Cinematic Interview Lighting: from Basic to Advanced!

What is it that makes an interview shot truly stand out? Well, the secret mostly lies in the lighting. Lighting can completely change the mood, tone and focus of your interviews. So in this video, I'll show you how to set up and light an interview. Everything ranging from basic to advanced, from moody to high key. Let's get into it. So before setting up any lights or even putting the camera on a tripod, I'm first going to look at where I would want my interviewee to be and in which direction I would want to film. So I'm just going to walk around the room with the camera in hand and then just look at what angles I find interesting. So the first angle I'm going to have a look at is towards the kitchen here because I kind of like the practicals up there. It's a little bit messy, but if we just have a look, it'll be more or less out of focus like this. Yeah, it could be an option. Also, the window on the right there is a little bit bright. That could be a problem. So let's just keep looking. Of course, we have a big psych wall here. That could be an option, but not something that I want. And one thing you also want to look for is depth. So ideally, you want to pull your subject away from the background and not put them up against the wall because then you won't have any depth. So if you have the space, you can obviously just pull them away from a background. If you're in a small room, you might want to shoot in the corner of a room and that will automatically create a lot more depth in your shot. So if we just show that as an example, if I'm filming Brida here up against the wall, you can see this shot doesn't have any depth. Basically, he has the same amount of focus as the background. So if we just turn this around, so shooting in the corner of the room, we get a lot more depth in the shot and that just looks a lot nicer. So another thing I look for is existing lights like practicals or windows. So anything that can motivate my lighting. Obviously, it's not a necessity. If your location doesn't have any windows or doesn't have any practicals, then you can just light your subject and that'll be fine as well. But if it does, it would make sense to use them in your shot to kind of have your lighting look a lot more natural. So here we have a lot of windows to choose from, which could also be its problem. But right now I'm looking at this shot right here because we have the big window on the left that could motivate our key light. And then because we can pull our subject away from the background so much, we can have a lot of depth in our shot as well. There are a few tricky things here, like there are a lot of windows, so we might have to block a few of those out to reduce some of the light. Let's put that chair in a good position and then have a look and see what that looks like. All right, so we're going to put the chair somewhere around here. Now, it probably looks a little bit weird because we're really close to the kitchen, but on the shot from here, it's going to make a lot of sense because of that depth that we're creating. We're just going to make sure that we can set up our lights, but I think we'll be fine. So I'm now going to put the camera on some sticks and see what that looks like. And Frida is just sitting in the chair, having a look at where we want the camera to be for height. The next thing we're going to do is clean up the background a little bit. I saw in frame that it was looking a little bit too messy. And the idea with all of this is that the focus is on our interviewee and what he or she is saying. So we don't want to have any distractions in our frame. So I'm just going to have a look at what I want to get rid of or maybe things I want to add just to get a nice frame. All right, so we've cleaned up the background, as you can see, and we added the bicycle back there, basically just to add like a point of interest. And this could be anything, depending on what the interviewee is talking about that could relate to what they're talking about. And we also opened up the curtains here just because that allowed a bit more interest in the frame. We felt that was just like a big whitewash here. So opening up the window just adds a bit more texture in there. So that looks a little bit nicer as well. Now, the only thing that's still not good is obviously the exposure. We have to expose the camera for the window and then bring in lights because then we can actually see what we are working with. OK, so in order to expose for the window, we're going to put up an ND because I want to shoot this at T1.5, so wide open to get a nice blurry background. And in order to do that and be able to expose for the window, we need to close down the ND. I'm mostly looking at the window because obviously the room is getting very dark or where the interviewee is going to be is getting pretty dark. But I'm just exposing the room, exposing for the window, and then we can bring in lights to actually expose for our person there. OK, so the first setup is going to be the most basic one. And this is just going to be one light. So this is great if you only have one light, if you're on a budget or you don't have a lot of time. So it's still going to look pretty good, but you're going to see as we go through these setups that as we add more lights, things are going to look a lot more refined, a lot more dynamic and a lot more beautiful. All right, so the first light or the only light in this case that we're going to use is the Alien 300C by Nanlite. So a 300 watt panel light, put that on the light stand here. And the cool thing about this Alien 300C is that it has this fast deploy softbox. You basically release these blue straps on the back here and the softbox automatically comes out. So you don't have any complicated rod system or anything like that, like you would see on some other panel lights. So it's really quick, it's really easy and it packs away very thin as well. So you just pull that back and that's how it goes in the case and ready to go. OK, so we're going to start off by moving the light