Video Production Tutorial - Shooting an interview with one camera

One of the things we try to do with Pro Video Tips is to focus on tips and techniques to help you squeeze a little more production value out of limited resources. Camera moves of course are a huge one but even more basic than cool camera moves are the number of cool camera angles. Can you show the action before your camera from more than one angle? The easiest way to show multiple angles of any action is to shoot with multiple operators on multiple cameras. However shooting with multiple cameras is the easy way but not by any means the only way. So today on Pro Video Tips I'm going to share with you a method of shooting single camera interviews so that they can actually be cut to look like two or even three camera interviews by the time it's all said and done. Check them out. The simple trick to pulling off the illusion of multiple cameras for your audience is to carefully edit in your head and periodically change your camera angle as your interview progresses so that with your one camera you can still at least get some of the same shots you would get if you did have two or more cameras. So I'm going to walk you through the technique of how to fake a multi-camera interview shoot with just one camera. For this technique to really work you have to think through when it's most appropriate to cut to another angle and be prepared to adjust your shot accordingly. As bonus coverage it may come in handy later the first few moments a subject comes in the room and sit down can also be used to pop off some close-ups of hand gestures, greetings and help establish a subject's demeanor or state of mind prior to a formal interview. Only you can decide whether it's fair or appropriate to show your subject beforehand but nervousness, confidence, concern or other emotional states are often more apparent in people's less guarded body language in the moments just before a formal interview starts. Again our goal here is to capture as many visual aspects of this conversation as possible with only one camera. Now when it comes to shooting our main interview we aren't going to do too much differently than normal. When it's time to dive into the interview itself we're going to stick with a fairly traditional medium shot. However to vary our coverage of the main content we can go to tighter close-up shots during a few strategic points in the conversation. I say strategic because the close-up is our power shot. It's the strongest emotional tool we have in our interview composition tool belt so we only want to use it during the strongest points of our content. So every time our subject is making the key point where the conversation gets to its most dramatic or emotional points we want to do a dramatic zoom in while they're talking or a quick punch in just before they answer and then hold on that tighter shot for the drama. When the drama subsides or when the motion of the moment is reset by a new line of questioning we can then pull back out so that when the next dramatic moment comes we'll still have that close-up in our back pocket to go to. So now we can check off our medium shots and close-ups. Now a riskier variation of faking multi-camera coverage for interviews is to periodically reset your entire camera position. By shooting from a more extreme angle than the normal frontal medium and close-ups we're used to it really helps to sell the audience if the project was covered with more than one camera. So that's a reward convincing and dynamic multi-angle coverage of the action. The downside to this method however is that you never know what a subject is going to say while you're locked into your b-cam shot. So the person you're shooting could make some really passionate point or give us the perfect golden sound bite we'd hoped for but using this riskier technique we could end up with our only coverage of that golden sound bite captured from a less ideal vantage point. Generally if someone is making a strong point or delivering an emotional moment we usually want to capture it from a more traditional frontal viewpoint with a strong emotional eyeline that connects with the audience. So it's a filmmaking gamble that often pays off but occasionally it can burn you. You'll have to decide for yourself if the risk is worth the reward. So using these techniques so far we've got our medium shot and a few close-ups and if really feeling ourselves that day we may also have some profile shots and one or two other different camera angles of parts of our main interview. However this technique of faking or as I prefer to think of it creating the illusion of multi-camera coverage can be entirely pulled off immediately after you shoot your main interview. So in the next movie I'll break down exactly how to do it all after the fact.