Lessons

Lesson Info

Shoot: Interview

For this example here um we'll just keep it I want one shot we're not goingto get him to change too much um but you know for example you could use a seventy, two hundred or you could use the zoom lands to get a variety off different shots he could maybe do some things you could do is this is not the use of this set up this tripod with a trap with a fluid head you could do things like where you could kind of um reveal you can stop with with like you kind of move into her face or you pan up it could be it could be useful like in the editing process but generally I just keep it keep it like on the subject so to make sure you capture that like that that's possible emotional part and when they're telling the story and that's what this is for this long lens to get in tight so in terms of you know, like I said managing and crew you'd kind of be very clear about what he needs to do say it's not like oh don't move it's toe what we really do know me so you know, just get the focus and you know i...

f you're with an assistant and they're not comfortable with like sitting up cameras and getting focus you could just do it and then just get them to monitor it and you know, like assistant will know if something's out of focus on that you know alert but that's kind of good to get out I'll get you can't looking over here I'm happy with that you know this could give him drop back a little bit but the space we have that's that's fine that's cool so that's set up so houston I get you're kind of standing here and obviously for this example you're looking that way now that I am some people might say what does that mean? Does that mean like marriage or something? No it doesn't so what it means is the audio is in manual mode it's important just a check like that because if it's too low then you don't have reference when you when you're you're sinking your footage so if it's too low then you're in trouble so you go to live you go down to sound recording and you just say a few words captain hello one, two, three, three six you can actually have this on order yeah the audio that's coming from here for example that's just a reference point so when you sync up and use plural eyes which will go through and discuss in the edit the press production every year you need that audio to have a reference point otherwise you can't sink your footage and I've done it before where you think you for trying to get footage with no audio would no order from here and it's hard because you better coming from the lips and you're listening to the good audio not so you make sure you get a good reference even if it's like slightly like a bit high but it's fine okay so that's cool um in terms of white balance you know somewhere around there I wish everything is shot manual by the way order white balance and order that is you don't want to do that you know what you want to control in what, what you're shooting so when it comes to white balance making sure that sure you in post production you can tweak it but you want to have it pretty either spot on very close and I'm happy with that I have been getting like rocks and no, I'm not happy with it you're wrong but I'm happy with that okay that's a good balance skin tone look for skin tones and the exposure um I'm happy that as well and I'm at four point five am cool with that and I'll get houston you know, just to make sure that if by chance she's moving, I don't think she will because she's comfortable you want to make sure that they're comfortable because if they're not then they feel like doing the lombardi thing and moving about and you want that okay, so I've got my man camera here and I'm just gonna double check it and again we wouldn't be spending all this time on making your way through that but just to show you what we do okay, cool now you could even have that lamp on as a it is a backdrop thing way don't have could we get a little extension somewhere that waken connected that way? Because if we do it this way then we can see it and we don't want to do that destruction see how that works you might be okay. Nothing okay, something I think oh, man, you just being way too particular but you know what? I don't know like singh here I want to try and avoid that you get someone like oh, like that kind of like what's that so when ugo do that that uh I'm houdini it's gone so I have a look at that they got reflections ah that's cool. So that's the back of the mirror looked like just do this okay, that does it for seven years. Bad luck not okay, so I don't like that because of the time constraint. What I would probably do is just shift a little bit and avoid that it's not a big deal, but the point of what I'm trying to make here is just look for the light look at the whole frame that's the whole point about this it's not about like now in this example, I need to like clyde that but the idea here a zoo in the studio is when you're sitting up just look at the whole frame really important because if you know you could have like a chord like lying then and initially you don't notice it but then when you're when you're cutting this thing, you're putting it together it's it's like a wish that wasn't there because it is a distraction, you know? You don't want distractions like cool, so we can also have a hair light, but because this is like just a natural um sitting then then we just do without its fine and another thing we could do a once set it up if you just pass me that phone call and we don't need it for this example, but if the house lights weren't on, we need the house what? So you can see what I'm doing, what you can do it these things are so valuable, right? Get them in our shot they call