For one of our clients, we were tasked with filming a series of interviews with a wide range of subjects all over the world. The goal was to keep the focus on the subject and their story. Guided by this goal, our visual approach was to film stripped down, simple close up interviews with as abstract a background as possible. We aimed for shooting locations that were simple and modern, sometimes even just a white wall or corner. This runs counter to the type of setting we usually request for interview shoots – something with character, natural light, architecture and a setting that provides visual context for the character or story.
- A wall with some texture works well.
Some of the locations were nearly ideal. One subject was filmed in his modern house. A simple staircase in the background served as the perfect abstract shape when blurred out and accented with a few simple shafts of light. Other times we only had a white wall to work with, so in those cases we usually shot a shaft of light across it, or positioned the subject in front of a corner to create lines and an interesting shadow. In one case, we found a wall that had some great texture to it. In color the wall was nothing special, but when seen in black and white the texture really came out and made the background the perfect contrast to the subject. In all cases we always looked for abstract shapes, lines, shadows or textures that would take an otherwise plain wall and turn it into a nice modern background for our black and white interviews.
- Abstract shapes can work as an interesting background.
When lighting the subjects, we went with a relatively contrasty look, using just one soft light from the side with a silver reflector as the fill. We never used a back light. We relied on the background shapes and lighting to create that additional separation from the subject, trying to position the lit side of the face against a dark area of background and vice versa. Lighting the subjects this way allowed them to pop more in black and white. We also always turned our monitor to B&W mode to know exactly what we were getting ahead of time (the interviews were shot in color and converted to black and white in post). We think the results turned out well.
