In Sydney they go wrong in two places nobody writes about. The first is the location, because filming on council land is a permitted activity with fees and lead times attached, and a crew that turns up without a permit is a crew that goes home. The second is consent, because New South Wales treats recording a private conversation as a matter of law rather than courtesy. This guide covers both, then the production runbook that sits on top of them.
The location decides the rules, so choose it before anything else
Three categories of location exist for an interview in Sydney, and they carry completely different obligations. Getting this decision right early removes most of the risk from the shoot.
Filming on City of Sydney land requires a permit above six people
The City of Sydney requires a permit to film or photograph on land it owns or controls for a commercial purpose, and it sets the tiers by total headcount rather than by equipment.
| Category | Total people | Application fee | Approval fee | Late fee | Minimum lead time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No impact | 6 or fewer | No application required | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| Low impact | 7 to 25 | $100 | $180 | $450 | At least 5 full business days |
| Medium impact | 26 to 50 | $100 | $385 | $963 | At least 7 full business days |
| High impact | More than 50 | $100 | $670 | $1,675 | At least 15 full business days where road closures apply |
The six person exemption is the useful line for an interview. A host, a guest, an operator and a producer sit inside it comfortably. Add a second camera operator, a lighting assistant and a client observer and the same shoot becomes a low impact application with a five business day lead time, which is longer than most interview bookings are scheduled in advance.
City of Parramatta applies its own notice period and insurance tiers
Filming on public land in the City of Parramatta area follows a different process. The council assesses parking and traffic needs for productions and states that an application submitted less than 48 hours, or two working days, before the shoot date carries no guarantee of approval. Public liability insurance is required, at $10 million for stills, news, student films and documentaries, $20 million for commercials and dramas with budgets under $50 million, and $30 million for major productions above that.
Private property and studios sit outside the council permit system entirely
This is the sentence that decides most corporate interviews. The City of Parramatta states that filming on private property does not require council consent, although notification is appreciated. A hired studio is private property. So is an office, with the building owner's permission.
Reading the three categories together produces a simple rule. If the interview does not need the street in the shot, do not put it on the street. The permit, the fee, the lead time, the insurance certificate and the weather all disappear the moment the recording happens indoors on private property.
Consent in New South Wales is a legal step, not a courtesy
The Surveillance Devices Act 2007 governs this. NSW government guidance states that the Act prohibits recording a private conversation without consent, citing section 7, with a limited exception where a party to the conversation records it to protect their own lawful interests.
Publication is treated as a separate matter again. Sections 11, 12 and 14 create offences for publishing, communicating or possessing material obtained through unlawful use of a surveillance device, and the NSW Department of Communities and Justice records maximum penalties of up to 100 penalty units, being $11,000, or five years imprisonment for an individual, and 500 penalty units, being $55,000, for a corporation.
None of this is a problem for a professional interview, because everybody in the room has agreed to be there. It matters for three practical reasons that are easy to get wrong.
- Record the consent, on camera, at the start of the file. Thirty seconds of the guest confirming their name, that they consent to being recorded and that they consent to publication settles the question permanently and costs nothing.
- Get a written release as well, covering the platforms and the duration. Verbal consent to record is not the same as consent to publish a clip on three social channels two years later.
- Keep the cameras off during the parts nobody agreed to. Green room conversation, pre interview briefings and anything said after the guest thinks recording has stopped are exactly the material the Act is written about.
Organisations recording staff or executives have an additional internal approval layer on top of this, and corporate podcast studio hire for internal comms teams covers how that usually works.
Five decisions made before the guest arrives determine the result
An interview is mostly won in the hour before it starts. These five are settled in advance or they are settled badly under time pressure.
| Decision | The two options | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Where the guest looks | At the interviewer just off lens, or straight down the barrel | Off lens reads as a conversation the viewer is watching. Down the barrel reads as the guest addressing the viewer directly. Mixing them inside one interview looks like a mistake. |
| How many angles | One camera, or two | One camera makes every cut visible. A second angle turns removals into ordinary edits and supplies the close shot that clips are cropped from. |
| Where the interviewer sits | Beside the lens, or out of the room | Beside the lens keeps the guest's eyeline consistent and the energy up. Remote or absent interviewers produce a flatter performance. |
| Whether the question is in the answer | Guest restates the question, or does not | If the interviewer will be edited out, the guest has to answer in complete statements. This has to be briefed, because nobody does it naturally. |
| What the session produces | A long form piece, or clips as well | Clips need a tighter close angle and a guest who lands points in short passages. Deciding afterwards means recording the wrong coverage. |
The fourth row is the one that separates people who have done this from people who have not. An interview cut without the interviewer, where the guest begins every answer with yes or it depends, is unusable. Briefing that single instruction is worth more than any equipment upgrade.
