How to Shoot Cinematic Interviews | 10 Easy Steps

this episode of indie muggle is sponsored by syrup how do you feel about using this camera if you want to make your life easy shoot in your storage area yeah what's going on guys today we're talking about interviews and how to shoot them on any budget with any location so today I got my buddy casey macbeth chasing breath is an amazing cinematographer that has shot some of the biggest interviews in the world tell them about some of the interviews i work a lot on the oscars and the golden globes I've shot interviews for George Takei Kristen Stewart Steve Carell Christian Bale Casey Sean the camera that were working with tonight so typically I like to work with the episode we're not using this camera instead we're using the Canon 60 which is a basically a consumer DSLR that you can buy online it's pretty affordable we're also gonna be using the syrup genie to motion control system with the magic carpet Pro slider now not only is this going to minimize our workload on set but this is also going to make sure that we get the most dynamic shot that we can out of that second angle now the only other things that we need to produce a good looking interview basically these three lights here are super simple run-and-gun audio setup and if you want to know more about that you can find everything that we use in the description down below you see me working with this instead and of course we knew your talent as well too so we've got our local business owner this is kaeleen how's it going so I can tell them a little bit about the business that we are making up today we are sounds good this is really an apply for any of those interviews that you're doing for corporate or for anything like that so let's do this all right so Casey what's step number one so step number one whenever you walk into a location is obviously to figure out where you're going to shoot the things that you want to try to keep in mind are how to keep it visually interesting usually by having depth in the frame obviously a fictive wonderfully challenging location I chose the most ugly location you could ever possibly shoot the warehouse here at the office we're trying to make it hard so no windows here we have to light everything from scratch so what are you looking for when we're trying to figure out where can we set our frame to be honest the first thing I do is I look for what I don't want to be in the frame if we turn around here this entire wall it's very naturally dark no amount of light is gonna change that what's wrong with this location over here there's nothing that could be useful here for the business over that we have okay how about this side what we got going over here we have a bathroom going on over however she did mention a coffee shop you've got some microwaves you've got some coffee machines over here and we've also got a doorway we can keep that doorway open we can get some depth with the tables that are already in place not only does that give us a great area to stage set decoration but that's also lots of leading lines that can help bring the eye back to the talent let's do this where are we putting our town well like we said we want depth the last thing we want to do is push her right up against a wall cuz that completely ruins everything we were trying to get so we'll probably drop a chair somewhere here and just to try to line that up will drop our camera somewhere back here can we have you come in let's talk first about camera placement so oh well yeah the Sun sticks right well absolutely so one of the first things that you're gonna have to choose as far as camera placement goes is you're also gonna want to take a look at the height of the camera okay so a lot of times people are naturally gonna go straight to I level I think most people generally benefit from a slightly lower cam position it makes them feel more of an authority this one we're shooting a traditional 24 frame per second sort of thing that's gonna give us a really cinematic look if you are shooting something for television definitely check with whoever the post-production coordinator is and then to just try to keep shutter speed nice we're just doing a traditional shutter speed of 50 all right so let's talk a little bit about framing so where are you moving her and what are you watching for we are gonna be having her look left to right and because of that a very traditional way of going about the framing is to have her on the left third of the camera so for you to vertically cut this frame into thirds you'd have her on the left side so we have more lean room on the right side of the frame it's what we're kind of used to seeing when people are being kind of portrayed a little bit more glamorous leave and then as far as headspace goes which is the amount of room between the top of the frame of their head I try to go with what seems like between maybe three to four fingers above their head so that way it's not too crowded and it's not too far away if it's too crowded it instinctually makes people start feeling a little bit more muscle phobic claustrophobic a little bit more nervous and like there's more weight to the scene than you want maybe it's too far the person first of all looks short which is a very unattractive thing and all actors will freak out but also it just it makes