How to Film an Interview in a Studio: Sound First, Then Everything Else

An interview is the cheapest thing you can film and the easiest thing to ruin. One camera, one chair, one person talking — and yet the edit is where most interview shoots go to die, because the take that had the perfect answer also has a siren under it, or a fridge hum, or the room's echo sitting on every consonant.

Audiences forgive pictures. They do not forgive sound

A slightly soft shot reads as style. Bad audio reads as broken, and viewers leave. That asymmetry should drive every decision on an interview shoot, starting with the room: the location is an audio decision before it is a visual one. An office meeting room with glass walls is an echo chamber; a quiet corner of a café is quiet until it isn't. The failure mode is never obvious at the recce at 10am — it arrives with the lunch rush or the air conditioning.

This is what a sound-treated room is for, and acoustic treatment and isolation are two different jobs. Studio B is built as a room within a room, and that construction is precisely the point for dialogue: the acoustic isolation means the voice comes back clean, without a rescue job in post. It blacks out as well, so the light on the last answer matches the light on the first one however long the conversation runs.

How to light an interview

Interview lighting has one job: make the face read clearly, and identically, for as long as the person talks. Start with a large, soft key about 30 to 45 degrees off the camera axis, a little above eye height, on the side the subject is looking towards. Lighting the far side of the face gives it shape without drama, and the size of the source is what keeps it flattering.

Fill is the mood dial. A bounce board or a low second source on the other side lifts the shadows for a corporate piece; take the fill away, or add black negative fill, for something closer to documentary. Then separate the subject from what is behind them: a back light from above and behind draws an edge round the head and shoulders, and a separate light on the background — a pool, a gradient or a colour — gives the frame depth without touching the face. Studio B's cyclorama takes a colour wash and its backdrop system is adjustable, so the background can be set once and held all day. The patterns behind all of this are in studio portrait lighting explained.

Before you roll, look for the catchlight in the eyes. A key set too high or too far round loses it, and eyes without it read as a tired subject. Lights are charged separately from the room at Scope, so please enquire about our lights when you book.

Lock the frame, then leave it alone

• Set the eyeline before the subject arrives — interviewer beside the lens for a conversational look, straight down the barrel for testimony. Decide once; a changed eyeline mid-series reads as an error.
• Mic twice. A lav on the body and a boom or second mic overhead costs minutes and saves shoots — when one clips or rustles, the other take survives.
• Record room tone before anyone leaves: thirty seconds of the empty room's silence is what the editor patches every cut with.
• Frame looser than you think for a talking subject, and let a crop punch in for emphasis in the edit rather than reframing live.

The best interview answers arrive after the subject forgets the camera is there. Everything about the setup should be finished before they sit down, so the only live variable in the room is the conversation.

One camera or two

One camera works for a single talking head, but a second angle is what lets an editor shorten an answer without a visible jump. The usual setup puts the A camera beside the interviewer in a mid-shot, and the B camera tighter or wider from a clearly different angle — at least 30 degrees round — so the cut between them reads as a choice rather than a glitch.

Keep both cameras on the same side of the line running between subject and interviewer; cross it and the subject appears to look the other way on the cut. Leave looking room on the side they face and keep headroom consistent across both frames. Then match everything that shows: frame rate, shutter, a manual white balance in Kelvin rather than auto, picture profile, and lenses of a similar character. Clap on camera at the top of each take if you are not running timecode. The shutter and frame rate that stay flicker-free under UK mains lighting are in camera settings for studio video.

Getting usable answers from the subject

The picture and the sound can both be perfect and the answer still unusable, because the question it depends on is not in the cut.

• Ask the subject to fold the question into the answer: not 'Three years', but 'I have run the company for three years'. Explain it once before you start, and remind them gently when they forget.
• Stay silent while they talk. Nod and smile, but no 'mm-hm' or 'right' — every one lands on their audio and sits under the answer where it cannot be cut out.
• Open with easy questions and ask the one that matters once they have warmed up, not first.
• Let a pause run. The most honest line often arrives a few seconds after the subject thinks they have finished.
• If an answer was nearly right, come back to the question later in different words rather than asking for it again straight away.

Schedule the talking honestly

An hour of interview needs more than an hour of room. Rigging, a lighting check on the actual chair, mic checks, the subject settling, water, and the inevitable second pass on the questions that mattered — a single sit comfortably fills a two-hour block, and a day of several subjects is half-day territory. Studio B runs £120 for two hours, £220 for a half day and £420 for a full day, with set-up and pack-down inside the block. Studio B also has make-up and styling zones and a dedicated edit and playback area, so prep and a first review can happen on site.

If the piece is audio-led — a podcast that also films, rather than a film that also records — the podcast room is the shorter route: acoustically treated, camera-ready, professional microphones and interfaces already in place, at a flat £40 an hour.