Last Thursday, Daniel Norton and frequent presenting partner Dave Brusca held a free, live demonstration targeting on camera interviews. Using a basic rig featuring a camera, tripod and detachable LED light, Daniel proceeded to walk us through the process using a model as his interview subject.
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The first part of the demonstration focused on a one-to-one sit down scenario. Establishing the look and tone of the shot, Daniel showed the audience different lighting set ups that are conducive to the feel of what the subject best represents. For example, the subject could be the CEO of Disney Studios. Therefore, the resulting look of the footage should be bright and optimistic. The team experimented with both LED flat lights and tungsten lamps thus displaying the pros and cons of using either one. Flat lights are bright and faster to set up and are more portable as they can be battery operated. But tungsten lamps allow more creative control thanks to attachable accessories like scoops, barn doors and various lighting gels.
Daniel eventually settled for a Lowel Softbox and Rifa lighting kit, thus allowing him to move on to the audio recording portion of the demonstration.
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While using both a Rode wireless lavalier system and boom rig, the differences in microphone technology were carefully explained. There are advantages to using either an omni-directional or cardioid shotgun depending on how much background noise you’d like to pick up in a shot (you may want to isolate the subject’s voice with the lavalier, but use the additional boom to record ambient noise). The set up was simplified for the run-and-gun portion of the event, where a Sennheiser cardioid microphone was attached to the camera, along with an LED Camera light and a mono pod.
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As usual, audience members were afforded the opportunity try their hand at both scenarios. In the run-and-gun portion, an additional audience member would play the role of on-site interview subject while the model looked on bemusedin the background. And Daniel attempted to further experiment with lighting techniques, showing us how a loosely applied gel bag can improvise some effective bounce light. Animportant tidbit was brought up with regard to the camera lens: always use a zoom. When you’re in the field, you need to constantly pull focus while zooming in orout from a subject. Thus you need a wide depth of field.
Sometime down the road, it may be interesting for Daniel and Dave show us alternative gear for interview situations like those presented on Thursday. Not everyone can afford nor has access to a Canon C100 Mark II and may have to depend on their DSLRs. In that scenario, a separate recording device might be needed (such as the Zoom H6 or H4n) as the audio recording capability of a DSLR can be, shall we say, lacking. Or how to approach a run-and-gun interview with a camera attached to a shoulder mount system (which in itself may require additional accessories like an attachable video monitor, a view finder loupe and possibly a follow focus wheel). Regardless, Thursday’s OnSet event was well worth attending especially for the budding documentary filmmaker.
OnSet is a weekly, in store event. It appears every Thursday starting at 12pm at Adorama, 42 West 18th Street, NYC.
