Ho to shoot 18 interviews in 8 hours with the HD-100

[Paolo Ciccone]

Hi all.
It's been I while since my last post in this forum. Recently I did a shoot for a client that required to interview a pretty large amount of people in a very short time. Ah, the thrill of low budget productions! :)
Anyway, I put a description of the shot and the techniques used, including editing of the clips in native format, HD-100 .m2t file, on my blog.
Take a look, let me know what you think: How to shoot 18 interviews in 8 hours

Cheers!

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Great video Paolo, nice having the blog and the 3d diagrams as well. Your lighting looks great in the video. All the interviewees looked very calm, you wouldn't have thought they were all filmed in one day after watching the video. Plus I love your graphics, did you make them all yourself? The blue transition light looks very professional could easily be used in TV news or sport. Brilliant idea using the projector as well, makes the background look a lot more interesting.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Thank you Jonathan. Yes, the day was great despite the scorching heat, which was even worse with about 2,000 watts of lighting and a running projector :)
It's all about the planning.

All the graphic elements are mine except for the swooshing swipes and the blue animated graphics behind the 3D text, which are part of the Digital Juice collection.
The other potential for the projector is that you could as easily change the BG depending on the combination of topic/guest.

[Marc Colemont]

Nice post Paolo,
Always great to see how other people solve difficult conditions.
I have possible project of 140 short interviews coming up.
It is requested/prefered by the customer to interview all the persons at their local location,
which is simply a nightmare to shoot all the interviews on time and without the travel expenses hit the roof.
I was scratching my head how to do this in a cost-effective way.
The idea of using the projector in the back, and organizing 'interview-days' might be 'the' cost effective alternative in a small studio.
Were they send-in pictures first which I can use as a background.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Thank you Marc. Yes, it's often hard to make the client realize how expensive it can be to produce something like a good interview. One thing that I didn't mention is that you can use the focus ring of the projector to blur the BG and you have instant shallow DOF :)
Good luck.

[Brian Luce]

Obi Wan lives! Great to see you back here dude. I like the blog, and the set up, I do tons of interviews and I don't usually use 3/4 angle, but I think I'm going to try it now, especially with the low intensity fill from the reflector. It makes you imagine a strong off camera light source, like a window or something. What kind of light are you using for a hair light? And is there an actual video sample or just frame grabs?

Love the projector idea too. I'm not crazy about the green screen results I get from the JVC. Great camera but green screen isn't its forte.

It reminds me of a stunt I pulled with the JVC a few weeks ago, I had the Manny Pacquiao fight on PPV, and a bunch of friends called me the next day to see it on my Cox box, replayed it on a 42" TV and pointed my camera at it. Amazing how good it looked. Burned off a few DVD's so they could see the fight.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Hey Brain, good to see you too. Nobody connected me to Obi Wan before, that made my day :)!
If you look carefully in the article on my site there is a link to the full video so you can judge the result in motion.
For hair light I use my truested Lowel Omni, I carry three of those with me usually, plus the softbox. The reflector is great because it takes minutes to set up and you get that nice, soft fill and you can change it silver, gold and 1/2 gold in a snap.
The HD 100 can get good greenscreen but, like any work of that kind, you have to spend *hours* to make it work and if you have multiple subjects and no controls on their wordrobe you are in for a lot of pain. If you are really concerned about changing the BG it's just easier to use the projector and shoot the same interview with different bitmaps. You can even use a video clip if it's appropriate. It's a very flexible solution. The only downside is that you need a fairly large space.

Happy Turkey Day!

[Brian Luce]

It's really an interesting idea, when you think of all that goes in to a decent green screen set up -- lights, bg, the notion of using a projector with a short throw is intriguing.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Yes, and here is another one for ya. Project the green screen!
For small areas like interviews it's perfect. You save yourself a lot of trouble in lighting the BG and it's perfectly even! You can even put markers on it and do some simple tracking :)

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

Yes, and here is another one for ya. Project the green screen!
For small areas like interviews it's perfect. You save yourself a lot of trouble in lighting the BG and it's perfectly even! You can even put markers on it and do some simple tracking :)

I had that exact thought earlier today. I used to do green screen by using a green gel on Fresnels. A single projector makes sense in many ways if you can control the ambient light. My DLP projector has a short throw and can project even at angles. The only concern might be fan noise.

Btw, if there are any newcomers to the under appreciated but still brilliant HD100-250 line, Paolo's True Color setting qualify as "Must Have". It'll supercharge your JVC's image.