the frame feel like it's swimming around a little too much and they're just kind of lost in it and the worst thing that I see a lot of people doing is they'll do this they'll just give a little haircut oh don't do it no haircuts typically I try to avoid having laps in the frame if somebody is sitting it's not a particularly attractive place to focus on anyways it just closed bunch up it just looks awkward try to pay attention to where the subject is in relation to the rest of the background a lot of times if there's plants or whatnot you don't want them right behind somebody's head I think this works a lot of time for beams or things like that make sure they aren't poking out of the actors head plants make sure they aren't poking out of their head make sure that's clean the background behind them is all good to go yeah okay cool so I always want to start with my key light it's one of the most important ones in the frame because it's really what draws the eye to the talent so we're gonna use just a traditional light with a softbox nice soft attractive and hopefully easy to control we can get a nice 45 degree on our talent so that way she's got some shape and direction to the light there we go already looking so much better fantastic difference if you notice when you look around we're getting lots of light spill onto our walls it's kind of uncontrolled as far as the direction that we want to go to get to that next level of quality you want to start learning how to control that so basically what this does is it takes the light and just focuses it forward so it doesn't splash all on the sides yeah all it does is it keeps all the light from having too wide of a spill so now we've lost all a spill on our walls we've lost most the spill on the floor here except for just by your feet moving on from here what are we going onto for next light we only brought three lights with us no it's unlikely that we'll be able to get through this without keeping our house lights on like the location lights so maybe we will use these for an ambient fill so what we'll do is we'll jump into setting up pathway so the point of a backlight is just to help separate the subject from the background it just helps chisel them out and really define their shape just so instead of their shoulder kind of falling into shadow you add a little bit light there now they're separated yeah we're gonna dark background it really helps create a more 3-dimensional image out of a two dimensional image okay so that seems like a pretty great exposure for her and the nice part is we're getting a good eye light already from the key light so that's really fantastic it helps bring life so what I'd like to do is go out into the hallway and place our last light out there as some sort of like a background light okay sounds good yeah like she kind of falls into the background right now Wow look at that alright cool we got a third light setup here so we're gonna cram this into the corner and try to get as much spread out of this as possible I feel like if we add some color to this then we can kind of help increase kind of not only the focus on our character but just help separate her further the only thing I'm seeing now is kind of that strip that we have her in is looking really great the rest though is pretty dull for a lack of a better turnout I'm seeing a couple of little lamps already on set and we can use those as practicals I think by adding some pops of light could go a long way into kind of making this location not look like this location so real quick people that don't know a practical light is a light that you put in the actual frame of the camera so that it actually adds a little more visual interest makes things look a little more interesting and you can also use them for motivation for the lights that you're using not necessarily always important for an interview but sometimes it's really neat cool so what's the key to using normal lights I just use any old household lamp so it's a tough question there's a lot of problems that can come into that there's the color temperature the bulb right now we're using lights that are daylight balanced a regular household bulb at full power will usually be too bright and will draw your attention away from the tones so you need some way to control the amount of light coming out of those get one of these things hand super affordable they're like $10 at Walmart so I think the last thing that we can really do here is kind of subjects right I think the thing to really kind of bring this set alive is to start bringing in as much production value stuff as we can and removing distracting elements as much as possible like right here in particular very empty first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna move this lamp over to the side a little bit there's stickers things kind of cool this way so right now it's adding like a little cluster of texture and colors right there nothing too distracting because it's not bright enough to really draw the eye like crazy by keeping our actress as one of the brighter things in the frame I'd feel like we're still looking where we need to look this area on the left side of frame feels a bit heavy I feel like we need to spread some of this stuff out I see a rogue coffee cup okay this is no runs we don't leave coffee cups that's pretty dumb