How to Film a Two Person Interview With One Phone
Nearly every guide to filming an interview assumes a crew. Two cameras, a lavalier on each person, someone holding a boom. If you have one phone and two people, none of that helps. This is what actually works, and the constraints are more forgiving than they look.
Where do you put the phone for a two person interview?
Put it at the eye level of whoever is seated, about 2 to 2.5 metres back, and shoot both people in one frame. That is the setup that works with a single camera, and fighting it usually makes things worse.
Two metres is further than instinct suggests. It matters because a phone's main lens close to a face distorts it, and the distortion is worse on whoever sits nearer the camera. Backing off evens the two faces out. If your phone has a telephoto lens, use it from that distance.
Eye level means the eye level of the seated subjects, not your standing eye level. A phone on a kitchen counter pointed down at two seated people is the single most common mistake, and it reads as surveillance footage.
How do you frame two people with one camera?
There are three framings that hold up, and each solves a different problem.
- The two shot. Both people in frame, angled slightly towards each other rather than square to the camera. Leave a little headroom and roughly equal space either side. This is the default and it is fine for the whole interview.
- Sit them side by side, both facing the camera. Less natural for conversation, much better if the video is going to be cropped vertical later, because both faces stay near the centre.
- Angle the phone off the axis. Place it slightly to one side rather than dead centre, so you see one person more fully and the other in three-quarter profile. Looks more deliberate than a symmetrical two shot.
If the video has to work both vertical and widescreen, keep both faces inside the centre third of a wide frame. A full-width 16:9 crop taken from a 9:16 capture keeps only about 32% of the height, and the same arithmetic applies in reverse. Anything at the edges of a wide shot will not survive the vertical version.
What do you do about audio with one phone and two people?
Audio is the real problem in a two person interview, not the picture. One phone at 2 metres hears a lot of room and not much of either person.
In order of what actually helps:
- Two clip-on mics into one recorder. Most wireless clip-on kits ship with two transmitters and one receiver for exactly this. This is the real fix.
- One mic placed between them. A single clip-on lying on a table roughly equidistant from both, about 40 to 60cm from each mouth. Not perfect, dramatically better than the phone.
- A second phone as a recorder. Put it face down on the table between them recording audio only, then sync in the edit by clapping once at the start.
- Move the room, not the mic. A small furnished room with a rug and a sofa sounds better than a large empty one. Turn off the fan, the air conditioning and anything with a compressor.
One habit worth building: after you stop talking, keep recording for ten seconds of silence. That gives you a clean sample of the room's own noise, which is what noise reduction needs to work.
How do you light two people with one light?
Put the single source in front of both of them and slightly to one side, at about 45 degrees, raised to just above their eye level.
The trap with two people is that a light placed close to one of them falls off sharply before it reaches the other. Light intensity drops with the square of distance, so a lamp 1 metre from the near person and 2 metres from the far one leaves the far person about a quarter as bright. Move the light further back and the ratio between them evens out.
A window works if you have one. Sit both of them facing it, or 45 degrees off it. If the room has no windows, bounce one lamp off a white wall or ceiling to make a large soft source rather than pointing a bare bulb at anyone.
How do you make it look deliberate rather than accidental?
Three things separate an interview that looks planned from one that looks like a video call.
- Put distance behind them. At least 1.5 metres between your subjects and the back wall. A flat wall right behind two heads reads as a hostage video.
- Lock your settings before you start. Exposure, white balance and focus. Auto exposure will hunt every time someone gestures, and auto white balance drifts across a take.
- Let the silences run. A two second pause before each answer gives you clean edit points. Interviews are made in the edit, and you cannot cut what you did not leave room for.
What if you have a second phone?
Use it for a second angle rather than a wider version of the same one. Put the second phone tight on whoever is answering, at the same eye level, and cut between the two shot and the close up. Match frame rate and white balance across both phones before you start, or the cuts will jump.
Clap once, on camera, at the start of the recording. It gives you a spike in both audio tracks to line up in any editor.
Common questions
Can you film a good interview with just one phone? Yes. The picture is rarely the weak link. Fix the distance, the height and the audio and a single phone is enough.
How far should the phone be from two people? About 2 to 2.5 metres for a seated two shot. Closer distorts the nearer face, further makes the audio worse if you are relying on the phone's own mic.
Should both people look at the camera or at each other? At each other, for a conversation. At the camera only if one of them is addressing the audience directly.
What is the cheapest thing that improves an interview most? A clip-on mic. It beats any amount of extra light, and it beats a better phone.
How do I get a vertical and a widescreen version of the same interview? Keep both faces in the centre third and either crop afterwards, accepting the loss, or record both aspect ratios at capture so neither version is a crop of the other.
Try ContentCam free. Records vertical and horizontal at the same time, on iPhone and Android.
