Tearing apart your “cinematic” interviews

right away we have this mic just get rid of it just cut cut it out not his head the mic and also too you have the light right there let's avoid this let the gym influencers walk around with these mics but you're a professional filmmaker don't settle in today's video I am going to be reviewing your interview setups I got so many sent to me I'm going to try to do as many as I can but just before we get in that one quick tip for lighting interviews it's just 20 $ and this is going to change everything for you go on Amazon and buy this I'm actually using it right now it's just a a diffusion sheet I think it's like usually less than $20 and these clothes pegs well they're not cloth pegs they're Pony clamps Tiny Little Pony clamps I recommend putting this on all your lights most of the light diffusion that you get out of the box that comes with your light in my opinion just isn't soft enough and typically for interviews you want softer light on your subject's face and you want to get that soft light nice and close that's one of the big mistakes I see with people is their lighting's too harsh and they have the light so far away so it's just casting really ugly Shadows okay first interview this is from Kim when I go through your interviews here's the first few things I'm looking for I'm looking for lighting ratios color contrast ey line Framing and overall lighting quality so for lighting quality it's soft but the contrast ratio here I just wish it's it's just a bit flat we don't have anything on this side of her face no Shadow I'm not really getting any sense of depth around her all the lighting's flat when I look at this waveform I'm kind of seeing it all take place in a very similar location we're not getting much dynamicism on her face and and when I actually look at the shot as well this background is brownish beige same as her skin tone there isn't overall contrast but look at the second shot here right away this is the shadow side and here's what we've done we've actually crossed our ey line you can see in the wide shot here she is looking from left to right and so our second angle should continue that she should be looking from left to right this is what's called jumping the axis and you can see here she's now looking right to left so what's confusing about that is it feels like almost like a different room a different space the shots don't cut well together imagine that there is a line through the room and you're going to have all your cameras on that one side this will help with the cohesion of the editing and it will also make us not confused cuz it won't look like the person is talking to themselves whenever you're making a film you want your edits to work seamlessly and never bring attention to them okay next interview here you'll see that he actually did do this we'll show where he has our wide shot here the person's looking from left to right in frame you can see their eyes are going this way and if we go to his tight shot they're looking the same way so these two would cut together very easily overall this is probably out of everything you're going to see one of the best interviews I love how soft this lighting is we have a nice little ratio here we do have great contrast it's not a ton but it looks like over all the style that the cinematographer was going was a less contrasty shot but beautiful giant soft light and it's casting really beautiful soft Shadows really complimentary wouldn't matter how wrinkly a person's skin with this type of lighting they're going to look great but really like this shallow depth of field here it's drawing me into the person what I also like about the shot is even though we have this brown here which is similar to his skin tone that that in that tan orange World we've broken it up with some green this is a big thing I saw in a lot of these interviews is people didn't think about color contrast and this is why you want RGB lights sometimes if your background is all orange you're going to want to throw a blue light on it but overall this this is the top tier this is this is beautiful moving on wao Wow back to another elaborate setup here this is from tlock interview sorry you didn't put your name in the video file maybe your name is tlock I love when people send me the video files and they put for Mark bone I I know it's for me you don't need to say that what I need is your name so I know who made this what's your name for Mark bone beautiful wide shot stunning wide shot my only thing I would say is I would love to see his foot it's kind of cut off here you've embraced the wide shot if there was any way to back up a bit more and just show me his foot beautiful grainy footage you know he is still one of the brighter things you're going to be kind of fighting this window back here perhaps you could have pumped a bit more light on him to bring down the darkness of the background depends your choice for the story ooh we got a slider here little tiny slider this is we're getting Advance here okay I'm just going to nitpick because it is such a great interview you have beautiful soft lighting again this is obviously a really large Source because we can see the same level of softness on the face here is landing on the body just great great lighting I think you would have had a great gaffing team here you can tell you've hazed out the room we have some beamage coming through the window here this was care this would have taken a couple hours to light at least and it's obviously that you guys care about this shot well the one thing I would say if I'm going to nitpick is maybe a tiny bit of a kick light you can kind of see it's no longer here but earlier in this I had a little bit more of a kick light because I had a hard angle of the light coming out of there doesn't have to be a full back lighting like I'm having on top of my head here but if right