Shooting an Interview TV-Style
Interviews are the most common form of nonfiction television; and with just a little practice, you can adapt this cheap and versatile format to your corporate, school, church, club, community and family programs. Most studio interviews aim one camcorder at the subject and the other at the reporter, providing A- and B-roll footage for easy editing, often in real time.
What's that? You say you don't have two camcorders? Here's a secret: neither do the pros. Location interviews generally use a single camera.
Making one camera look like two is surprisingly easy, as long as you know a few tricks and plan your approach before you shoot. Let's look at the production side of shooting a two-person/one-camera interview. We're not concerned with documentary-style interviews in which the questioner never appears, and we don't care about how to ask penetrating questions and such. Today's chalk talk is strictly about production nuts and bolts. We'll start with what you need to achieve and how you plan to do it. Then we'll walk through setting up your camera, lights and mike and wrap it all up with procedures for taping an interview that your editor will…
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