since we've got our main frame nailed down I think we need to start freeing and second camera so why do you use more than one camera less than time very unlikely anybody's gonna give you perfect answers perfect responses and you're gonna want to be able to cut through things there's only so many times you can cut to me roll between eight shots so if you have a second angle it can really simplify editing it can make the talent seem a lot more first of all knowledgeable but also comfortable which is a really big deal recently I've really fallen in love with using a motorized slider for your close-up or your bu camera because the frame is slowly parallaxing it's constantly changing it's very visually interesting and by being motorized you no longer have to have a whole nother crew person who's gonna struggle with a dolly so in this case we are using the syrop genie - this is a motorized slider that we're gonna be using for that dynamic second angle the share genie - and the magic carpet are basically just gonna bring up the production value of this shoot we've tested it before I love how silent it is as well as how easy it is to set up basically when you normally use this kind of gear you have to sacrifice for the sake of portability but it's not the case of the seer of genie - in the magic carpet our super small and lightweight so right here for our second camera we are using the Canon EOS R again it is a kind of affordable DSLR camera the reason why we're using two Canon cameras is from the same manufacturer you're looking to have a lot more similar and matching color science which is going to make your post life so much easier so right now I'm just going through the app base control system they have so all I'm doing is I'm giving it a start keyframe which is gonna track the location on the slide you know the pan and the tilt yeah and once I lock that in on the start and the in frame it will constantly be tracking between that and in theory should keep her in the same position all the way through the nice thing is we can go through and add midway points if we need to fine-tune anything yeah but we're gonna set a start and a stop point and then just check it out from there so right now just to be able to get the same consistent motion back and forth we've got the Jeannie set on bounce and all that's gonna do it's gonna run that same keyframe animation forwards and backwards until we tell it to stop so it's the perfect worker the perfect second shooter yeah and this is all the kind of thing that you could fit into a backpack if need be well yeah I mean if you look at it all it really is is your support it's the slider itself and then everything's built in here and we're just using an app to control it yeah and this right here is all built in battery too so really not a problem there the next thing is audio yeah we you know we're shooting an interview and they're not just gonna stare at camera they're gonna say stuff so cool neither me nor Casey is an audio expert so we have an audio expert Andrew hey have Stanwell travel this real quick is Andrew enters the head of duty microphones he is also basically a professional sound mixer that has worked with GQ he's Mike like Mark Wahlberg than your bottom so hardening all of them yeah can you show us what kind of mics we need and how to actually make this oh yeah this is gonna be really easy to set up first thing I want to do is I want to see your framing so I don't dip into your shot here's what a shot looks like how pretty it is okay so what I'm gonna do here is we're gonna just the simple boom on a stand I think that's the best most people like to choose like shotguns when they do videos but for an interview it's actually not needed we're not outdoors were indoors so actually a hypercar dude or just a regular cardioid pencil mic is actually the ideal kind of microphone through the situation drop this guy in I'm using a basic boom holder so what are we watching for when we've actually got our boom pole rigged up so the first thing I'm watching for is shadows now that I'm rigged up I want to look to see where I'm casting the shadows from the key light that's typically the one that's going to be casting the shadows so the best place to get mic placement is typically if you you know create like a little horn you can put it right here on your head like a unicorn right there's where you want the microphone at you said katelynn can you give us a quick little bugle right look good alright so yeah right right in there and I'm not pointing it directly at her mouth what I'm actually doing is I'm pointing that microphone at her chest area most people think you point it at the mouth and that's fine but if they ever slope in the middle of an interview you miss out and all of a sudden you're shooting that microphone right into the forehead and it does sound different at the same time a lot of people also talk from the chest and the throat and the actual mouth itself so you get this fuller sound when you actually point it here instead of here real quick what are we plugging this microphone into so we're plugging into a zoom h5 because it is a nice running gun basic reporter at the same time it actually sounds pretty good and these kinds of microphones you put on boom poles are traditionally not the kind of microphones you can plug into a DSLR