Basic Interview Lighting Techniques. Part of the SMAPP series.

we are one week closer to the launch of SMAPP and as our update of the week we wanted to share a tutorial on interview lighting. there are so many different ways you can light an interview and while story is always important, interviews more than anything else often come with the constraints of time, space, and gear. traveling for A Game of Honor we had to be able to light an interview with whatever we could fit into one 70lb suitcase (which inspired a whole separate tutorial on what's in that suitcase). if you've done your share of interviews, you'll be all too familiar with showing up and having a room that would be a tight fit just to hold all of your gear, let alone setup and interview in it. with almost every interview we feel like we could use one more stinger, one more light, an extra five minutes to tweak the setup, or an extra 5' feet to reposition the talent and camera. however, through working within these constraints we can learn to do much more with much less. half the tricks we know about lighting have all come from having to figure something out while on set, and having to do so quickly. the more we understand light, how it works and how we can work with it, the more we can make the most of whatever time, gear, and space we might find ourselves in. we hope you enjoy our first lighting tutorial on basic interview lighting. our next lighting tutorial we will be sharing shortly will show how we light the same scene three different ways to create different moods. P.