Why don’t they show them? Pan over! Pan over!! Who dat!?

In certain contexts, particularly for serious documentaries and dramas it’s effective, but when you’re trying to get attention on the social medias, eye contact is more engaging to the audience watching the finished video.

But for the interview itself, it’s yet another level of added awkwardness to try to have the talent make eye contact with the camera. Most shoots don’t have the budget for that fancy Errol Morris interr-o-tron mirror contraption that lets you see my face while still looking into the lens, so now the talent has to talk to a soulless circular piece of glass in a black box rather than an actual human.

To avoid this cold experience, anyone’s tendency as a real human is to look at the person asking you questions, but if talent is constantly looking off to the side at me and then back to the lens that’s no good. They’ll appear shifty, or paranoid, or distracted.

So what does one do? Hide hunched directly behind the camera like a shady house elf so they have nowhere else to look of course!

“Right down the barrel for your answers. I’ll be here out of sight, just listen to the sound of my voice…”

Can you picture it now? You’re the talent. A stranger talks from some strange vantage point, crouched in the darkness while you’re blinded by hot lights. You’re being asked stilted questions with weird caveats and long pauses after saying stuff, while being provided literally zero engagement for 5-10 minutes straight. It’s downright diabolical.

“I hate E.P.K.!” many of the talent say. And rightfully so. It’s rarely fun:

Aside – EPK is Electronic Press Kit. Back in the heyday of entertainment news magazine shows (Think E! / Access Hollywood), it was common practice for the networks to send reels of selected interview sound bites and b-roll for the newsrooms to cut together into packages for sneak previews. The name stuck. The process, less so nowadays.

After enough of these alien interactions watching myself and my fellow producers muddle along, I started to consider different ways to avoid the trap all together.

STEP ONE: REMOVE MYSELF

First step was a simple one. Delete myself from the equation. It’s humbling but productive to realize that a stack of index cards with questions on them is more engaging than an interviewer acting supremely unnatural. But the less time talent wastes listening to me, the better, right?

To quote my ol’ man here: “Better to remain silent and let people wonder if you’re intelligent than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Give the talent all the questions on cards and that also solves the issue of them having to remember to work the question into their answer. They’re reading the question aloud themselves AND answering the question. Great!

Folks have long ago caught onto this method and are doing it well with clever variations. The “autocomplete” series by WIRED is a quality example of this working. You know where the actor peels off the Google search bar on a big poster board? These ones:

Still strange though? A little bit? Them having conversations with themselves?

STEP TWO: REPLACE MYSELF

Second step was adding someone that wasn’t a stranger to the mix. Some kind of friendly face or moderator like the showrunner, or even better – another cast member from the show. Now they’re with a known face in a more familiar setting. It’s a late night talk show format. Better energy all around.

From a logistics standpoint, this is more difficult though. You need to get two people’s schedules to align. They’re busy people. They have other places to be. During the madness of show production, it’s nearly impossible on a set visit to have two people free at the same time for any significant amount of time, let alone have talent from different shows together unless there’s some sort of blue moon Dick Wolf cinematic universe crossover event. But when you can pull it off, the result is quite a bit more pleasant and IMHO worth the effort.

Fortunately we had semi-annual events called “Mondo Shoots” (or “Image Campaigns”) and “TCAs” that were dedicated to all manner of marketing content. On the theatrical side these events would be called a “Long-Lead Day” or “Junket”, but basically we’d have 20-40 cast members from the new seasons of all the shows and they’d do a circuit of stages to capture photos and video content. Picture wind fans and head turns and slow motion. This kind of shit:

It was possible in these scenarios to plan out pairs of interactions between folks for reals.

STEP THREE: LOUNGE AROUND

As filler one year to keep the talent occupied between stages, we added a stop to try out the interviewer-less format. We coined the station the “Blue Card Lounge”.

It wasn’t a very nice lounge. The set (if you could call it that) was really just a tiny entryway area between a couple of the Hollywood Center Studio stages.

In the week leading up to the shoot, a hodgepodge of random questions were scraped together onto stickers on index cards, a couple of directors chairs were procured, a tiny table in between, and a last minute network logo was added to the screen between talent. It was a no-budget effort.

