This week we learnt about formal and informal interviews. We also learnt about light temperatures and white balance and making lighting choices in line with the more formal set up of the formal interview, as well as the informal set up of the informal interview.
All cameras have two presets for white balance. White balance has to do with the light temperature. Outdoors averages to 5200 kelvin, whereas indoors averages to 3200 kelvin. The Sony EX3 has two presets, one for each, as well as a manual white balance. It is usually set to 3200 kelvin automatically as the standard setting. This is where the manual white balance comes in handy, because it always ensures that the camera’s settings are set to the proper light temperature for the environment.
Knowing about colour temperatures and correctly white balancing makes lighting choices much easier. This is where the interviews come in. Interviews are all about the correct lighting of a subject. This means ensuring that the most exposed areas of a person’s face are only exposed 70% (this person being on the paler end of the skin colour spectrum). Formal interviews control every element in the frame, including lighting, set design/dressing, and framing. Even an informal interview will still control some of these aspects to a degree, less through redesigning the situation and more through observing and crafting the situation to their creative advantage, taking the time to find the right angles to observe from, creating a greater and more personal context in the moment.
Interviews themselves are very interesting as, depending on the way they are set up they can provide even more context and information about the individual, not only the environment in which you choose to film, but the way you choose to film; the lighting, composition, set design/dressing; it all says something, no matter how subtle, about your subject.
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