Adventures into interviewland

I have always struggled with shooting interviews. They never come out the way I want, but with the advances in DSLR technology and a little basic lighting/color grading, I found that I really enjoy shooting interviews... because they turn out AWESOME! Here's a video of some before and after...

The original video was greatly under exposed and way too warm, but the lighting setup was sufficient enough that it set me up for a great color grade in post. In most of my interviews now I've only been putting one soft box in front of the subject on either the left or right and a kicker behind to get some bright outlines. That's it.

The color grading was simple enough. I brought the footage into after effects and added curves, hue/saturation, and shadow/highlight adjustments. I did some exposure and vignetting in Magic Bullet but these can be done in AE as well.

The greatest thing to remember about color grading any footage is to make really small adjustments... REALLY SMALL!

With the curves adj. I simply increased the contrast, brought blues and greens up in the shadows, and boosted the over all brightness.

With Hue/Saturation I simply desaturated the reds. That really helps with getting rid a of a really warm look in the skin tones.

With the Shadow/Highlight, I really used it to bring some more contrast, and detail to the roughness of his face. I wanted him to look a little gritty. You really have to be careful with this adjustment because people can get really carried away with this if they're not careful. If you're going to use this adjustment no one should really know that you have. Trust me I've made the mistake before and it just becomes way more of a distraction than anything else.

Lastly I added some vignette and a little exposure boost and called it good.

Here's one more example. It's not exactly the same scenario but just remember that if you start with good lighting, a lot fo what you do in post will be a nice addition to your video rather than a destruction.