But it was a beginning. Albeit a clunky, stiff, and lackluster one. There weren’t as many pairs of talent as we had hoped, but we saw the folks that did have a buddy had way more fun.

Then in combing through the footage afterwards, we started to notice patterns. Since it was the same batch of cards that all the talent went through, you’d have multiple spots where you’d notice – okay this question had entertaining answers. This question was always avoided. This question seemed to stump folks or kill momentum.

Here’s Garret Dillahunt expressing this feeling:

By the end of the editing process it was clear what would improve this form of content was putting more effort into crafting different questions. (Isn’t that always the solution though – coming up with better questions?)

Here’s some of the prompts that didn’t work out so well in this setting.

Questions Requiring Too Much Thought:

• Describe a cooking attempt of yours that ended horribly?
• What do you wish you knew more about?
• What is your favorite quote?
• What one book would you most like to have everyone read?
• Name three things that are worth waiting in line for?
• What’s your favorite sound?
• If you were given a chance to know what happens in your future, would you take it?
• What would you name your imaginary band?
• If you were given the chance to interview a historical figure, who would it be?
• What TV character would you most want to hang out with?
• What TV show would you like to guest-star on, besides the one you’re on?

Why didn’t these work well? Don’t people like talking about themselves?

Mostly I think talent want to come across as thoughtful and insightful and doing so requires thought and insight and that’s pretty much the opposite of spontaneity.

Because of my alien rules, they’re hyper-aware the cameras are rolling, and they’re now thinking about how they might come off – like whether they’re boring or incoherent or asshole-y. All things that make them pause, and think, and mull, and now they’re self-conscious again and things go south fast.

More Questions That Were Momentum Killers:

• What is your favorite thing about your job?
• What celebrity do you think would make a good best friend?
• What celebrity would you like to be for a day?
• Who has significantly influenced the way you see the world?
• What’s your earliest memory?
• What has been your favorite birthday?
• What’s your favorite hot food that you eat cold?
• Can you name the last 4 vice-presidents of the United States?
• What is your favorite television theme song?
• What TV show were you surprised to like?
• What’s something you wish you’d learned earlier in life?
• Describe your character in three words.

So the challenge became – could ALL of the questions be “easy” ones? Throw out the ones that caused slow downs while people tried to think of something clever. Keep the speedy ones and add more that could be readily recalled, readily shared. Total softballs right down the middle. Easy layups. [insert relevant sports analogy here.]

If we had another chance, could it be non-stop entertainment? Could we optimize for maximum unstoppable off-the-cuff enjoyability?

THOUGHTLESS THINGS

To the credit of my department’s leadership, despite the marginal return on the first attempt, Dean Norris and Flory Litchfield were open to trying the format again. And so I spent the months leading up to the next event searching for and thinking of thoughtless things.

By thoughtless, I mean questions that would require no thought to answer.

Favorite Color? Thoughtless. What’s Your Sign? Thoughtless. Are You Double-Jointed? Thoughtless.

Instant recall prompts were the search criteria and the goal, and the benefit of this strategy would be two-fold:

One, the talent would be less nervous having to come up with elaborate responses on the spot. So now they can enjoy themselves, making for better energy. Better energy, better entertainment, better engagement, better share-ability, better media value, all that KPI nonsense.

Two, there’s this math in filmmaking called the shooting ratio. It’s the amount of useable content vs the amount captured. So say you have a 10:1 shooting ration, that’s like for every 10 minutes of footage, you have 1 usable minute.

In normal EPKs, you lose all the time it takes for you to ask the question, plus all the time it takes for the talent to think about their answers, plus all the detritus of hair/makeup/camera/audio issues and the inevitable flubs and half-answers and do-overs.

Combine that with very limited time with talent – sometimes less than 10 minutes, and you end up with not a lot of good material to work with.

But with the Lounge format, there seemed to be theoretically a chance to get up to a much higher ratio. One question after another, no breaks, back and forth, stream of consciousness, and the majority of content captured daresay entertaining.

It would be glorious if it worked.

