Shooting interviews in a cinematic yet professional way.

Shooting interviews, or pre scripted pieces to camera, can be more of a challenge than they seem. There are some really key components that you need to make sure you get right, and obstacles that are usually in your way to acheiving this…

You want to make sure you have clear, high quality audio.

The thing that can be a barrier to this is that it you want to record external audio at a higher quality than in camera audio recorders/microphones are capable of. You also want to make sure that the audio recorded is no more than 3 feet away from your subject, so that you can isolate your subjects voice and have as little background noise as possible. To achieve this - I use a Zoom H6 recording at 24bit 96khz with backup recording at 12db less than the original file, to account for work in post and any unplanned peaks in noise levels. This has either a shotgun mic attached or a 90 degree mic, and is boomed just out of shot. If you are going for a tight interview angle such as the one seen below, you can get the mic surprisingly close to your subject, allowing for really clear audio.

You then need to make sure you are able to sync your external audio to your video in post. Make sure you film at 24fps, (of if you want to get specific 23.976) and that you have some sort of audio recording on. Use a clapper board (like you see people use at the start of takes in films, it will also make you feel either really cool or a bit stupid), so that you can easily sync your audio in post. It saves you a TONNE of time, trust me.

You want to make sure you have your lighting and angles set up to suit your scene/mood/message.

In this case, the mood we were going for was a more serious and pensive feel - so I opted for a tighter angle with the subject talking straight to camera. We felt this delivered a more powerful tone.

To light the scene - I had an aputure 120d set to about 70% power, with a small diffusion dome pointed at her face about 45 degrees to her side, and about 2 feet above her head, with some extra diffusion cloth in between to again reduce harsh highlights. I also made sure that their were no other lights on in the room, which was quite large, and that there was a soft tungsten light on in the background so as to add some depth.

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I do really like the outcome of the setup, and looking forward to releasing the full film soon, which will give you an idea of how the audio came out in the final edit.

Thanks for looking!