on this side of the face you just had a tiny little kick you might be able to sneak it in there on the wide oh that would be tough but you could overhang it that would be my only thing but overall I'm not looking at it going oh I wish he had a bigger kick there when you adding in Too Many Lights it can start feeling kind of fake but overall just just beautiful work I'm I'm so impressed [Music] wow if you want to kind of see how to set up an interview we go into this extensively in the Cinematic eye this is our cinematography course part of the aod academy we have many different videos in that about how to frame and set up your interviews where to place people how to use two cameras and our doors are opening very soon to join the art of documentary you can jump on our wait list or follow us on Instagram for any more details on that also we're giving away an fx6 whenever we open the doors for art of documentary we always give away a camera package and so I'm actually headed to Africa tomorrow to give this away to the last winner but if you want more details on that we'll be announcing that very soon so follow us on Instagram or stay locked to this Channel and I'll be letting you know how you can enter in to win this camera package all right back to more interview [Music] tips all right let's do John K there's a few things we're going to review let's talk about what's working well your subject is the brightest person in the frame that's usually what you're going for in an interview if you have really bright other areas in the scene it can be distracting you're did not shoo to the shadow side we would want to see the shadow it looks like you have a big nice soft light and then we'd want to see that Dynamic Shadow on that person's side also too always bring a lint roller when your person is wearing black like I should have done I'm just seeing some loose hairs here and lots of things on their shirt you as a cinematographer you as a filmmaker wardrobe is also your responsibility I would also say here hide the mic just hide your mics I know it's become this thing with influencers where they'll walk around with iPhones or they'll have these Road mics these big things just sticking out of their necks it's my pet peeve it's my absolute pet peeve when you're talking with someone they don't have a mic sticking out of their face when you're making a film you want people to forget that they're watching a film so hide the mic and if you're in art of documentary we have a whole section about how to hide your mic and how to do it properly so that's in module one I would definitely say John that you have great potential with this interview just remember shooting the Shadow and hide that mic in your next interview it's going to be fantastic all right let's do another one here just going through this is I don't know who did this you didn't put your name in it you put my name in it I didn't make it you made it put your name in your video files this shot here were lower than her eyeline that's a statement she's an athlete she wears a whoop also so maybe that's what you're trying to show she's a strong athlete I can tell that you probably just used a window light here overall if you're going to do this you're just going to commit to using a window light you still want to be able to control your window light so her arms here are kind of to me the brightest part of the shot where her face we want to draw this so either in post just do a gradient filter here just really subtly bring this down or grab that skin color which couldn't even maybe grab some of this of the bed here and bring that down like draw us to her face or you can again get some diffusion and start cutting light off just buying a couple of these tools off of the internet just to have in your bag Pony clamps ND filter diffusion black wrap any of these things that can help you shape the lighting goes a long way and I think you have a second shot in this interview yeah this is kind of a cool setup I think she's a cyclist here or maybe it's like the Saw movies I don't mind the lighting on her face again would love to see some shadow on the side we're looking that side if you brought this light just a bit more over to the side actually that light is on the other other side of her face and then we're casting the shadow here T let's move that over to the other side so again we're looking at the Shadow and then why not Place her just a bit more into this alley you have these beautiful leading lines here I would have just pushed her a bit more over to the that side and then brought the camera around a little more your frames are painting your interview is often the most important part of your film take time to craft it perseverate stress over it in the moment let's keep going here got a really wide shot here from Hayden Idris I don't mind a wide shot I don't mind a big bold interview but right away we have this mic just get rid of it just cut cut it out not his head the mic and also too you have the light right there it just it screams amateur it looks like you're have some taste here as an artist when how you framed this and then throwing one of those Road mics let's avoid this let the gym influencers walk around with these mics but you're a professional filmmaker you're not shooting a podcast you're shooting a film don't settle hey man also bright lamp this is where you want to bring a couple Tools in your kit as a filmmaker couple gels that can soften things I always bring a dimmer just off of Amazon I buy buy a dimmer and I plug them into lights and I dim it if it starts to flicker then that's when I need to put ND filter in there you could literally tape your ND from your lens if you need to onto a light to dim it I like that you put a table in I would have come up a bit more your shot here were below the eyeline now we're looking up to him try to get your camera as often as