LOUNGE 2.0

The next time around, a dedicated stage space (Stage 8!) was allocated, along with three cameras instead of one, and a small budget for minimal set design and props. And with a little help from Fuzzbuster Films and our in-house production team, a proper shoot it was.

With the master list as a guide, each question was printed out onto mailing address stickers, slapped onto cards, and sorted into themed piles on set. I spent a lot of time thinking about the best order to have the cards in when handing them to talent (Most of them wouldn’t change the order). Which ice breaker should be first, where should the speed rounds be placed, how many should be in the stack, which ones would be last, etc.

We’d lean more towards the table setters to ease into a start – the superficial “Where Ya From?”, “Describe Your Character’s Shoes,”, “Ever been in a band?”, then shuffle the goofiness from there. Each stack would have maybe 15 cards, and they were allowed to skip ones they didn’t want to ask. A purposefully designed “safe zone”, so maybe they’d let their guard down and relax a little. It’s low stakes. These questions aren’t scary. You can loosen up. It’s okay. Promise.

We also rebranded to the “Fox Lounge” so as not to limit our color range options for the index cards. There’s lots of other colors besides blue, people.

After a very brief introduction and basic instructions as they sat down, I quickly shut up and left the talent to their own devices. They got on a roll, quickly forgetting the cameras were even there, and the crew would sit back and try to stifle the laughs, but even then a little bit of overlapping peanut gallery audio in the edit played into the spirit and vibe – almost as if there was a live studio audience watching from the bleachers.

In addition to the new questions, we thought about how else to make the whole space inviting. How entertaining could we make the entire immediate reachable zone, we wondered? Thanks to guitars, accordions, and NERF, as you can see we went a little nuts finding out.

Thus, every problem from the beginning was solved – no alien interviewer, no stifled pauses, no weird response rules, just familiar faces and blazing-fast questions and answers without interruptions.

It was FUN!

And each year we refined the questions and environment for maximum entertainment value. (Note to self: A hand drum is not a toy musical instrument).

One year at the request of the social team, we even added a second zone just for food related questions called “Taste Of Fox”. There were flying fish and ice cream tastings and everything.

The talent self-reportedly quite enjoyed themselves, and we were upwards of a 10:8 shooting ration. A 10 minute sit down and we’d walk away with 8 minutes of usable goodness split out into 80+ pieces of content from the three day effort, an extraordinary return. It became the favorite station for the talent relations team to bring their peeps. (Way more fun than international tags. You try saying “PROSIEBEN” five times in a row).

The Fox Lounge was a mainstay for the next few years until the idea of a big expensive mondo shoot fell out of favor with the network brass and it became more difficult to arrange for cross-show talent pairings due to more frequent off-cycle show productions and increased out of state production. Folks were even harder to get into one place than before.

So it goes.

Anyway, if we were to try it again, I’d probably position and market the whole endeavor as more of an original series like Hollywood Game Night rather than ancillary content for individual shows. Longer segments, rotating guests. Get to that fabled 10 minute mark for the Youtubes, to get that mid-roll ad magic. Or wrap it with a brand sponsor. If ever there was a format tailor-made for product integration, it’s this, yo.

There’d also be an audience trivia component where viewers have a chance to guess what they think the talent’s response will be, and have the chance to share their own picks, that kind of stuff.

It’s even entertaining enough to run as a live format, which would save quite a bit on editing costs.

DOWNSIDES

I should caveat that there’s a certain amount of resistance to the fundamentals of this effort. The most pointed criticism is – what do these questions have to do with marketing the show? It’s a valid point and one that you hear across all of media – what makes this particular thing you’re doing make people want to actually go watch the show? What does liking boxers more than briefs have to do with getting people to go find a full episode of Raising Hope? Does nonsense like this drive the needle?

At a philosophical level, we’d make the case that talent promotion in-an-of-itself is a valuable goal. The more well known, likable and engaging the audience finds talent, the more effective the marketing, publicity, and sampling of the content over time. Make the cast more famous, and the show will benefit (at a lower cost) regardless of connective thematics.

Relevant adage: “Popular Shows Are Popular”.

Getting the audience to know the actors in a fun and entertaining way services that goal directly. It’s one of those brand intangibles that provides a halo effect for affinity and loyalty.