a little bit more frontal so we get a bit more of wrap around the face. Before we just had a very strong shadow side, which of course is a look you could be going for. I'm going to increase the power a bit as well. So we were at 10 percent and move it up to maybe like 25 percent, maybe even 30. Yep, that looks pretty good. So now we still have texture in the face, but you can see it wraps around the right side there as well. So as you can tell, we are shooting from the shadow side. So that means the light is on the left of the camera and we are shooting into the darker side on Frieders face. The reason we're doing that is because the natural light from the window is coming from that left side as well. So it's going to look a lot more natural that the light is coming from that side. We're going to change it up and put the light on the other side and you're going to see what that looks like. It's not necessarily wrong. It's just a different approach. So you can tell this definitely doesn't look bad, but it just feels a lot less natural because obviously on the other side, we have windows and there's no light coming from there on this side. As a viewer, you don't really see what's there, but there is a light coming. So it just feels a lot less natural. Like I said, it's not wrong. It's just a different look. So I'm just going to move that back to the other side because I actually prefer the other way. So now let's say you don't like that strong shadow side there. You can still use something very cheap like this 5-in-1 reflector and fill in the shadow side. If we use the silver side, you can tell that's going to be very, very bright and a little bit harsher. So let's switch it up to the white side, which I think is going to look a lot better. Okay, so now with the white side, see how close we can get. That's in frame. So something like that, you can tell that kind of fills in the shadow side there. If I put that away, it's a lot darker. Put that there and that's going to fill in the shadow. So it kind of depends on what you want. And this is just a very low budget way of kind of adding a little bit more production value to the shot. So you don't need an extra light. And one of these is like 30 bucks or something. And it just looks a lot better. Another cool thing that this Alien 300C has is this honeycomb grid here. So if you are shooting in a smaller location, it'd probably be good to use this one because it controls the light a lot more. So it focuses the light on the subject or wherever you're pointing it. And it doesn't spill all over the background. Now here, in this case, we are in a very big room. The light doesn't reach the background. So we don't really need it. But it's cool that this one is really easy to attach and detach. So none of that Velcro weird stuff. You kind of just slide it on and it just like really easily attaches. Okay, so this is the final shot we ended up with for our basic setup. So we only have one light here and then, of course, the reflector. But as you can tell, this still looks pretty good, especially for just having one light. Now we're going to start adding in a few more lights and just enhancing this shot a little bit more. And you're going to see what difference that makes. So this is going to be our low-key look. Already we had a fairly low-key look before with the basic setup. But I just want to enhance that a little bit more because later on we're going to turn this into a high-key setup. And I just want to really show you that difference. So what we're going to do first is move our key light a little bit more towards the side, like I showed you before, to get more of that shadow. But then we're going to use the diffuser here in this 5-in-1 and blast the light through there to get even softer light. And this works really well if you are lighting faces, if you're lighting people, to double diffuse your light because then you get a much softer light on the face and people just look a bit nicer then. Of course, because we are double diffusing, we are losing a lot of output on the light as well. So we just need to increase the output on the NAN light here. So we're just at 30%. Let's put that up to about 50. I think we probably need a little bit more. So I'm going to put it up all the way to 85. I think we'll look good. Yep. All right. So on the other side, instead of using the bounce, we're actually going to put in negative fill. Again, in this 5-in-1 reflector, you have all the options. So I'm just going to put on the black side. And instead of adding light to the shadow side, we're going to take away light by putting in that black side. And that's going to create a lot more contrast in the face. And it's going to fit really well in our moody look that we're going for. So after adding in that negative fill, I am noticing that it's a bit too much of a split light. So the shadow side is not getting any light anymore. So I'm going to move the key light a bit more frontal again. So we get a little bit more wrap. That looks a lot better. Because now we get more light on Frida's left eye, giving it a little bit of a catch light in the eye as well. All right. Now we're going to add in a few more lights, starting with the Nanlite Pavotube. And this is going to be our hair light. So I'm going to boom it on a C-stand. Raise it up so it's not in frame. So we've got that Pavotube up there. And obviously, it's a little more tricky to reach. So I connected both the lights to the Nanlite app. And then I can just go into the Pavotube and adjust my settings as I need them. Look into my monitor here. And I don't need to touch any of the lights anymore. So it's really cool that you can add all these lights into one scene on the Nanlite app and then just control the lights remotely. OK, so let's turn on that Pavotube. Right now, it's at 69%. So I think it's a little too bright. It feels a bit too sourcy. So I'm going to turn that down to 25%. And then turn it on and off to see what it does. And you can tell it's creating a lot more separation from the background. It's filling a little bit of the shadow side as well. But