Interview Lighting BSA 101 (Intro to Film) Week 6
Lighting and Interview:
The industry standard way to light an interview is by adopting the Three-Point lighting method. This way of lighting your subject requires three lights:
1. The Key Light, this is the main source of light on the subject, it is usually one of the larger lights available even if that means an open window. For us this meant using the redhead. The key light is shines directly onto the subject.
2. The back-light, this light is so called because it is situated behind the subject, directly across from the key light. It's purpose is to create a glowing effect on the edges of the subject.
3. The fill light, this can be anything from a pro light to a reflector as long as it fills out the darker parts of the subjects face. It rounds out the subject, preventing against harsh shadows and in turn creating a sense of depth.
Other important elements to consider while filming an interview is:
The industry standard way to light an interview is by adopting the Three-Point lighting method. This way of lighting your subject requires three lights:
1. The Key Light, this is the main source of light on the subject, it is usually one of the larger lights available even if that means an open window. For us this meant using the redhead. The key light is shines directly onto the subject.
2. The back-light, this light is so called because it is situated behind the subject, directly across from the key light. It's purpose is to create a glowing effect on the edges of the subject.
3. The fill light, this can be anything from a pro light to a reflector as long as it fills out the darker parts of the subjects face. It rounds out the subject, preventing against harsh shadows and in turn creating a sense of depth.
Other important elements to consider while filming an interview is:
-The setting: The setting is important on two fronts; The first is to be thematically appropriate to what the subject is talking about. For a stage actor this might be a theatre (as seen in this VICE interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72cKL4BT--E) or for an artist this might be an art gallery. The second reason setting is important is in creating a sense of depth in the frame. While compositing our shots in class we encountered a problem with creating depth, instead of setting up the equipment in a space that would provide a sense of depth in the background we naively thought that the corner of the room would be more interesting. A background that stretches out behind the subject not only makes the picture more interesting to look at, but as we found during out practice run it also makes the subject stand out. A great way to ensure a dungeony feel in your interview is to set up in a corner, it results in harsh shadows and a flat composition. From my experience in class I learned that considering setting and location is important during an interview, just looking around the room and assessing the situation can result in a much more dynamic final product.
-The talent: We learned that making the person being interviewed feel comfortable is also a very important part in creating an interesting narrative, If the subject is not comfortable in front of the camera they might not so easily share their story, which could result in a boring final product. A good trick to making the subject feel more comfortable is by putting them in front of the camera and asking them menial questions like "what did you have for breakfast?". This makes them accustomed to being in front of the camera and allows their voice to adapt (in which time the sound op can also start to fix his levels).
-The Narrative: Arguably the most important thing we learned this week was how to shape the narrative for your interview. People are much more invested in an interview if they are being told a story, to do this we use B-Roll. The tricky thing about B-Roll is that it needs to support the subject matter and yet tell a story at the same time. A great way to ensure interesting B-Roll is by formulating questions that are open yet subconsciously guide the talent in a certain direction. The best kind of question is to ask about a routine, something that the interviewee does on a regular basis that can be easily recreated and that tells a story. We were asked to come up with some of these questions in class and had a surprising bit of trouble doing so. Halfway through the process we decided to approach the questions from a different perspective, namely "does the question result in an answer with repeatable action?". The questions we ended up having were much more effective because of how we changed out approach.
In this example of yours truly we had some trouble with the backlight, specifically that it was too harsh and resulted in over-saturation. In the example above the fill does almost nothing because the left side of my face is already too bright. The key light is pleasantly soft, but unfortunately it resulted in some pretty harsh shadows around my collar and on the curtain in the background. This problem was not with the flooding, instead that the key light was just too close to the subject.
In the second image we managed to fix some of the problems seen in the earlier version. We tried fixing the ugly shadows by moving the key light back and reducing the flood, this worked well to mitigate the shadows but unfortunately lost some of the softness. The backlight is a huge improvement, actually giving the fill a reason to exist. The shadows on the collar seem stronger and in general I prefer the colour we achieved with the first try. This is much closer to three point lighting than the first though and that's what we were trying to achieve with this activity.
-The talent: We learned that making the person being interviewed feel comfortable is also a very important part in creating an interesting narrative, If the subject is not comfortable in front of the camera they might not so easily share their story, which could result in a boring final product. A good trick to making the subject feel more comfortable is by putting them in front of the camera and asking them menial questions like "what did you have for breakfast?". This makes them accustomed to being in front of the camera and allows their voice to adapt (in which time the sound op can also start to fix his levels).
-The Narrative: Arguably the most important thing we learned this week was how to shape the narrative for your interview. People are much more invested in an interview if they are being told a story, to do this we use B-Roll. The tricky thing about B-Roll is that it needs to support the subject matter and yet tell a story at the same time. A great way to ensure interesting B-Roll is by formulating questions that are open yet subconsciously guide the talent in a certain direction. The best kind of question is to ask about a routine, something that the interviewee does on a regular basis that can be easily recreated and that tells a story. We were asked to come up with some of these questions in class and had a surprising bit of trouble doing so. Halfway through the process we decided to approach the questions from a different perspective, namely "does the question result in an answer with repeatable action?". The questions we ended up having were much more effective because of how we changed out approach.
In this example of yours truly we had some trouble with the backlight, specifically that it was too harsh and resulted in over-saturation. In the example above the fill does almost nothing because the left side of my face is already too bright. The key light is pleasantly soft, but unfortunately it resulted in some pretty harsh shadows around my collar and on the curtain in the background. This problem was not with the flooding, instead that the key light was just too close to the subject.
In the second image we managed to fix some of the problems seen in the earlier version. We tried fixing the ugly shadows by moving the key light back and reducing the flood, this worked well to mitigate the shadows but unfortunately lost some of the softness. The backlight is a huge improvement, actually giving the fill a reason to exist. The shadows on the collar seem stronger and in general I prefer the colour we achieved with the first try. This is much closer to three point lighting than the first though and that's what we were trying to achieve with this activity.
Good reflections and visual evidence - thanks, Bo!
ReplyDelete