There’s also a hypothetical case to be made, particularly for the cross-show installments that goes something like this: The fans of Zooey Deschanel and New Girl might in their Youtube searches happen across the combo with Shannon Woodward and think, hey this other person seems pleasant and maybe I’ll sample this show she mentions that I’ve never heard of called Raising Hope….

Yea, well, look, it could happen! Anything’s possible. Rare stuff happens every day, you know.

Harder to justify financially though. Are the production costs worth it? “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” How would you quantify the return? Q-Scores? Follower Counts? Watch time? Views? Click-Through Rates? Who knows, but fun tends to be less fun when you over-analyze it.

But to directly address the naysayers, each round we’d weave in custom questions that were more thematically or contextually aligned to the show or the network. For example, when Sleepy Hollow was on, we’d have folks answer “If you were to go to sleep and wake up in a different era tomorrow, what time period would you choose?” to match the premise of how that show opens. When it was The Exorcist, we’d ask if they liked horror movies or could hum the theme song. Stuff like that where you could be more obvious with the connections to begin or end or compile a piece:

Did it work? Tough to say. Anecdotally there were wins – once the publicist for an up-and-coming cast member asked for lounge clips to send to help pitch them for consideration for talk show bookings. They’d be a good guest! They’re likable! See!

Or there was the time when someone in programming saw Nat Faxon and Dakota Fanning interacting in a clip from the lounge and thought they were funnier and had better chemistry together here than what was written for them in Ben & Kate, and forwarded the session along to the showrunners with a ‘make it more like this…’ note.

Aside: I have a theory that chemistry-building is often what keeps the first few episodes of new comedies from being brilliant – folks don’t know each other well enough to riff properly and play to strengths on set and in the writer’s room. I have a lot of nickels for all the times I’ve heard:

“It gets better after episode three!”

This more structured Q&A strategy could be a way of building that cast chemistry quickly before getting into production. A boot camp for getting to know each other or something? It would be an interesting experiment.

But I digress. There were actual wins too if you care about that kind of thing. The official second season was a BRONZE PromaxBDA winner for best “Promo-Tainment / Program Wraps Campaign” – bested only by Dexter Extras and American Horror Story Asylum Teaser Content. FX always wins, those talented buggers.

ALL THE QUESTIONS

Anyway, you’ve been so patient. Without further adieu, here’s the master list of questions. All of them have been road-tested to not require much deliberation or delay in responding. Top-of-mind, so to speak.

Questions were collected in a variety of ways as I went about the day (Emailing myself, chicken scratches in notebook margins, text docs on laptops) from a lot of different internet places (Google! Buzzfeed! Reddit!). All eventually dumped into an excel document to rank and sort and filter. And yes I know, some of them aren’t questions, they’re prompts. Thoughtless.

BTW, these also make for your own fun ice breakers between new and old friends and/or team-building exercises. Try them on long car rides or slack channels.

They’re broken out into three categories – “BLUE CARDS“, “GREEN CARDS“, and “RED CARDS“. Blue are regular questions. Green are themed questions – in this case food related ones (and in practice show-related ones too). Red are a series of speed round this or that quick responses. For those, we’d collect 6-8 pairs into a single set, and put a couple of sets in between every couple of blue card questions to alter and drive the pace without us having to interfere directly with the flow.

We’d also experiment with throwing in surprise and delight cards – random prompts, polaroid moments, hidden props, lottery scratchers. Anything to maximize the opportunities for more hallowed reaction shots – the laugh, the surprise, the goofy expression, the wide-eyed delight that makes the human experience so wonderful and infinitely watchable.

Martha won $2 dollars on camera once. Exciting times.

Each talent would get their own stack of different questions, and they’d be instructed to take turns asking and answering.

