Shooting & Lighting Interviews

Interviews are the ‘bread and butter’ of my work, the centrepiece of any film. They’ve got to look good and usually be shot quickly too!

I always start by finding the frame, what’s in the background of the shot? Sometimes this means changing the location of filming to a more visually appealing location, or somewhere with a little more space. If I have two cameras, as I often do now, I will position both cameras so we can see what we are working with.

A large 120cm octodome is my key source here. We also changed location from the boardroom to the foyer when we saw this background!

Once the frames have been agreed we can being lighting and ‘setting the scene’.

For lighting, I will generally use a key light, this is usually a large source off to the side of the interviewee directed towards their face. This light casts the most shadows and positioning it to get the desired effect on the face is key (no pun intended).

Secondly, I will add a kicker or backlight. The kicker usually comes from behind the interviewee on the opposite side to the key light. If I’m working with motivated sources, like windows in the background, I sometimes bring it from the same side as the key. With a backlight I am usually trying to add separation from the background, sometimes this is possible to do with tone and therefore a backlight isn’t needed.

Inspirational Voices — Making use of both a kicker from the key side & backlight at the same time. Making use of colour contrast to add interest.

Finally I will now look at the shadows. Firstly on the interviewee, does the dark side of the face need to be darker or lighter? Either way I try and do this passively, either using a white/black reflector or poly board. By using a passive fill light, you avoid creating a double nose shadow, which can make the interview look over lit! I quite often will fill from the far side or directly from the main camera, this allows the shadows to maintain a bit of shape.

Negative fill from the opposite side to the key, making the far side of the face darker

Then I turn my attention to the background, what needs some more contrast to make the background pop. This sometimes can be closing blinds, turning on or off room lights or dimming them. Sometimes I’ll add some small panel lights to add pops of colour or shape into the background.

You can check out a series of my interview frames on my website here.

Dan Mears