so you will need to get yourself a nice recorder so we've got our mics set up and everything but the actual room itself if I I can hear kind of an echo right and the problem is we've got this giant brick wall behind us yeah and that is also causing some of the issues so what we're gonna do is we're set up some sound blankets and that's gonna really dampen the room and kind of keep the audio from just bouncing around all that in the room ruin it all yeah so after I've set up this sound blanket I'm gonna listen again we've already done that but I can also tell I've also got some problems with this hard concrete floor so I'm just gonna throw a blanket on the floor just to kind of kill any standing wave going from this floor ceiling spend a little extra time in production getting better audio it's a lot harder to fix bad audio in post so now that we've got our last blanket on the floor is there anything else we should do no I think we're good to go cool sounds good get out of here audio deployments gone thank you shooting the interview let's do this so now we're back at camera our first camera a second camera set up on our second shooter we've got our microphone set up sound blankets lighting is done all ready to shoot yeah I think the best thing now is to talk to our town make sure they're comfortable they know what's gonna happen we can start you know breaking the ice with the interview or set them up get everything to rollin cool so I'm gonna be the interviewer today biggest mistakes to avoid as an interviewer first of all you want to be quiet a lot of times we're used to talking to somebody so when they say something like damn that's crazy or Wow okay awful for the audio okay so you want to just let people roll give nonverbal cues because it is a conversation that you're just recording the second thing that you want to do is everybody gets very excited once they know somebody's about to finish speaking and they go oh that's great so you just want to make sure that whenever you're speaking to somebody and you're giving them just that gap to finish so that way you can have nice clear audio another one and this one is always really difficult to continually remind your subject to repeat the question that you've asked them in their answer so if you say what did you have for breakfast a lot of people say bacon and eggs but if you just cut out that thing it's just a weirdo in a chair saying bacon and eggs so if you try to ride them hey you know just say oh this morning for breakfast I had bacon and eggs it will make the interview process of editing a lot simpler and more informative to whoever's watching it all righty you ready to do this sounds good all right we're gonna go for a take here with kaeleen again fake business today we're doing a coffee shop book store that we're gonna be talking about something well I think with our place you get a little bit of everything you get a bookstore you get a hangout space you get a lovely cafe and you get cats now why cats walking I'm sorry Paulie good so did you have a cat when you were younger of course I had a cat when I was younger her name was Weezy we called her Weasley because we were obsessed with Harry Potter but she was a cute little rescue cat she drooled out of one side of her mouth because she was missing a tooth we just loved her we wanted to make sure everyone so we named it Weezie's cat cafe I am Veronica and I run a Brooklyn cat cafe slash bookstore for the LGBTQ community pretty good all right very good good that's great that's one did you notice how easy it was to fall into conversational where you're just you're starting to step on lines I know I did stuff on so while you can you got yourself a couple times but as it goes on it's hard to kind of member that because you get excited you get invested but I think you know with all things practice makes perfect so alrighty guys so there you go there's your episode how to shoot interviews again no excuses out there if we were able to make this warehouse location work for us you really have no excuses to make a beautiful frame this is Casey where can I find you you can find me best at Instagram at Nick throw underscore FTW kaeleen where can they find you Andrews back Andrew can they find you absolutely cool and this of course is indeed mobile if you got any questions leave me the comments down below we're gonna go hop in there and actually answer those questions in real time but there you guys have it hope you guys have an absolutely amazing day and we'll catch you guys next time so a lot of times if you need it you can use your hand to kind of simulate somebody's head until somebody sits in as long as you're on access to the camera you get kind of like the same angle of reflectance well we don't tend to have too many problems we keep a solid eye on all of our cats to make sure they're not trying to munch on anyone's food but mostly its endearing if they do it's pretty easy to shoo away one of our cats

Channel: Indy Mogul

Views: 1,106,401

Rating: 4.9397469 out of 5

Keywords: Tips & tricks, job shadow, Parker Walbeck, cinematic interviews, cinematography techniques, two cameras, lighting setup, Tom Antos, Shutterstock Tutorials, DSLR tutorial, multicam shoot, essential, documentary, How to, Ted Sim

Id: Jv1jdXZFqiQ

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019