🔵 BLUE CARD QUESTIONS

Are there any skills you’ve picked up in the last year?
Are you a first, middle, or only?
Are you afraid of heights?
Are you double-jointed?
Are you good at keeping secrets?
Back in high school, what social circle were you in?
Can you play any musical instruments?
Can you whistle? Juggle? Do any good impressions?
What’s the image currently on your phone’s home screen?
Do you have any hidden talents?
Do you collect anything?
Do you still get starstruck?
First memory of Los Angeles?
Have you ever had any nicknames? (How did you get the name?)
Have you ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?
Do you get road rage?
Do you have any friends who are in a band?
Do you have any pets? (What kind and what names?)
Do you make a face when you dance?
Ever been on a blind date?
Favorite children’s book?
Favorite month of the year?
Favorite thing about the 80’s?
Go-to karaoke song?
Let’s hear your best Homer Simpson impression.
Guilty pleasure?
Any good ear piercing or tattoo stories?
Have you ever been… Sky Diving, Bungie Jumping, Hang Gliding, River Rafting, or Rock Climbing?
Have you ever broken a bone?
Have you ever gone skinny-dipping?
Have you ever won a contest, giveaway, or lottery?
How are your parallel parking skills?
How do people typically misspell or mispronounce your name?
How often do you misplace your keys?
How many songs does it take you to get to work?
How many times were you grounded by your parents?
If I asked your best friend what topic you know WAAAY too much about, what would they tell me?
Longest you’ve ever gone without bathing?
Of your previous projects, which cast member have you laughed the most with on set?
Tell me something that is awesome about ME.
What app are you currently addicted to using/playing?
What are you saving up for?
What celebrity do people say you look like?
What color are your socks?
What countries have you been to?
What impersonations can you do?
What is your most feared insect?
What is your favorite sound?
What video game have you been most addicted to?
What was the first album you bought with your won money?
What was the last concert you attended?
What was your childhood dream job?
What was your favorite toy as a child?
What was your first job?
What was your high school sport of choice?
What was your most embarrassing early celebrity crush?
What were the must-have toys when you were a kid?
What’s the oldest thing you own?
What’s the one line of yours that people most often quote back to you?
What’s your favorite thing to do for fun?
What’s your favorite euphemism for lady parts and/or man junk?
What’s your favorite household chore?
What’s your least favorite word?
What’s your method of memorizing lines?
What’s your middle name?
What’s the theme song for your grand entrence?
When you’re feeling down, what song cheers you up?
When you were a kid, did you get an allowance?
Where do you consider home?
Which of your past hair styles gives you a chuckle?
Who is your role model?
Who taught you how to drive?
Would you ever go back to school? What would you study if you did?
You’re the next So You Think You Can Dance contestant – which dance style will let your skills shine?
When you were growing up, were you more Bart or Lisa?

These couple we found were still top of mind to answer, but required a little storytelling.

Describe your first car?
How did you get your name?
What was your favorite toy as a child?
What do you remember about your first real date?
Describe your very first job.
Describe the shoes your character wears.
Describe what your style was as a teenager.
Describe your favorite reading (or writing) spot.
Describe the very first credit listed on your IMDB page.
Describe what your handwriting looks like.
Describe the worst flight you’ve ever taken.
Describe your sense of humor.
Where were you when you heard you got the part, and who did you call?
What do you remember about the first time you saw yourself on national television?

🍏 GREEN CARD QUESTIONS (aka FOOD STUFFS)

How are your cooking skills?
How do you take your coffee?
How hot do you like your hot sauce?
At a baseball game, what’s your favorite food in the park?
When’s the last time you baked/cooked something?
What’s in your fridge right now?
How do you like your eggs/steak prepared?
Weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?
Favorite… candy? cheese? childhood snack? condiment? drink? donut? ice cream flavor? juice blend? nut? pizza topping?

🔴 RED CARD QUESTIONS (aka SPEED ROUNDS aka THIS OR THAT)

There ya have it. This was not the first time you’ve seen the Q&A format, nor will it be the last time you’ll see people talking about themselves on camera, but now you never have to think of another question ever again. You’re welcome.

For more of this nonsense, you can still watch a lot of the original videos on Youtube if you search for “Fox Lounge” or sort by oldest on the “Fox Food Club” page. The most popular installments were with the Glee and Scream Queens cast, and the folks from Brooklyn Nine-Nine and New Girl.

Drop in the comments what some of your favorite questions to ask folks when you’re getting to know them!

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