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interviews

Watch and learn how to light and shoot cinematic looking interviews

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Interviews are just a fact of life for those of us who shoot video. At some point, we’ll either choose to or find ourselves talked into shooting one at some point. Or, perhaps it’s your goal. Maybe you want to learn how to film interviews or you’re already doing it but feel you could get a bit more out of them and want to step up your game a little? Well, have a watch of this video from Jono and Jason.

In the video, Jason walks us through the process of shooting a more cinematic style of interview, from picking your shooting location, through composition and lighting to getting the best audio. They’re a small channel just starting out, but if they keep putting out content like this, I think they’ll do quite well.

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How to create 30 different interview and portrait lighting setups in less than 15 minutes

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While understanding how light actually works is a much more reliable way to figure out how you’re going to light your subject, when you’re just starting out, it helps to rely on some tried and trusted lighting setups and techniques to get you up and running. The more different setups you try, the more you learn to understand how they work, the better you’ll understand light as a whole.

In this video, commercial filmmaker Austen Paul shows thirty different interview lighting setups in under 15 minutes that will give you plenty of options to get you started. And don’t let the “interview” description fool you, these lighting setups are ideal for photographers shooting portraits, too.

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How to keep your subject comfortable in front of the camera when shooting interviews

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There are a lot of great videos out there on the technical side of shooting interviews, but there isn’t really a whole lot out there on the psychology of it. Shoving a camera in the face of somebody who’s not used to having a camera shoved into it can be extremely off-putting and uncomfortable. Anybody who’s ever tried to shoot an interview will tell you that they’ve experienced that shift in their subject’s behaviour at some point.

So how can you overcome this and make your subject feel more relaxed while still getting a good shot? That’s what Simon Cade discusses in this video going over how he shoots interviews. Simon also talks with filmmaker Sebastian Solberg to get some insight on how he tackles interviews and paces them to keep your subject interested and involved the whole way through.

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How to set up a 2-camera interview using a motorised camera slider and pan-tilt head

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While we were visiting NAB 2019, we took the opportunity to have another chat with Ben from Syrp. We wanted to find out more about how camera sliders and motion control heads can be used in practical situations. Typically, we see sliders being used for timelapse creation, but we wanted to know more about how they could be used for video. So, here Ben shows us how we can use the Syrp Genie II 3-Axis Pro Slider Kit to add a B camera to an interview.

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The SquidRig gives your tripod arms to hold your lights and microphone

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Tripods already come with a set of legs, so why not give them a set of arms, too? If you shoot video, and particularly interviews, you’ll know the hassle of having to setup a bunch of stands for a couple of lights and your microphone. The SquidRig plans to solve that by adding three arms right onto your tripod. It’s a bit like a grown-up version of the Gorillapod Octopus.

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How to light two interview subjects with only three lights using cross key lighting

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Interviews can be a fun lighting challenge, especially when you need to go back and forth between two subjects; The interviewer and the interviewee. There are all kinds of elaborate lighting setups you can use to light two subjects and have them both looking great on-camera.

Sometimes, though, you’re limited on gear or space or setup time. In this video, filmmaker Rubidium Wu shows us a simple three light setup that gives short lighting on two interview subjects to great effect.

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Advanced lighting book

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