very cool! :) Thanks for sharing.

Now remember: no nose picking while you're interviewing: it WILL show up on camera. :D

I suppose you could skip the mirror altogether and just have the interviewer sit behind the subject. In either case it seems a bit odd as though she really is behind him and he's just talking to the wall. Perhaps if you could see a bit of an over the shoulder of the interviewer in addition to the mirror you could fix that.

Looks pretty weird to me - if this is a serious demo. The interviewer is featured way ahead of the subject, who is out of focus and talking to the back of his head.

Might work for part of a music clip ...

Peter, you're assuming the person in the FG is the interviewer. I imagined it the other way around.

Yes, Jay, I may have misread his hand signals when he says "the interviewer".

- if it's the other way round though, it still looks weird that the interviewer is talking to the back of the subject's head - ok for a "stylised" interview, I suppose.

I don't care who is the interviewer and who is the interviewie .. they both need to be in focus!

I think one could get away with this trick in an amateur production, as it might pretend to be an intentional "style".

What makes it look awkward in the clip Jay linked us to is the otherwise professional environment it's being shot in - all those lighting equipment cost probably much more than say renting an extra camera for doing a proper interview...

I don't care who is the interviewer and who is the interviewie .. they both need to be in focus!

And looking at each other, not one person looking at the back of the other person's head.
IMO, that's just wrong.

Mike

If the mirror was smaller so that it looked like an PIC IN PIC with the mirror giving a distinct boarder with the interviewee in front as if masked out over part of the interviewer it could work better; you could assume eye contact taking place between the two people talking

Most single cam interviews are over the shoulder this is an improvement from that

The point is new ideas for lower budget studios. Nice idea. I would use it

New ways of doing old things

This is called the oldest trick in the world

"... they "

Says who?

You can't think of any situations where a like setup would work?

not sure why both would need to be in focus... so we can see one person nodding their head & the other talking? Or so we can see one sipping a copy of water?

It's something else for the toolbox like those moving stills.

"It's something else for the toolbox... "

BINGO!

"This is called the oldest trick in the world"----- I Think the oldest trick is actually "It's your baby" or "your the father".....or "I love you" ;-)

first thing that made me laugh out loud in a few days. :)

Unique... Yes
Usable... No

Looks like she's 'Stalking' him or 'Eavesdropping'.
If there was some type of Border or Separation between the 2 of them to make a better distinction that she is truly NOT behind him... then maybe.

As it stands, this would be unacceptable for me. I would much rather just use the 1camera on the Interviewee alternating between Tight & Wide shots for my edit points. Making sure he answered in complete sentences then editing the Interviewer out would be my choice.

This just looks sooo weird to me.
She looks like a wife checkin up on her Cheating Husband.
Strange. Very Strange.

It's idiotic, but food for thought about *why* it's idiotic. (and by the way, the lighting itself is fine, IMO)

The biggest problems are that a) you have to be told it's a mirror, b) you have to think about it rather than what he's saying, and c) there's just no reason for this to be done in a mirror. It's not motivated by anything.

Motivation is one of those concepts people get in lighting classes and then rebel against for 10 or 15 years. The problem here is more one of motivated composition than lighting but the basic goal is to have a look that seems logical enough that people don't spend a lot of time puzzling over it.

The typical shot like this is a narrative storytelling device. Usually the scene is one where it's obvious there should be mirrors present. At the very least it's a way to deal with the fact that the room is full of mirrors and your shot choices are limited. At its best the shot and the mirrors says something about the situation, perhaps a feeling of being exposed on all sides, or of inner thoughts being revealed...

Or sometimes the mirror has nothing to do with the drama and you just need to show it exists and then ignore it. But storytelling is not real life. In real life a mirror or a gun or a syringe or a cigar can just be "there". In a story, when you show the camera a gun or a mirror, it's done for a reason. Once you've called attention to it, a cigar is never just a cigar.

Rob

It's a misused tool in this case. To use it you need to establish the setting a bit more and establish that there's a mirror over there. So it doesn't get you out of doing other shots and it makes a simple interview much more complicated.

I'm trying to think of cases where this works well. I'm sure All That Jazz had a ton of these shots, but that's a movie, not an interview, and it makes sense in the context of that movie.

Rob Mack

for some reason I'm getting the feeling that most of the posters here are taking this as a serious piece & not just a tutorial in how to do something like this.

I like the lighting but I can't handle the thought of a shot with an interviewer looking at the back of the interviewee's head.
It would work in a lot of other situations but, IMO, not this one.

Mike

Something shouldn't be "idiotic" simply because a person cannot think of a way to impliment it. This clip shows extraordinarily creative thinking in solving one problem.

I can think of at least one way in which it could be used very effectively in an interview scenario.

I agree with the Friar. It almost seems as though some of the posters feel threatened by it because it goes so much against the conventional approach. I find that interesting.

What I'm saying is that it confuses the interview. However, if you establish what is happening then at least the audience will be able to parse it, and it becomes less of a distraction and more of a conceit.

Another way of looking at it is that this setup is so attention stealing that, once you've stolen the audience's attention away from the interview you'd better do something with it. The composition is no longer about the interview, it's about the composition.

Rob