Breakfast Shoot With The CEO

Camera and light setup.

My friend and fellow Clock Factorian Paul Jaffe had a video to create for Cooley LLP - a major San Francisco law firm with offices on both coasts - and needed me to cover an interview with Joe Conroy, the CEO. The interview was to take place in their offices in downtown San Francisco in one of the conference rooms, commencing around 9 a.m.

I arrived about 7, giving myself plenty of time to get the gear upstairs and set up. The conference room was located on the southeast corner of the building. The structure is unique - it has a square base from which rises a cylindrical tower which means that a lot of the rooms on the lower floors are unusually shaped. The room we were shooting in was triangular.

I was shooting with 2 Sony FS700 cameras. One was locked off and the other was on a slider, though I didn't keep the slider camera moving throughout the shoot. I feel the slider look has already gotten a bit tired, but it was useful for repositioning the camera over the course of the interview.

I used 2 1x1' Litepanel LED lights for illumination and a Sennheiser shotgun mic mounted overhead on a boom along with on-camera mics for syncing. I shot him against the window, so the city was visible in the background. I used zoom lenses and had them at around 100mm, so by keeping the light relatively low and opening up the lens I was able to make the background go soft, separating the subject from the background.

Joe Conroy, Cooley LLP CEO

 Mr. Conroy is a charming, funny, confident man, but like a lot of people he is a little uncomfortable when he is in front of a camera. Rather than try and have him speak extemporaneously or read from a teleprompter we had him interviewed by one of his colleagues. This worked well. He was relaxed and articulate and we wrapped up the interview in about half an hour.

The only difficulty we encountered was in light management. About 20 minutes before the interview was due to start the sun suddenly cleared a building and blasted in through the windows along the south side of the room. The blinds were adequate to prevent direct sunlight from entering the room but because they were white they were visible reflected in the window behind the subject's head. You can see what that looks like in the picture at the top.

The solution came in the form of black tablecloths and bulldog clips. By clipping the tablecloths onto the blinds we were able to control the light sufficiently. It definitely falls into the category of, "it ain't pretty but it works."

Many thanks to Rob Corwin from Cooley LLP, whose help and good humor were invaluable.

The final video is here:

http://www.cooley.com/68931