ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author offers some broad visual, editorial and interview management principles to guide directors and self-shooters on how to bring back nicely composed, well lit, interesting, cuttable interviews. Unless the filmmakers are making a narration-only film – like a wildlife film – some of their screen time will consist of ‘talking heads’, as interviewees tend to be called. That casual term belies the many detailed questions that must be answered before the film makers embark on filming an interview. The directional shotgun microphone is often attached to a long pole to capture the sound of groups of speakers – in a public meeting for example – allowing it to be quickly moved across the heads of the group to capture good quality audio from different speakers while also minimizing off-camera sounds. Self-shooters obviously cannot film and record the sound of a big meeting on their own.
