How to improve 'interview' cinematography

In concept its a very funny idea. And with some polishing of the quality this could be very funny!

First thing I noticed was basic framing of people. You need to give head room. Cutting off someone's forehead in the top of the fram is bad. Google shot compositions for medium shots.

Also, the camera angle wasn't level. What I mean is that the was tilted sideways. Lines that should have been vertical were diagonal. Any halfway decent tripod should have a leveling bubble. (Unless this "mistake" intentional for the style. But I didn't see any reason for it).

If I were directing the video, I would set the camera up in one static position for all interviewees, and then do jump cuts in edit between their responses, so as the background would not change position or composition, only the interviewees would seem to change. I'm assuming these were "actors", and not real people thinking they were applying for a real job, so before I would shoot a single second of footage, I would get all the actors to sit in the chair so that I could find the single best camera position/angle/focal length for all of them (so that on person's head wasn't chopped off during the actual filming, although that may be funny too)

Also, really look into audio... It adds a lot more quality to production value than most starting off think. People will excuse bad shots if it has good audio, because it could seam intentional, where as bad audio paired to the most beautiful shot in history will be poorly received by audiences.

Good luck!
 
Three words ... audio, audio, audio! The voice recordings weren't clear and had a lot of echo and "distance." You need either a closer boom mic or a concealed lavalier for this.

There was some weird video processing going on there -- the image was foggy and soft (no details at all in the skin) and strangely oversaturated. Was that a look you were going for intentionally, or an artifact of the camera used? I really don't understand the motivation for it. A really straight-ahead documentary look seems to me to be what's called for in this situation. Not over-sharpened, of course, but seeing this as is would make me want to go adjust something on my TV.

And a +1 to Ryan-Guy about getting the horizon level and sticking with the exact same framing for each shot.

Very fun concept, though! And the actors were good, especially the pregnant lady. I've seen too, too many of those "little miss perfect" types in real life interviewing!

- Greg
 
Take a look at established interview news shows such as 60 Minutes and Dateline. They are pretty good at setting up interview lighting, composition and framing.
 
I thought the lighting was perfect for that particular idea. Kind of an am-cam look that fitted a fly on the wall camera..

If you glossed it up.. it would have over powered the idea.
 
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