I really don't mind that. And you can see the light landing on his shoulders, of course, on the hair. And I think that looks pretty good. We want to add a little bit more interest to the background and put a little bit more emphasis on the bike there. So we're going to add in the third light, which is the Forza 60B right here. And I have a spotlight attached on the light because I want to focus the light on there and not have it spill everywhere else on the background. Now, one thing you'll notice with the spotlight on like this is that we have just one very clear beam of light that doesn't look very good. So one thing we can do is either add a gobo to the spotlight or, for example, put something in front of the light to break up the light and it's going to look a lot more natural. Now, besides the lighting, you can also change the framing of your shot, especially, for example, for the close up to tell more of the story or to change the mood of the shot. So, for example, let's say you're filming a very intense crime doc and the person talking to the camera is talking about very dark emotions, for example. You could maybe want to frame them a little bit more short sighted like this or you could even lift the camera up and shoot down to make them a little bit smaller, make them more vulnerable, depending on what they're talking about. Also, you could switch that around, go more from like a lower perspective and then get more of like a hero shot, depending on if this person is, for example, a powerful person. So, with your framing, you can still tell a lot of the story as well. So, it's not just lighting, but also the framing matters a lot. So, this is our final frame for a more low key look and this is something that could work perfectly for maybe a crime doc or a drama doc or basically anything where you want to have a bit more of a cinematic feel to the shot. Now, let's turn this into a more high key look and see what that looks like. All right, to start off, we're going to move our key light a little bit more frontal because that's going to reduce that shadow and give us a bit more of a higher key look. Maybe something like this. We don't want to go full frontal because then we're just going to get a very flat image. We still don't want that. And also, we're going to change the negative fill here back to our white fill. Again, to reduce the strong shadows and get a more bright look on the person's face. I really wish they would just put white and black on one side and then silver and gold because I never use silver. I just use white and black and then it would be a lot easier. Anyway, so white on this side to create more fill. Okay, so moving the key light and adding in the bounce has already brightened up Frida's face a lot, but still the background feels a little bit too dark for a real high key look. So I'm just going to open up the ND here and luckily it's a cloudy day so I don't think we're going to blow out the window there. Now I can tell that the key is a lot too bright. Definitely on the face, it just feels like it's blasting in there. So I'm just going to reduce that from 85 to 75 and I think that's pretty much it for our high key look. So it's very easy to go from a low key to a high key look. You just got to move the lights a little bit, add in a bounce, reduce the negative fill and then brighten up the background. If you would be working with a very bright light coming in through that window, for example, you would need a much stronger light in here to just bring up the overall exposure and to compete with that brightness from the window. All right, so now that we've had our basic setup, our low key setup and this high key setup, I want to show you one more which is a top down lighting setup. So for this setup, we moved things around quite a lot. We got rid of the hair light, we removed the diffusion and as you can tell, we put the Nanlite Alien 300C up here, boomed up on an arm and that's the cool thing about this light. You get 300 watts of power but still a fairly light and small light so you can easily boom this up like that. Another cool thing about the Alien 300C is that you can power it with V-mount batteries. So on the side here, you have one V-mount attachment right here and then another one on the other side and then you can power the light with two V-mounts. Let's say you're shooting somewhere, shooting an interview where you don't have any power, you could do this easily with V-mount as well or if you're shooting outside, use V-mount and you're good to go. So we have the Alien C overhead a little bit off to the side and as you can tell right now, it's a little bit too bright. So we're at 57%. I'm going to turn that down. Let's see 25, maybe even 20% because we're going for a very moody dark look. I think maybe even less. Let's see what 10% looks like. Yeah, let's go 15%. We have a negative fill on the side there just to fill in that shadow side. I don't know if we really need it, but I just have it there. Now, one thing we can do because the light is actually spilling a little bit on the floor there as well, we can actually put on the grid to focus that light even more just on the subject so we don't have that spill. So you can tell what a huge difference that makes adding the grid on there. There's a lot less light spilling on the background, on the floor. We get a much more focused beam on the subject and the whole shot just looks, I don't know, maybe like 10 times more moody by just adding that Ecrate grid on there. All right, so this is the final frame for our top-down lighting setup. As you can tell, it's a very moody and dark look and this would fit perfectly if you're shooting a crime doc or basically anything with a mysterious character or a dark character. Now, one thing we haven't talked about yet is what the C stands for in the Nanlite Alien 300C and that is of course color. All right, that's it for this video. I hope you were able to learn a thing or two and that it was helpful for the next time you are setting up for an interview shot. Thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye.