Framing and Coverage

The AV craft chapter Size, shape, and where to put the subject explains the composition rules worth keeping: thirds, headroom, lead room, shot sizes, the 180-degree rule. Read it. This lesson is the field version: what to do with your feet and your phone at the location so the editor (probably you, at 11 p.m.) has what they need.

Framing an interview

Most of your video will be people talking. Get this setup right and you can repeat it forever.

1. Camera at eye height. Not above looking down (makes people small), not below looking up (nostrils, ceiling fans). Tripod height or a stack of books.
2. Interviewer right beside the lens. Sit so your face is a few inches to one side of the phone, at the subject's eye level. They will look at you, which puts their eyes just off-camera. That slightly off look is the standard for news interviews. Looking straight into the lens is for presenters and ads.
3. Subject on a third, facing across the frame. If you sit to the left of the lens, they look left, so they go on the right third with open space to the left. That open space is lead room. Put them on the wrong side, nose almost touching the frame edge, and the shot feels like they are about to walk into a wall.
4. Eyes near the top third line. That sets headroom for you. A little space above the head in a medium shot, very little or a slight crop of the top of the head in a close-up. A lot of empty space above the head is the classic beginner frame.
5. Medium shot as the default. Roughly mid-chest up. Wide enough to see gestures, close enough to read the face on a phone screen.

For a second interview subject in the same story, flip it: sit on the other side of the lens so they look right and sit on the left third. In the edit, the two people seem to face each other across the cut, which reads as two sides of one conversation. Do this on purpose.

Check the background before you roll. Lamp growing out of the head, a bright window, a messy shelf, a political sign that has nothing to do with the story: move the camera a foot, or move the person. A plain background with some depth (the subject several feet in front of it) always works.

Wide, medium, close: shoot a sequence

For any action you want to show, shoot it three ways. Say volunteers are filling sandbags before a flood:

• Wide: the whole parking lot, the pile of sand, six people working. Tells the viewer where.
• Medium: two volunteers, one holding a bag open, one shoveling. Tells the viewer who.
• Close: sand pouring into the bag. Hands tying it off. Tells the viewer what it feels like.

Then add the shot people forget: a reverse or a point of view, the line of sandbags from the volunteer's angle, or the volunteer's face as they work. Five shots, maybe two minutes of filming, and you have a 15-second sequence that looks professionally cut. Cutting between clearly different sizes of the same action hides the cut. Cutting between two nearly identical shots makes a jump cut, which the AV chapter When to cut covers.

Move your feet, not the zoom. Most phone zoom is a crop that throws away detail, unless your phone switches to a real telephoto lens. Walking closer for the close-up also changes the angle a bit, which helps the cut.

B-roll

B-roll is everything that is not the interview: the pictures that play while the person talks. Good B-roll shows exactly what the speaker is describing. If the resident says "my bill went from $48 to $59," the B-roll is the bill, close enough to read the numbers. If she says "the pipes are eighty years old," it is the pipes. Generic shots of a sky or a flag are filler, and viewers can tell.

Rules for shooting it:

• Hold every shot at least ten seconds, steady. Count it out. You will use three seconds of it, but which three is the editor's call.
• Do not zoom or wave the phone around while recording. If you want a pan, do one slow pan and hold still at both ends for three seconds, so the editor can use the move or just the still part.
• Get things in motion: hands working, water running, cars passing, a door opening. Motion gives a cut a reason.
• Shoot details. Signs, documents, a nameplate, a hand on a railing. Close-ups cut with almost anything.
• Shoot about three times what you think you need.

Cutaways

A cutaway is a short shot related to the scene that lets you leave the main shot for a moment. In an interview: the subject's hands, a photo on the wall they mention, the interviewer nodding (filmed after the interview, called a "noddy"), the interviewer's notebook. At a public meeting: the audience, a clock, a member reading the agenda.

The edit needs them because every time you cut words out of an interview, the picture jumps. Put a cutaway over the cut while the voice carries on and nobody sees the seam. No cutaways, no clean edits. Shoot a few at every location even when nothing seems worth filming.

The 180-degree line

When two people face each other, imagine a line running through both of them. Keep the camera on one side of it for the whole scene. Stay on one side and person A always looks right, person B always looks left, and they seem to talk to each other. Cross the line for one shot and suddenly both look the same way, and the viewer's sense of the room breaks.

It matters most for two-person interviews, conversations at a counter, and meetings where you cut between a speaker and the person they address. If you must cross, walk the camera across during a shot so the viewer sees the move, or cut to a neutral shot straight down the line first.