Standard two-Camera Interview Set-Up

Shooting a new WallStreetCast show, today, to air on Fox Business Channel, there is a good opportunity to see a basic two camera interview set-up. Two Rifa soft lights give us our key lights, with one of the back lights visible at upper left. The cross shooting with small HD cameras allows good portability plus the ability to zoom the operator-less camera during post production without losing noticeable quality. We had a situation during a recent shoot where someone watching in front of the unmanned camera stepped into the  image frame. We did a fair amount of cursing under our breath while digitizing the media only to breath a sigh of relief when we realized we could easily use Final Cut Pro’s Motion tab to increase the image size to 120 percent, re-center the frame and effectively crop the offender out of the shot.

Miami Trolley Video When Miami’s  historical museum wanted to add video to their exhibit of one of Miami’s old trolley cars, put out of service in the mid-1930s, we came up with a unique approach of using archive photographs to show what the old transit service was like. Take a look, and visit the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in the downtown library/arts complex.  

Carl sets up side-by-side cameras in a standard two camera shoot, here with author and corporate consultant Nance Guilmartin.

The standard “to-camera” interview set-up used to be a single camera with a change of framing between shots to facilitate editing. Now, with low cost high quality HD cameras, we are using two matched side-by-side cameras, one framed to the close-up, the other set to a medium shot. With lenses only millimeters apart, and the cameras set far enough back to avoid off axis eye lines. In post production we cut between cameras moving to the close-up mid question for appropriate emphasis with perfectly matched quality. This has improved our shot options and allows building a single flow of response from multiple takes, cutting between cameras to cover edit points.  We have noticed a big improvement in work flow.

We also now do all  one-on-one interviews in “real time” with multiple cameras avoiding the need for reverse questions. Not only is this a godsend by insuring full question and response, but with Final Cut Pro we lay out the two cameras on the timeline and cut back and forth between them, on the fly.

Hunters capture a Burmese python at the edge of the Everglades.

We spent several days shooting a wildlife reality show pilot, chasing reptile hunters in pursuit of Burmese pythons as they beat the bush along the edge of Everglades National Park. Hundreds of snakes were literally blown into the park when a nearby breeding facility was destroyed during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The snakes are in the news now because they have flourished in the South Florida climate and have begun to attack pets and farm animals as they forage into developed areas for food. Don’t be deceived by this picture, these snakes grow to six foot adults in 3 years and can reach 20+ feet and a girth in excess of 2 feet around by their sixth year, capable of eating a small deer.

In the mid 1990’s, a team from Hebrew University in Israel went to Eastern Europe in search of Jewish cultural artifacts which might have survived the Holocaust.  In the Balkan states, they were amazed to discover six wooden synagogues still standing, some barely, all unrecognizable as houses of worship from the exterior.

In 1999, filmmakers Carl and Kathy Hersh and Executive Producer Al Barry went to the area to document the buildings before they fell into ruin and look inside for remnants of the storied murals.  While traveling to remote villages and talking to people through an interpreter, they found four more synagogues and heard eyewitness accounts of the round-ups that emptied Lithuania of its pre-war Jewish population.

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James Michener while writing Caribbean

When James Michener lived in Miami while researching and writing his last big book Caribbean, he allowed us to look over his shoulder and watch him write and follow him around the Caribbean while he researched and checked his facts. The result is a rare look at one of America’s most cherished and prolific writers. The documentary has rarely been seen in the U.S. We are offering it for the first time on DVD at $20 per copy. Click on the “Contact Us.” We’ll see you get your copy.

Filming the final segment of Michener at Work aboard a P&O cruise ship.