possible eye level unless you're trying to express something about someone low shots make the person look domineering High shots make the person look small this is what is cinematically communicated to our audience this is your second shot here Hayden underlighting again that's a choice it's not the choice I necessarily would want to do because it cast Shadows up people's faces which is always kind of reminds us of those spooky ghost story this is not really how lighting Works in life we rarely have lighting coming up at US unless you're like walking on a boardwalk and then you can see lighting underneath just casts weird shadows which we're kind of getting some of that on her and uh I'm not sure what this is all about I like that this is dark because it's drawing my eyes to it you could get in postproduction and just darken this down add a bit of a vignette but again my eyes are being drawn here to these boxes and they're not all that beautiful so I would kind of think about making more of a Cove as you can see like I've tried to create a bit more of a shadow Coke here oh man that Sunset just I'm so glad I kept the window open okay this is from Michael peacock we have an interview here here's our main angle looking doing the interrotron looking directly into the camera lens and then we have this tight angle overall decent enough lighting I would say what I think you could have done like I said is maybe just throw one more layer of diffusion on this shot maybe get a bigger Source I can look at the catch light in her eyes right here and I can already tell it's a smaller Source it was a bigger source Source you'd be getting a bigger reflection you can see in my glasses here just how big the reflection is from this bigger source so I would say get something softer bring it in closer I'm also feeling like she's sitting too low in the frame framing is so important for me I'm so picky it's a bit of a personal choice but you're looking here she's kind of sitting low like this head room doesn't bother me but her eyes are getting closer to this 50% Mark of the frame you don't really want people sitting down there unless it's a huge huge wide anytime you're getting into the medium and close-ups start looking to put the person's eyes 3/4 of the way up in the frame and then this other shot here this this second shot that we have it's just too tight it's not that you can't be this tight but again it's the framing we just have so much forehead here we're cutting off her chin her mouth is what we'd probably be looking at next to her eyes it's dipping near the bottom of the frame I would just back off this camera you can always punch in closer like this in post production but give yourself a little more breathing room all right let's just do a few more few more this is a tough shot going into direct like hard sunlight you can see these windows are working better with their dappling I mean one thing you might have been able to do is to duplicate that over and post bring it over here you have pumped a lot of light onto her face so kudos to you on that because otherwise these could have been even more bright this window is a bit unfortunate how bright it is if you had ND you could have but maybe there was another place in the room you could have pushed her over to don't love that this chandelier is kind of coming out of her head kind of looks like a hat kind of looks like a continuation of her hair perhaps placed her in front of this although you'd be fighting these poles I can see that you probably thought about this actually here's what I would have done I would have brought the camera around pointed from this side and shot into this corner that's my assumption of what would have worked and then you would have lost this big white window right beside her face competing for attention you wouldn't have had the chandelier in her face we probably would have had a darker background and she's like a real estate lady I believe from this opening shot here oh no she's a deer Care Dental Care deer care we all need to care for our [Music] deers so yeah it's a dental care place we want it bright we want to feel like like teeth are bright so I appreciate that you do have this beautiful bright and bright doesn't necessarily mean that you have to get a harsher light beautiful lighting if I was a client I would say ha I look great just giving you that quick lessons again watch your contrast ratios making sure that there actually is contrast in your shot unless you're just trying to go for a soft overall look look for color contrast this is how you help your person Stand Out soften your light big sources bring them in close add more diffusion these are just really simple tricks for you to get that told you about that piece of diffusion that's like 15 bucks on Amazon I buy like 10 of them every year and just have them for all my lights put it on on top of all my lights getting it softer then watch your head room 75% that's kind of like where I like to put my eyes and just always make sure your person is the brightest thing in the frame unless you want them to be shrouded in mystery make them the brightest part thank you for everyone who sent those I really wish I could have reviewed all of yours if I didn't get to yours perhaps bug me on Instagram I'll see what I can do no promises but thank you for sending this I loved seeing everyone's videos here oh man I wish I could give everyone their advice like H just such beautiful work that all of you did like the soft lighting beautiful anyways I hate kbby but I think I just really love red meat I'm all about it sorry if you're vegan on this channel nothing against you just I really love red meat it's the best so nutrient dense anyways see you in the next [Music] one

Channel: Mark Bone

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Id: njq95IvH_vI

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2024