phone call and you could use them to bounce light very gently. You can also use the black to cut the line and we'll do that very quickly with the the studio like little like panel, but I have so I'm not going to use it for this set up, but I'll just show you what it does if we have way don't have the house lights were actually able just to show we kill the lighthouse but is that possible? Yeah doesn't throw you out so we're just going to do that you see what it does I wouldn't like I wouldn't overdo it I'm not a big fan in like over doing like your feel like but just to show you that if it's super contrast you could kind of like maybe right stay on the side of his cheek it's just a little bit of that just like down here it gives it like extra shape you can put these on light stands sorry reflect the holders which I'll show you in a moment and some people think that it's you know it's brian it's a wedding you wantto make it look awesome, you know and um part of the storytelling because it's it's just more pleasing it's just an example but because for this example we've got the house life so we just leave them on so you can kind of see what I'm doing but just to show you that these phone calls this is what it does just gives it a little bit but don't ever do it because then the image I could do that this flat get flat you know the man you want to have a little bit of like shadow have a little bit of shape and looks and looks great cool so I'll just give this back thank you all right, so after all that we're pretty much ready to shoot now I have my setup here just remove this little guy because I don't know anything got my headphones and what I do is I have them on sometimes actually just like this this is what works for me, okay everyone's different but I won't have all the headphones like both hit both left and right on I'll just have one just do it like this something like that so then I can monitor it go like that but also he here like real time like actual actual voice through just speaking because I just find especially these headphones you sometimes talk louder than what you should and then so tell me like yeah yeah tell me about the church thing is it like he's singing you got into seeing that's really cool and the older guys in the back like what are you doing? We're good so basically making sure that while the interviews taking place that you have your headphones and you you are monitoring as you go okay, so what I'll do is I'll just press record straight away I don't do it like the moment they start because but why risk it there's an sd card in there ready to go uh one one more time count to ten four five six seven eight nine, ten get one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten all right, now we're ready to go he said you're good good houston we have lift off they're gonna hold it against me that you had my houston we have a problem you're free so just again we just check here cool okay all happy with that. So what I do is I just press record and cool you're good with your shot? I'm no here yet. You can see the shot and I got it. Okay, okay. That's good and look at me hey, awesome. Okay, so that's kind of work and we start so we basically we have the half I want have the headphones on because you interrupted the microphone. I have so cool. All right, well, um yes, well excited. So, um you've been good like everything's will come teo coming together. Awesome. Cool. So yeah, let's really want to hear about how you guys men and start like tell me a little bit about that again. So how did you guys meet and tell me will be at the church church thing? Yeah, way both grew up going to the same church we met in preschool in the blue room and actually the first time I remember him it was actually birthday on guy was your older than him and once you turned a certain age, you've got to leave the blue room and actually go have a senate school lesson, and he didn't want me to leave, but he interpret that it interpreted that as telling the teacher I was lying, and it wasn't my birthday so that's my first memory of him, I was in the blue room, but we grew up going to church, you know, going to camps together in places where I was upset he was married in the play to someone else like him and then friends author, junior high and high school, and we go have coffee dates and talk about, you know, the current love life you know of each other but never dated almost many times but never actually dated reference yeah, we're really good friends, though had a couple years of not being friends due to him dating someone else now is upset over it, but eventually became friends again, and he followed me up to college and broke me up with my boyfriend at the time, and then I dated her peers and got engaged. Wait now, who can tell me more about the church aspect? But how important is that to you? And and yeah, it's uh it's really it's really important to us and one of the really cool things I like about it nation ship is that we believe everything the same because we grew up in the same church, so we learned all the same things, and so there's no clashes on guy really just cemented our relationship in that we actually all the little details of the same, but we both started a lot, and I am on the women's council planned events and during high school group bleeding together really involved in music and troop leaders are day camp, and our director had move our troops apart from each other because you're talking too much from your kids and stuff. And our pastor from our church is the one marrying us, and he did marriage counseling with us and are actually getting married on their wedding anniversary. You mentioned on the phone chatting