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My week of new videos continues a piece for Fordham Law School, an interview with Professor Jed Shugerman. This is one of three just released concurrent with the online version of their magazine.

I have been doing these for a number of years. The setup remains pretty consistent with slight tweaks to adjust to different rooms, different cameras, or different lights.

Over time, I have found that a 7′ wide backdrop is the smallest I can go and still have enough separation between the subject and the background to light each separately. At one point, I was using two Litepanel Sola ENGs to light the background (3.5″ fresnels.) They are great lights but in this setup and with their round shape they never had quite enough coverage. I now light the background with two Litepanel 1×1 floods and use the Sola ENGs as a backlight on the subject and sometimes to light the interviewer – that’s something I’m experimenting with. It’s a way of bringing the interviewer, who neither seen nor heard in the video, out of the shadows during the taping to enhance their connection with the interviewee.

In terms of audio, I started out using both a shotgun mic and a lapel lav mic on the subject. The shotgun has always sounded better and now that I can see the sound levels directly while filming with the C300 (as opposed to a dslr second system sound setup where they would be on an external recorder) I feel more comfortable just using the shotgun.

Setups and lighting:

Lighting diagram. Click images to enlarge.
Lighting diagram. Click images to enlarge.
Setup #1, New York, NY. November 12, 2013.
Setup #1, New York, NY. November 12, 2013.
Setup #2. New York, NY. November 13, 2013.