How We Film Interviews With Two People In Frame
In this blog we’ll discuss how we film interviews when there are two or more people in the frame. While this setup relies on many of the same concepts as one person interviews, there are some key differences to keep in mind.
How We Film Interviews With Two People In Frame
In this video we’ll discuss how we film interviews when there are two or more people in the frame. While this setup relies on many of the same concepts as one person interviews, there are some key differences to keep in mind.
Focus
Maintaining focus on everyone in frame can be tricky when filming two or more interview subjects
One way to achieve focus is by making sure each subject is within the area of acceptable sharpness, also known as depth of field. We do this by having our interviewer just to the side of the camera, so that our interview subjects are about the same distance from the camera when facing them. If the distance between each interview subject relative to the camera is too much, one subject will be in focus while the other is blurry.
There are a couple ways to increase our depth of field. One is to raise the aperture. The narrower the aperture, or higher the f-stop number, the deeper the depth of field. The second is to frame the subjects with a wider shot scale by either using a shorter focal length or by moving the camera back.
Camera Angles
Our A-cam will have all of the subjects in frame. We place the camera close to the interviewer and line of action. Besides helping with focus, it also creates a more personal eyeline with the subjects.
When filming with two subjects, we can actually get 3 camera angles from A-cam. Because we film in 4K but export our final videos in 1080p, we can zoom in up to 200% on the shot while editing without reducing the quality. This allows us to have a wide shot and create closeup shots of each subject from the same camera.
For B-cam, we have a camera operator pan between the interview subjects as they talk. For some productions, we use a third camera so that we have full coverage of each subject for the entire interview.
Microphones
We give each interview subject their own microphone to capture the highest quality audio. Each microphone is recorded to its own audio track. This allows us to edit each subject’s audio individually, and mute the other microphones when not in use. If we only used one microphone, we wouldn’t be able to remove crosstalk during the interview.
When using multiple microphones, it’s also important to follow the 3 to1 rule for mic placement. This rule says that when using two or more microphones in the same scene, the second mic’s distance from the subject should be three times the distance between the first mic and the subject. To record audio for two subjects, we use two boom mics, two lavs, or both.
Lighting
When filming two or more people, it’s important that the key light is evenly distributed on each person’s face. We can achieve this in one of two ways.
The inverse square law states that a light source’s intensity is relative to the distance from a subject. So we place the key light so that it is about the same distance from each person. Otherwise if the light was significantly closer to one subject, they would appear much brighter than the second person. The other method is to use two separate key lights for the interview subjects.
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