about what you're doing for sermanni, but you're writing your own vows about what? About that and what you be saying is anything specific to you, jenny? And yes, our writing on ballots were kind of trying to keep them similar, but same time different mine has a lot of problems, thirty one woman scattered throughout it and his his is just him, like totally sounds like him. He has the phrase reckless abandon and his vows, I think it's awesome er and so we have the vows in our program you want to show everyone that this is what it's really about this is why we're getting married it's not just about drowned big party even front uh yeah and he's singing to me he's seen teo you know what he's saying I don't know anything into me he won't tell me I won't know till we get up there have some hopes of what I hope he's singing to me I tried to like drop some hints and playing it, but we'll see so just, um as we you know, it's it's it's important to, like, every so often it's important every soft and to prompt something else into the conversation but you want to minimize that because, you know, you want to kind of interrupt the flow of the the narrative, but every so often as you noticed, I would kind of inject and then I'll in a new way and then let her just just talk about it. So um and so I'll just I'll just go through a couple other things oh, yeah, good questions when you do interject how much does that pick up on her left? It will pick up okay, yeah that's why it's important to either not do it at all or just do it only if you need to and it kind of you feel that may help the flow, but I probably shouldn't have like look at me a potion of injected there but I got excited one of their questions so while you're interviewing her, is there a third camera going around getting details shots or close up shots while this is happening? No no, not at all I lot of times it's just one camera um do you mean like what we're doing the interview because you know how in the theater video with the globe yeah, and that was the d gesture that was actually in her space. So do you afterwards after you do this interview, you have that mental checklist and if there's things around her environment to you capture those as well well that example there what I did is, um I wanted to be efficient with the time because I didn't want to, like have interruptions during the session off doing the skype call, so what I did is I just let the the audio run and is he noticed that I got a few shots of just the screen off him like doing certain things and that is like your like your b roll type footage you, phil, as long as you've got your audio rolling and it's really good audio, you have the liberty and I'll show you like without the clips that you know, you don't have to kind of just like you know when they do give giving you don't have to just have like the one thick shot on them I'll lead her on or explain like you know how we captured a mini story as opposed to just captain what's happening two different things but nancy question yeah like I will keep the audio running and for that example this is a scot session where it's kind of like it's not there not engaging with me they're just doing their thing I found that it was it worked to get certain things but I'll keep as you notice in that clip I stayed on her for certain things and when I felt oh they're kind of like going into this tangent about something and it's like not really important field was important based on what they told me then I felt you know I was going to look around well there's a glove there and that's the picture as a kid I get that that's kind cool so yeah um so yeah and then as I go forward I would basically kind of like, you know, flush out a bit more things like, you know, just inject a little bit more so I'll probably say so you mentioned before about him like get his into motorcycles so what's the plan dan what's what's that all about well he's really into motorcycles and he bombard my pinterest feed on purpose with motorcycle pictures to bug me and he rides his dad's and grand pose in this cramped as a huge motorcycle and hey actually wants to try and leave the wedding on a motorcycle. However, I don't think my dress is going fit, so we're going to do a trial run with my dad and the motorcycle to see if I can get on or not or tied to dress up somehow but that's the only time in the world I will ever be on a motorcycle or ever approve of the motorcycle. So that's pretty big, kind of like when we spoke before you like, I mean, it looked like I was into motorcycles and so what you can do, you can ask questions about who they are as individuals, so, you know, and this you could get some of this footage, like maybe on the day they might be, you know, just checking out the motorcycle and make sure that you, because you are using the the the medicine ical thing could be some could be another pre wedding session where, you know, he's with his dad, and they just, you know, checking out the bike and, you know, maybe so you just kind of like, look for little clues and little, many stories, and then you can think of ways to tell that and make it personal. Because it's not just about them as a couple, but it's also about them as individuals so it's important to ask questions about who they are and what they're into because you mentioned your church is something that you're very in sync, but I'm sure there's things that maybe there's other things that may be that you're different and it's like I'm like what you're like. What do you into, rebecca? I am actually photographer, so I'm really into that's why I drive him nuts in the details of photography's like, I don't get this get to the point I'm