Interview in boardroom – any advice?

[Gilles Gagnon]

Thanks for this video Mark. Quite helpful.

My challenge is that I don’t have the vast amount of space behind the subject, as it is in the video.

Gilles

[Gilles Gagnon]

Thanks Aaron,

I’ll definitely try opening the iris.

Gilles

[Steve Kownacki]

Excellent advice all around. Most professional cameras will let you set the game at minus 3. That will allow you to get iris open a little bit more for the depth of field.

Aside from all the technical stuff don’t forget about taking care of the client
If you have time budget you may want to go over early with your camera and experiment. Be sure to have the shot completely blocked and setup before the big wigs come in. You don’t want to waste anyones time.

Steve

[Gilles Gagnon]

thank you all for taking the time to provide your tips/advice.

I really appreciate it. I learned tons.

Gilles

[Steve Kownacki]

Many boardrooms are controlled by an Exec Assistant, you need to befriend them too. And I’d take a good look around and look for any existing damage; photo document it and bring it to their attention before you bring gear in. We had an issue years ago where we were blamed for a scratch on a cherry floor and the photos we had ended that discussion.

What about shooting tighter shots using a net behind the talent rather than gelling windows or adding additional light to the subject? See the third image down https://efplighting.com/2011/07/27/outdoor-interviews/
Pretty sure this is done for White House shots too.

Hey, found a COW thread
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/47/855423

Steve

[Aaron Cadieux]

Shooting the CEO of a large corporation is always interesting. Sometimes you’ll have the “communications director” come in and “brief” you on what to ask, what not to ask, and how to address the CEO when he comes in. Almost as if you were meeting the Queen of England or something. Then, the CEO usually comes in with an army of butt-kissing yes-men who dote all over the CEO and tell him that he poops ice cream and that his flatulence smells like roses. And no matter how crappy of a job the CEO does, the yes-men tell him it was the greatest interview they’ve ever seen. It’s all really pathetic. I could never work in a corporate environment regularly.

[Mark Suszko]

Aaron, sweetie, this is never going to be a problem for you. 🙂

But yeah, you’re right that it is a highly “political” environment, and you need major diplomatic skill to get what you came for and not settle for one bad take to try and “fix in post”. You need to know how to ask for extra takes while massaging egos, and how to make the changes you want sound like their own idea. You have to be a little bold and remind people that nobody wants to spend the money to do this a second time, so you need to get it right and get it professional-looking the first time.

The optimal situation is to get into the empty office in plenty of time to light and do test shots, so the grande’ fromage can just walk in, do it, and walk out again. Because whatever your hourly rate is, a bigwig CEO is costing that much PER MINUTE of his time. If you have to come into the head cheese’s office while he’s in there already and set up while he tries to do business, that’s very high stress.

Though I recall one gig where we had moved the guy’s furniture around quite a bit to make the shots work better, as we set to putting everything back in the original locations, he said: “actually, what you’ve done here looks really good, better than what I had arranged, let’s leave it as it is”.

So maybe I have a second career in office decorating, waiting for me:-)

[Mike Cohen]

This thread is why the COW rocks!

Mike Cohen

[Grinner Hester]

I love using windows as backlights and backgrounds if the view is pretty. I just light accordingly.