Two Person 'Interview' or two people on camera.

G

grantw

Well-known member
I'm still trying to work on getting a good 'interview' shot. I may have a job that consist of two people sitting together and talking about their business. They are both facing the camera (no actually interviewing)

The two-shot 'interview' seems difficult. Most videos put the two people behind a desk which seems really boring to me. Anyone have any advice for these set ups? Or know of any videos that people did a good job on?

When shooting just one person it seems pretty easy to always get a decent shot, but with two people there is just so much more room and everything just seems flat with two people sitting and looking at a camera.
 
I always try to get them interveiwed separately. I have had too many occasions where one is looking board while the other is sharing important stories, or one is staring right at the lens or picking nose or...

The two shot can be tough to light properly as well. If they absolutely must have two people in the shot, try to budget for a second MCU/CU camera.


Jason
 
This isn't really an interview though. It's a business that wants to put on a 'mini' show and is the two owners pretty much sitting in their office and talking and answering customers questions.

There's alot of options with different rooms and there are some nice city view from some windows. Just tough to get a wide shot of both of them without it looking boring and open. I also don't care for two people sitting at a desk look.
 
Agreed, this will be boring. Is it a live feed to the company or recorded? Is it scripted or ad-libbed? How much time do you have? How patient are the people being interviewed? These all determine how to handle this.

Of course, for TV we always use the 3 camera approach. If this somewhat scripted, not live, and you have a lot of time, and the customer wants a high quality product, you could simulate the 3 camera shoot with one camera. But it's a lot of work.

If you have limited time, and impatient clients, but it is somewhat scripted, you could start out wide, and push in on the person speaking. Then pan over to the other speaker or pull back out to a two shot and so on. This could work well if you know who is going to speak when and they are going to speak long enough that this movement isn't irritating.
If you a have more time, then you can do those same movements but break them up with cuts to each shot by stopping the discussion and starting again with a new shot.

Your options really depend upon what kind of shoot this is and how much time you have.

Edit - if you have the luxury of two cameras, you can lock one down as a two-shot and use the other jump from one speaker to the other and then have a very good simulation of a 3 camera shoot.
 
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