going on and on about all the little little things are going into too much detail about a baby photo shoot or something driving a little bit of that, but I know it's not a lot lee totally disagree I mean, he vegetables and I love vegetables, you know, like an everyday thing, but and just jumping to the day. So you mentioned the rhythm vowels and you get your pass it there, you know, it's, obviously something very important to you tell me a little bit about what you're looking forward to and some of the other aspects for the day that, um, that reflect who you guys are and how you sitting up the day, what tens of people for the people, the whole church, oh, and then on top of that family eso lots and lots of people and we know everyone ridiculous will be really fun to see everyone and there's a lot actually his family I haven't met so that'll be really cool to get to see everyone what of like do it yourself little aspects he spray painted wine bottles for every table for me and paper flowers we made and my sister in law's dad built us an arch they're getting married under a lot of those little details that I love details like I'm all about the little details uh so and in the ceremony I'm really excited with ceremony hymn singing and really excited to hear what our pastor has to say and the vows were excited about that you mentioned that it's a big big wedding to the people but it sounds like you have a very like you have a community like a time community is anyone like traveling specific free wedding anyone in particular that you're really really close to, um one of the bridesmaids from nashville she's coming and it's actually her birthday too so that's really cool and his sisters from idaho she's coming she sprays mead um but not kind of really far away it just like everyone still local I mean a couple hours drive maybe, but still besides those two everyone's really local still so cool so immediately here like you know there's lots of little things that you can capture here so she mentioned that it's a community phil the big wedding but you know everyone kind of knows each other and they're very close so it's important to get a lot of faces you know, people just interacting it's simple but it's personal to them it's very important and then what you can do is if there's anyone specific that they're really close to andi made mention that in the toast and obviously mentioning here then you can be specific about capturing those moments those people make sure it's like a checklist you know it's a very straightforward thing just like they just candid but if you don't know you're not gonna shoot it and then you don't have that content so and you know this way obviously really around I need to write this down for the wedding like I have this is footy show as we go through it then we'll make no it's going back in the edit suite and then we could make a checklist make sure you get a shot of the who's your friends what's your friend's name the friend gone from nashville, tennessee yeah that's right uh and also um sometimes what I do I do it all the time but if they're comfortable get them too send me a photo sent me a photo of this you know and then I have call her up and say you wanna go on a date I'm kidding eighteen points have a reference yet I think that really helped because look usually you know who's like important if they mention that because he'd go in there I'll show you when we did the bridal prep actually like introduce myself to everyone hey uh you know get comfortable but I'll show you that tomorrow but yeah just thinking about what she's what she's telling you in terms of the story and making mental notes mommy tonight but just using that information to have more purpose in your shooting on the day and then you know you have a tailor film for them it's really special um nothing I didn't I forgot to mention it's probably was shown live but I forgot to turn this little second I did it straightaway but this is important it's important to have a good on camera mike eh it's not for this because you've got you've got the time it's not a live event you've got set up time it's not a back up it you know during like grocery later but it's a backup a cz well it's it's an added audio source and it's pretty good it's it's you know it's our it's like it's a shotgun so you know you're picking up the sound come from there it's not the best that's your you good audio and also you need a very good reference point so you know sometimes the mike I mean that's secondaries that's cool but I want to make sure I've got this is my main shot. This is my main audio I want to make sure thiss is like spot on okay so I got my mike plugged in I've got levels of check that and it's all good um so yeah you want a reference point so I was going to do there is like a few minutes to go what I'll do is I'll just show you want set it up but I'll just quickly show you set up with a light panel generally this is the best set up using natural light for the way you're winning couples because with the lights you know it can get a bit cluttered on dh overwhelming for them but if you're gonna use lights I would recommend just keeping it fairly simple so the concept is he's still the same you wanna have your key light you want to have the camera on the other side of the key light and shape but with these light panels when I'm about to show you they do generally they spread the light quite they sorry they spread of light is quite wide it's a kind of floods everywhere I would even like go for something with this is one, two, three, four, five six banks even four bank or two bank like two globes is enough you know because it's pretty can we bet you plug this in pretty pretty pretty strong and what I would do is I would use diffusion paper which we have um we have the diffusion paper just quickly went set it up but the principles are pretty much the same when you're sitting up similar to the natural natural life is that's as it is that's your source of life yeah, yeah once you put a diffusion here you soften the live and it's a lot more pleasing and then the source of light is here he changes source of light because its that's the last point that it's it's leaving and hitting the subject so you want to change your source of light in this aspect because if either shine this like directly on to the subject it's going to be quite quite harsh so you could either do in two ways you could have this usually works for me just have like something have like a special screen it fits like a glove just fits into these are bond doors and then he softens the life you could have a this's the fusion paper right? You see that really cheap it's yeah it's not it's not gonna break the budget get whole roll when you cut it off and use I like he's wouldn't pigs especially like when the other lives they hot wooden pegs is the way to go and you could also use a reflector hold up again you one like overcrowd the space with like year but that's another way to do it you can bring the reflector a little bit out and then that will change the source of light coming from there you kind of make it more subtle but this works just fine I actually later on show you three other course some of the other interviews type shoots that I've done and one of me is a commercial one but I'll show you some other wedding ones and and I'll show you that the life's quite soft and in the pdf you'll see an example of the shot that I got the steel frame that you can you can download and purchase it will show you hair light and were positioned it and there is a there is a screen that I used to suffer the life I guess I was going to ask a question about specific times of days that you would actually hold this interview because the light right now is very, very diffused on her face what about if it's late and there's really harsh sun or bright sunlight would you typically go to your order your artificial lighting so that you create sort somewhat more soft and not excessively harsh shadows so if it's an outdoor you mean if it's an outdoor shoot or so see that you see those panels right there totally do if using, if it was like full sun and that was a plate glass window and that was coming down on her face, the characteristics of the light would be completely different than being much more harsh. So how would you offset that? So there's a number of ways you can do it? Could I have one of the reflective right here? Okay, so generally people in their homes, they have draped like blind the ones that don't like these ones, but the ones actually soft soften the life. I've found that they helped quite a bit, but I would after you kind of like sosa and find out what the setup is there and find out what you are going to work with. Thes things here you can put them on. Can I get a that that reflect the hole that that's got the fan call? You got one of these shoot through things where they soften the lot and what you can do it. You can have again. A lot of people think it's like all this gear and I don't have this, but you can rent it so cheap. You just have one of these, right? It's got down these these clips, and you've got you can basically clip that on. You get square once square ones. We better for the for the window and I'm just gonna come across. Can I come across here? That's? Cool. So I just assumed like, this is like a on my answering. Your question is yes. If this's ideal, this is like, yeah, this is perfect. But there's gonna be times when it's just a plain window and it's like strong like harsh lights coming through. So look at look at rebecca now, it's, you know, like, sit pretending that assuming that there was no kind of frosting that lot in that window, it was like a harsh window. You could do a lot with that. And also what you should be doing is if you can, if there's space permitted is just position them so it's not too close to the window, but these things, he come in different in like, levels off division. Um, so you just need to just get the right one, and yet you could use that. You know, sometimes you could just bring a little light panel, maybe not so much this size, but the same concept and just go with just go with the city of light, which I used for sandra, they were only available at night, I could not get them during the day. And I kind of not warned them and made them kind of freak outside I'll look I'm just going a little light is that cool with you it's not gonna understand and because that night because I need to let her up yeah that's totally fine because I have established a connection with them they're kind of like we're on a friendly friend level so I kind of like a pre empted them and warn them good question old school we learned about color temperatures of the lights we seem to be mixing in our our cameras don't care that outside the incandescent the fluorescence those air all okay to use a mix of lights no, but because where in this in the studio we needed to have the house lights on tio kind of show like close ups of the sittings and things so what you should be doing is it should be neutralizing balancing the lot and I'll show you that with bridal prep you know, like how many times like you if you even like when you're doing photography photography, get away with it but houston, you mentioned you've done some winning stuff and you go into the bridal prep and you go in there tungsten light everywhere and this is light coming from outside and mix well no mixed lining is not good, it really just makes the picture look unpleasant so you need to basically control it and just balance it so you just have one sort, so if there's any fluorescent, if you should be just avoiding that I will discuss how to kind of deal with those limitations of certain things you can bring some subtle lights you can bring to the shoot because for example, if you switch off all the lights and the makeup artist is there and and you lose like they're not going to be happy, so I'll go through that with the broad all prepped and everything from eddie kit, how you communicate with them all that stuff will go through that tomorrow and it's going to be freaking awesome, I think we've established what we need to do from when you first get to the location to the house how you just kind of get them in a comfortable and relaxing state you want to do that first, assess the space, make sure that you are aware of what space you're going to be using, what where is she going to be sitting what's going to be the background think it's on the box and, you know, think of set design initially I thought, you know, that hangar thing was gonna work within I thought the wills and they're good that's not that's not gonna work, so yeah, and then you just take the steps to settle up without them being there and once there they should be just doing the very bare minimum getting focus check the levels on dh and start interviewing the interview now show me calling in interviews that should be it should come across as a chat so you notice in the way I've asked questions it wasn't like so when did you make it's like a queen you kind of like making conversation all right well why don't we take to questions from the people on the phones here photo booth todo a couple questions we do have some questions about the interview shoots so yes christian from melissa little photography she didn't interview interviews with the guests at a reception how should I like that? Is there a good way to go table to table or do you have a separate interview area that you would take us so I'm assuming that this is on the wedding day right and they're getting some sound bites from people that's what it sounds like the person I attend tio yeah, we think look if that's something that will help to enhance your story because I don't use that as a zone example as a method I just find that there's a lot of distractions and there's a lot of people in the background and background noise but if something that works for you in terms of what you're providing the couple I would kind of make sure just take them somewhere where at least there's like you can actually have background noise there's nothing wrong with that because it actually creates atmosphere, right? But just make sure it's not overwhelming it's not like you got people back yeah, you know, like I got to this place and then, uh, beer and I'm so happy for rebecca, you know, is this is great you got that in the background, it's going to kill it. So mike, wait to attend to the question yet I would just find the place outside, maybe on do it there is nothing wrong with having some background noise atmosphere just kind of keep it to a band minimum and, you know, think about the market phones he going to be using because generally, like what you could be, you know, you could do me let me give you some what you could do is you could have these things come with, like, attachment like a shock on attachment and it's very directional so what you could do, I wouldn't do it like you've right up in the face so it's in the shots I could friggin, you know, like voxpops, you know? Like, okay, we're coming live from, uh, from seattle state, and we've got the football and we've got this way got tony and want to say a few words about rebecca and winning, but I haven't done this because I it's not a method we use, but if you find the right shotgun and you just have maybe your assistant on your second shooter just kind of like having on the side and pointed in that direction close enough that it's not in the shot I think that's what you should be doing because the shotgun and I'll go through that has a different wave pattern so it would just pick up the sound coming from from the subject we'll ask one final questions this is from calvary creative who wanted to know talking about how good her emotion was her emotional level and is there any advice to give when you get to shooting the day and the bride and the groom aren't nearly as a motive as you thought they would be, maybe from previous conversations, what do you do without getting too director ish or how do you elevate their emotion in a constructive way? Basically, I make sure that, you know, the whole session for starters continues to be a conversation and you know, if something's not working just shift generally look people like talking about things that are special to them that's, human nature, so usually that shouldn't happen, but when it does happen, it can't happen, I would just basically just go with it and not try and force things out of couples because once you stop trying to force things, then you're not getting what you need. And what you need is real emotions, right on dh. You know, I know that if you buy spending the time just to assess this story, then you have the the right questions, and you ask them in the right way and it's, not like super formal. And you kind of give them soon and like ways of asking. So, for example, and say, actually, like, kind of, like, reminded her all. Remember, you tell me about the church thing and, you know, so there's, just a little ways. Just be subtle about the way you ask you questions.