My two camera interview

Yesterday I taped an interview of CT Senate Republican candidate Alan Schlesinger with Online Journalist Pat Carroll doing the interviewing honors.

This was my first properly set up two camera shoot. I chose the use the traditional dual "over-the-shoulder point of views".

I used my camera and mic on a mic stand, and I set up my two China lamps to provide additional light, then set up Spazeboy's camera and mic stand, wired both mics into a dual jack then plugged them into my camera, and started both cameras and let Online Journalist Pat Carroll take it away. (And she did a fantastic job!)

I edited the two tapes for a good seven hours last night before uploading it to Youtube. It was a learning experience on how to edit a two camera shoot. The important thing was to run both mics into the same camera, and use the "B-camera" only for video.

It helped that once I started both cameras, I let them both run non-stop for 55 minutes. Once it was synced on the editor, it stayed synced for the entire length.

I used Pinnacle Studio v9.43 for PC to edit it.

The technique for doing the two camera shoot is to put the main video with audio on the Overlay track, and the B-roll stuff on the Primary track (don't know their official names, that's what I call 'em) then lock the audio on the Overlay track, so when you snip the video out of that track for a cutaway to the B-roll, the audio is maintained.

Once I got the process down, it got easier. The main thing is to have the two cameras running non-stop, and use a clapper board (or clap your hands) to sync up the two tracks. I had to shave frames to get them perfectly aligned.

Here's the interview...it's 24-minutes long, but you will pretty much see in the first 2 minutes how it looks and sounds.