How I film multi camera interviews

multi camera

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This week I thought I’d share a lit­tle look at how I set up and record a mul­ti cam­era interview.

Thanks to David Wise­man at W3 Design for allow­ing me to share some con­tent from my recent film­ing with him.

Put sim­ply, a mul­ti cam­era inter­view is a great way of pro­vid­ing a mul­ti faceted view of a sin­gle point of inter­est (the interviewee).

It’s also much eas­i­er to edit as you can sim­ply cut to anoth­er angle with­out the need to use cut­away shots to mask those edits.

For my set up I use two Sony FS5MK2 cam­eras, one front fac­ing and one pro­file, along with a Sony A7III to shoot hand held b roll.

To frame my shots I like to have a waist to head shot on cam­era 1, a pro­file close up head shot for cam­era 2

For all shots I make sure that both the sub­jects eyes are in shot and allow two fin­gers above the head of the sub­ject when framing.

For light­ing I’m using a Roto­light ANO­VA as a key source, two NEOs for a fill and a kick­er and an LS pan­el as sec­ondary source.

For sound I’m using a RODE wire­less lava­lier set up (although I did orig­i­nal­ly set up an over­head boom and shot­gun mic first).

Once my lights and sub­ject are set and lit I’ll white bal­ance using either a scrim or white card.

Recent­ly I’ve been tak­ing an ATEM mini switch­er on projects with me. When linked to an ATO­M­OS Nin­ja V mon­i­tor / recorder, It’s great for check­ing the colour and expo­sure from each cam­era match­es and for mak­ing final adjustments.

Of course you can also use the ATEM for stream­ing but that’s the sub­ject for anoth­er future blog.

The cam­eras are all set to record in HLG2 (hybrid log gam­ma) as it grades nice­ly in the edit.

So once we’re rolling it’s a clap for sync’ and off we go, check out the results below…