Basic One Camera Interview

[KeckCreative]

This was shot with one camera (Sony HDR-XR500V) and ambient light in large hallway of a large conference center. Sort of amazed we didn't have more noise than we did. Shawn, the interviewee, was very nervous, but she comes off very calm, collected, and articulate. Considering the setup and surroundings, I think it came off pretty good.

CMN Player - YouTube - Interview with Shawn Novicky

[bpalermini]

Looks good. Did you do the zooming in post? Was the mic on the camera?

[KeckCreative]

Yes. All framing and zooming done in post. Mic used was wireless body mic under her jacket.

[rcourtney]

Her answers describe me. (Why I am behind camera most of time!)
The ONLY thing was the chair caught my attention first, instead of the talent.
Perhaps if it was smaller, or simply turned slightly to match her
position.

Since that is my harshest criticism, you did great!

[zactommo]

I couple of points, take it or leave it just my opinion.

I don't like the post produced zooms and frame chances. Do it during the shoot I say, something about them looks unnatural.

I don't think some of the cuts worked to well, where your going between shot sizes that aren't very different, maybe need a transition to smooth it out, so it doesn't look like a jump cut. Eye line was a little off for a couple of shots too.

Aside from that, good work. Sounds was great considering the circumstances!

[KeckCreative]

I agree. There's definitely a need for some B-roll to cover edits.

[Gracetech]

Good content and very good assembly.

Now for things to work on and ways to fix it on location.

First off as has been said, chair is way to big. Makes talent look like a kid sitting in a big chair like that. One of the rules of thumb is to never use high back chairs, don't know who made that rule up but it has served me well. I find that big chairs make people want to slouch into them which doesn't look well on screen.

Image is flat. Use reflectors or lighting to punch out talent so that they are not blending into surrounding and they stand out. It's hard to do that against white walls but with enough light at the right angel you will get the talent to pop.

As has been said work on eye line. You want the talents eyes to be on the same plane on every shot. Tape a piece of thread or even floss across your screen and keep the eyes on that line the entire time. Use the upper third line as your placement of the eyes. The eyes to me were low almost the entire video which equates to you not having enough of the talent in the shot. Unless you have beautiful surroundings that are part of the story consider them just fill and keep as much out of the shot as possible. Fill the frame with the talent to allow the nuances of the talent help tell the story.

These are some hard and fast rules and will allow you to take your game even higher. You will learn when to break these rules as you develop and hone your skill.

Audio seemed pretty good and matched well. Only critizism on audio would be a opinion of dulling down the background track by reducing the treble a bit. Volume of the backing track was fine i though and selection was good as well.

Look forward to seeing your future work.

crt

[Randman]

I love that the old "Ficus tree in the background" trick is still used to add interest to a dual background. It's almost a joke in our church team. "Where's the ficus?"

One idea would be to set up a cheap camcorder at a different angle during the interview. It doesn't have to be good quality. You can cut to it in editing, purposely degrade the image, or make it black and white. This can be your b-roll.

Great job, though.

[joshsliffe]

yea i'm not a big fan of "sets" and this looks for corporate and like studio-ish.. the plant... the bamboo wall.. feeling pretty old school. compare to being outside or something vimeo.com/14432479

aside from that ... she seemed to be talking about everything... all over the place... i didn't really know what i was to take away from that video or what the point really was... there was a few things that were a bit wishy washy as far as right thinking of worship that made me kinda eek as a worship leader.

i'de say typical one person talking head videos don't need to be any longer than 1.5-2 minutes.. gotta be more on point.

[jcalhoun777]

Nice job. Good clean audio, nice pacing. For the future, think about using either a large space that allows you to put your talent close to the camera, and the BG as far back as you can get, then open your lens as wide as you can to throw the BG out of focus... or use a large sensor camera like a HDLSR. Nice work though!

[jcalhoun777]

Is should have pointed out that you don't want to talent too close to the camera, as you want to zoom in quite a ways to frame the talent up, which will help throw the BG out of focus as well.

[seez52]

I like it and would be pleased.