Audio decides whether the interview looks professional, and the targets are published
Viewers forgive a soft image. They do not forgive audio that sounds like a room. Two rules cover most of it.
Record every person on a separate channel. Two voices captured on one track cannot be separated afterwards, so one person's cough, one person's level and one person's phone buzz become everyone's problem. Separate channels are decided at the moment of recording and cannot be added later.
Then deliver to a published target rather than to taste. The European Broadcasting Union's EBU R 128 sets a target programme loudness of minus 23.0 LUFS with a tolerance of plus or minus 1.0 LU, and states that true peak level shall not exceed minus 1 dBTP during production. That is the broadcast reference. Podcast and streaming platforms normalise to different numbers, and podcast studio vs home studio sets out the Apple and Spotify targets side by side, which are two decibels apart from each other and well away from the broadcast figure.
The practical consequence is that an interview intended for a broadcaster, a conference screen and a social feed is three different deliverables from one recording. Knowing that before the session means capturing enough headroom to serve all three.
A ninety minute interview runs to a schedule, not to a vibe
This is the shape of a session that produces a usable forty minute piece and a set of clips. The timings assume a room that is already built and tested.
| Time | What happens | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|
| Minus 60 minutes | Cameras framed, lights set, levels checked on empty chairs | Every minute of this spent after the guest arrives is spent on the guest's patience. |
| Minus 15 minutes | Guest arrives, is offered water, sits, is fitted and re-levelled | Levels set on an empty chair are levels set on nobody. A seated guest changes them. |
| Minus 10 minutes | Brief: answer in complete statements, ignore the second camera, mistakes are fine, we stop and go again | The single most valuable ten minutes in the session. |
| Minus 2 minutes | Consent recorded on camera, name and title confirmed on camera | Solves identification and permissions in one take, permanently. |
| Zero to 10 minutes | Warm up questions the guest could answer in their sleep | Nobody's first answer is their best answer. Ask the easy ones while the nerves burn off. |
| 10 to 60 minutes | The interview | Expect to use roughly half of what is recorded. |
| 60 to 75 minutes | Pickups: restated answers, a clean version of the one that stumbled, three direct to camera lines | The clips almost always come from this block. |
| 75 to 90 minutes | Room tone, cutaways, wrap, backup copy made before anyone leaves | A recording that exists in one place does not exist. |
Two of those rows are the ones most sessions skip. The warm up block is skipped because the clock is running, and the pickups block is skipped because everyone is finished. Both are where the best material comes from.
Four things cannot be fixed after the guest leaves
- Channel separation. Two voices on one track stay on one track.
- Camera coverage. A single angle stays a single angle, and no edit conceals a cut that has nowhere to go.
- The direction light came from. Colour can be graded, exposure can be nudged, a window behind the guest cannot be moved.
- The performance. A guest who was nervous and unbriefed is nervous and unbriefed in the finished piece.
Noise, hum and echo are now largely fixable with AI cleanup, which is why the argument for a professional interview setup rests on the four above rather than on room tone. Podcast studio vs home studio works through that distinction in detail, and what equipment you need for a professional video podcast prices the kit that covers the first three.
Konnect Studios removes the permit, the setup and the operator problem at once
Reading back through the obligations above, most of them are location problems rather than craft problems. Konnect Studios is a recording studio in the Parramatta CBD, six minutes on foot from Parramatta station and the light rail, and teams book a Sydney interview studio where the room, the cameras and the operator are included from $174 an hour on the Capture session.
| The obligation or risk | How a session at Konnect Studios settles it |
|---|---|
| Council filming permit | A hired studio is private property, and the City of Parramatta states that filming on private property does not require council consent. No application, no fee, no lead time, no late fee. |
| Weather, traffic and street noise | An indoor room treated to minus 40 dB isolation, so the recording does not depend on what is happening outside. |
| Scheduling around the guest | The studio is currently listed as open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so an executive or a client can be booked early, late or on a weekend rather than at the only time a crew was available. |
| Two angles and matched colour | Two Sony FX30 cameras recording 4K, framed and colour matched before the session starts, so the second angle always exists. |
| Separate channels for every voice | Up to four Shure SM7dB microphones, each recorded on its own channel, which is the one audio decision that cannot be revisited. |
| The sixty minutes of setup | The room is built and tested before you arrive, and a dedicated studio operator runs the technology for the whole session. |
| Clips as well as the long form piece | Craft sessions at $774 for two hours add the full edit, five reels and one teaser. Conquer at $1,149 adds motion graphics and custom sound design. |
An interview on location is still the right call when the location is the story, and how to choose a property videographer covers that side of the work. For everything else, what podcast studio hire actually costs in Sydney models what a session costs against a finished piece.
Three questions before you book anything
- Does the location need to be in the shot? If no, record indoors on private property and the entire permit layer disappears.
- Will the interviewer be edited out? If yes, brief the guest to answer in complete statements, and put that instruction in the calendar invitation rather than mentioning it on the day.
- What is the deliverable, exactly? A forty minute piece, a three minute cut and six clips are three different coverage requirements, and they are cheapest to decide before the cameras are framed.
If a studio is the answer, how to choose a podcast studio in Sydney sets out the three fields most listings leave out.
Questions people ask about filming interviews in Sydney
Do you need a permit to film an interview in Sydney?
It depends entirely on the land. The City of Sydney requires a permit to film or photograph on land it owns or controls for a commercial purpose, with no application needed for six people or fewer, and tiers above that starting at a $100 application fee plus a $180 approval fee and a minimum five full business day lead time. The City of Parramatta assesses applications for public land and does not guarantee approval on less than 48 hours notice. Filming on private property, including a hired studio, does not require council consent.
How much does a filming permit cost in the City of Sydney?
The application fee is $100 across all tiers. Approval fees are $180 for low impact at 7 to 25 people, $385 for medium impact at 26 to 50 people, and $670 for high impact above 50 people. Late fees are $450, $963 and $1,675 respectively. Lead times are five, seven and fifteen full business days, the last where road closures apply.
Is it legal to record an interview in NSW?
With consent, yes, and consent is the operative word. NSW government guidance states that the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 prohibits recording a private conversation without consent, citing section 7. Publishing or possessing material obtained through unlawful use of a surveillance device carries maximum penalties of up to 100 penalty units, being $11,000, or five years imprisonment for an individual, and 500 penalty units, being $55,000, for a corporation. For a professional interview the fix is simple: record the consent on camera and take a written release.
What insurance do you need to film in Parramatta?
Public liability insurance is required for filming on City of Parramatta public land, at $10 million for stills, news, student films and documentaries, $20 million for television commercials and dramas with budgets under $50 million, and $30 million for major productions above that. Filming on private property does not require council consent.
How long should you allow to record a video interview?
Ninety minutes for a session that yields a forty minute piece and a set of clips, assuming the room is already built. That breaks into an hour of setup before the guest arrives, fifteen minutes of settling and re-levelling, ten minutes of briefing, ten minutes of warm up questions, fifty minutes of interview, fifteen minutes of pickups and fifteen minutes of room tone, backup and wrap.
What loudness should an interview be delivered at?
It depends on the destination. EBU R 128 sets a broadcast target programme loudness of minus 23.0 LUFS with a tolerance of plus or minus 1.0 LU, and a true peak that shall not exceed minus 1 dBTP during production. Podcast and streaming platforms normalise to different and higher targets, so one recording usually becomes several deliverables.
Should a video interview use one camera or two?
Two, for anything that will be edited. One camera produces one angle for the length of the interview, so every cut is visible and there is nothing to cut away to. A second camera turns removals into ordinary edits, creates the reaction shot and supplies the close angle that short vertical clips are cropped from. Camera coverage is fixed at the moment of recording and cannot be added afterwards.