How do you like to shoot interviews?

[Erik Olson]

@William. Is this relentless application of rule of thirds template really the way to go?

Check out the making of Seinfeld documentary at the end of the DVD box set for seasons 1&2. 45 minutes or so - dozens of interviews. You will notice all shots are composed with the interviewee in the horizontal center of the screen. Let me know what you think.

The project often mandates safe for 4:3, which limits pushing your subjects too far into the off-screen areas between that and 16:9. Too many people are framing eyelines at 3/4 frame or even 7/8 frame height and it's a claustrophobic composition. Unless you want your viewers to crouch in their seats, of course.

 

[pwyll]

You might want to look at some of Earl Morris' films. Great, great interview set-ups.

Edit: Another fun thing to do is hire a teleprompter for the interview camera. Then take another camera (doesn't matter what it is), have that on the interviewer and pipe the feed through the teleprompter so the interviewee is talking to the interviewer, but looking directly into the lens of the "interview" camera. Makes it extremely personal to the viewer.

The Errol Morris/Interrotron look worked well in FC&OOC, Thin Blue Line and Fog of War. But way overdone on the TV stuff and pretty irrelevant in Standard Op. The pont is that the rule of thirds framing is boring as hell and so frikkin predictable.

 

[Erik Olson]

The Errol Morris/Interrotron look worked well in FC&OOC, Thin Blue Line and Fog of War. But way overdone on the TV stuff and pretty irrelevant in Standard Op. The pont is that the rule of thirds framing is boring as hell and so frikkin predictable.

One network notes session on your technical execution will take a lot of zing out of your framing-reinterpreted-disposition. Very often, if not always, the crew is working to a style-guide at minimum. There is no need for framing which conforms to safe areas and the rule-of-thirds to be boring. We don't always have the luxury of the untethered freedom (read: on your own dime) a documentary filmmaker does.