A three-step life-changing course with Ivan Kuznetsov
Learn to ask questions like a professional journalist and get unexpected and lively answers. Apply this skill to your everyday life when talking with anyone, literally. Talk to yourself to understand your own motivation and choose the right path.
Overview
“How to record a badass interview” is a three-step life-changing course with Ivan Kuznetsov, an outdoor journalist, editor and writer with 10 years of experience.
It’s simple: questioning is the engine of communication between people. This is how dialogue is born. Therefore, learning to ask questions (and get answers) is a skill necessary for everyone, not just professional journalists. But they are the best at it and ready to share their experience with you. That’s what this course is all about. What makes this different from others is that the author doesn’t try to tweak journalistic methods of asking questions and recording interviews to fit everyday life, but leaves the genre in its purest form, to capture its beauty. In other words, you will really learn how to record an interview as a journalist. Applying this skill to your everyday life when talking with anyone is your task.
The course is aimed at and will be useful to aspire journalists and writers of any creative content, field researchers, bloggers, podcasters, and anyone who likes to ask questions — above all, of themselves.
Your questions are like complete stories. Even without answers.
— Irina Kudres, outdoor photographer, Bergamo, Italy
Author
Ivan Kuznetsov is an outdoor journalist, editor and writer, co-founder of Panoramica creative studio in the Italian Alps.
Since 2014, over the 10 years in journalism with a focus on outdoors, he has recorded more than 150 interviews in a variety of formats with a wide range of characters from world-famous travelers such as Russian marine biologist Alexander Semenov and street photographers such as Marcin Ryczek, Poland, to locals from remote communities at the end of the world for whom it was an excuse to use email. Thanks to the internet, the geography of his interviews covers the globe from Alaska to New Zealand and from Patagonia to the Russian Far East. His interviews have been published in local and international media and blogs: Bird in Flight photo magazine, My Planet TV channel, Sport Marathon outdoor store, and many others.
He is the author of “I am arriving”, the first ever collection of interviews with famous Russian-speaking travelers, whose translation to English is forthcoming in Panoramica in 2025.
Highlights
• Personal
• WhatsApp or Zoom
• 2 theory 90-min calls + self-practice with feedback
• 300 euro/person, discounts for groups
• Starts today
Contents
The course consists of three simple steps: Theory, Practice, and Feedback. The first is divided into two more parts, so a little more technically.
Step 1: Entertaining theory
We will call twice, at a time that is convenient for you and me. There will be a gap of at least a few days between calls. You’ll learn the theory of recording an interview through 10 simple steps, each of which is equally important: from choosing a topic and finding a hero to publishing and working with reader’s feedback. We’ll cover five questions in each call. After each call, you’ll have the opportunity to ask a few questions during these additional 30 minutes.
Step 2: Challenging practice
You’ll find a hero and a topic, and come up with your questions for him/her or them. It is generally agreed that an interview starts with three questions. An average interview is 10 questions. Large interview is more than 15. So we’ll have a purely mathematical reason to think hard together about what to ask our hero(s). We’ll edit your questions in one or two rounds and make the final version. You’ll also get tips on where to publish your story if you don’t have your own blog (publication is not guaranteed, but we’ll try our best to make it happen).
Step 3. Honest feedback
At the end, you can again ask questions about the recording of the interview as a whole, including your new experience of publishing it and getting a feedback from your readers. Then you will receive final feedback from the author of the course on our communication in general. Or rather, we’ll exchange feedback, because getting your opinion on this experience is just as important for me. The bigger idea of the course is communication, mentoring, and, maybe, even a new friendship.
Sample interviews
To date, most of the author’s interviews have been published in Russian for local media even if he made them in English, Italian and Spanish. But there are a few examples in English. More will appear here soon.
English. Read the latest self-interview with Ivan about the similarities between creativity and active recreation. He asked himself these questions. Here are examples for Bird In Flight photo magazine and Beatdom.com, the leading media on Beat culture.
Check also our book “The art and science of street photography.” There are 20+ interviews. We will gift an ebook, if you apply to the course.
Russian. There are My Planet TV channel (a kind of Russian Discovery Channel), Arrivo travel media with 1.5 m visitors at its peak, Sport Marathon, leading outdoor store in Moscow, Velolive cycling news media.
Here is his entire portfolio of more than 1,000 of journalistic and other works for 35 leading local and international clients.
Reviews
You will be one of the first persons to take this course. A little later here will be reviews from students, but for now, I’ve collected some feedback from some heroes of my interviews, which I’ve made over 10 years in journalism:
Your questions are like complete stories. Even without answers.
— Irina Kudres, outdoor photographer, Bergamo, Italy
Ivan is an excellent journalist. In the interview with me, he did a very cool job and asked challenging, unconventional, and interesting questions that I had never been asked before. I wanted to think about them well and take the time to do so.
— Katerina Savina, a professional photographer from Tel Aviv, Israel
Being a sports journalist, I loved recording interviews. I really like the publication Ivan and I did for the site of the Moya Planeta (My Planet) travel TV channel about Georgia. Thanks for the cool, off-the-wall, and fun questions!
— Daria Kholodilina, ex-brand manager of Tourism Administration of Georgia and guide, Tbilisi, Georgia
Vanya is a rare master of a good interview. Not a freeloader like the popular “journalists” of today: “Here is a set of uninteresting questions, you answer them in writing, the editor will redo everything, and I will get a fee”, but a real and interesting person who is friendly with words. After talking to him, I stopped answering questions sent for all sorts of press. The bar has been raised.
— Alexander Ivanov, traveler, writer of 14 books, and eco-builder, Altai Mountain region, Siberia, Russia
It turned out to be an awesome interview. The fact that it is based on the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries” with Gael García Bernal (2004) gives it some kind of special romance. Very cool stuff.
— Ilya Soev, author of the “Son of the Sence” travel blog, St. Petersburg, Russia
Vanya is an internet discovery, a master of words. He turns posts and pictures from our blog into magazine articles that you can be proud of. He has a talent for making any idea into a finished product: beautiful and packaged. He came up with (and literally forced) us to hold a street photography master class, which garnered only positive feedback from its participants.
— Mishail Varfalomeev, photographer in his studio “Kasha”, St. Petersburg, Russia
It’s sad that Arrivo travel media has closed down. The basis of the site was in your (with Timur, the first editor — author) conversations, which you conducted very interestingly, competent, and gracefully. So I will be waiting for your new accomplishments.
— Natalia Korneva, author of the “Never Stop” travel blog and the book “Hitchhiking across Russia”, Moscow, Russia
A couple of years ago Ivan asked me in an interview for Arrivo: “Do you have a chance to think about eternal things in the ocean?” You see, Vanya, your question has stuck in my head thoroughly. Today I am thinking about the eternal in a substantive way, and it is like a memo “How to find yourself”. Take it and find yourself. I share it with you, friends!
— Maria Klochkova, author of the around the world by yacht travel project “Travely Family”, Altai Mountains region, Russia
All course data
• Title: How to record a badass interview. A three-step life-changing course
• Author: Ivan Kuznetsov
• Publisher: Panoramica
• Date of first publication: 2024
• Language: English
• Format: one-to-one in WhatsApp or Zoom
• Duration: 2 theory 90 min calls + self-practice with feedback
• Start date: today
• Cost: 300 euro/person, discounts for groups
• Result: your first or a new interview published on your blog or podcast, or external media
• Gift: one of Panoramica’s ebooks of your choice
Impact
By taking this course you are not only learning to ask questions like a professional journalist but becoming a part of Panoramica creative studio, a friend and a family member, as we say in Italy. Making this course possible we are helping to development of sustainable tourism in the Italian Alps and building a bridge between it and your place. This leads to positive changes both on a trail of your life and the life of a local communities.
Go to Ivan’s Profile page or to the Panoramica Studio page.