Many interviews for documentary projects are shot under less than ideal conditions in offices, at events, factories, on the street and in dangerous or hostile environments. Lighting is essential in getting a properly exposed segment.
Shooting Interior Interviews
Indoor lighting can vary in a some ways from daylight and tungsten in homes to daylight and fluorescent in office situations. There may be mixed lighting sources with varying color temperatures. A light kit with a few lights can help with supplemental lighting but often it’s more about working with available light. White balancing is important.
An office often has a window and a person’s desk in front of it. There are a number of possible choices. If there are blinds or drapes see if they can be drawn and use a simple 3 or 4 light set up with at least a key, fill and backlight light setup.
What if there is no way to block the light from the window? Is a better environment available like a conference room? One alternative is to consider how to shoot the interview using available light. Can we use the light coming from the window as a key light? For example it might be possible to shoot the interview from an angle or from the side of the desk where you use the light coming from the window as the key and then use a reflector to bounce light in from the other side. Your subject is facing the camera and both are parallel to the window. Remember to white balance for daylight.
Whenever possible think about lighting a subject with a key, fill and back-light whether it is available light, lighting instruments, reflectors or a combination of light sources. A key to fill ratio of between 2 to 1 and 4 to 1 is ideal for most video interviews and other documentary situations. Appropriate subjective lighting may be used to get a certain look or feel for an interview, however, most of the time, in documentary situations, we’re looking to capture the flavor of the environment; we try to reinforce the existing lighting so that we can get a decent exposure without adding our own interpretation.
Example of an interior interview may be seen in the preview of The Baldwin Park Story. In this situation we had a number of options including an office, conference room or meeting room area. We chose a neutral background that we could light to give some minimal contrast with a lighting ratio of about 2.5 to 1.
Actuality Interviewing and Listening by James R Martin
Available from Amazon.com –[amazon_image id=”0982702361″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Actuality Interviewing and Listening: How to conduct successful interviews for nonfiction storytelling, actuality documentaries and other disciplines … (Documentary and Nonfiction Storytelling)[/amazon_image]