When I was first starting out on my career, I shot a ton of observational and b-roll heavy documentaries. I traveled the world, making short films about fascinating people for my first ever doc-series, Humanity.

Once I moved on to shooting feature length films, my wife and I made two films that were bought by Netflix - “Heroin(e)” and “Recovery Boys” - that were nearly 100% vérité. The success of those films really launched my career as a documentary cinematographer, but because my work never called for setting up interviews, that remained a big gap in my skillset.

And because of that, I lost out on JOBS. Good paying J-O-B-S.

And, worst of all, I hesitated in making a change to rectify this issue. And so this weakness in my skillset continued. So why didn’t I make a change?

To be honest, I found setting up interviews to be intimidating. What lights do you use? Which diffusion is best? Where do you place the light in relation to the interviewer? Where do you do the interview? What focal length is best?

It all felt confusing, but I knew I had to make a change.

So I did.

10 Steps to Cinematic Interviews

I rectified my lack of skill in interview setups by spending the last five years studying what makes a cinematic interview, watching tons of documentaries while also taking time to set up hundreds of hundreds of interviews.

It was a process that resulted in the creation of a step-by-step process I made for myself called: THE 10 STEPS TO CINEMATIC INTERVIEWS.

The 10 Steps To Cinematic Interviews is a step-by-step method to make sure you get great looking interviews, no matter the location or how much time you have to do it.

And today, I have launched that process in my first ever online video course:

And for my email subscribers, I am offering 30% off the course in this initial launch phase (doors close on Cyber Monday, Dec 2).

Use code: CURRENSUBSCRIBER30 at checkout to get 30%!

Why It’s Important To Learn Interview Setups

If you can light a documentary interview well, you can light anything.

For filmmakers, lighting the human face, often is THE JOB. Whether you’re making music videos, fiction films, experimental films, or documentaries, lighting and highlighting the human face is often the most important aspect of filmmaking.

So if you can learn how to do that, you can light and shoot anything. AND you’ll get PAID to do it.

As a documentary cinematographer, if you can shoot great vérité and also light and setup amazing looking interviews, $800/day will be your basement price, with the ceiling being anywhere from $1200-$1500/day or MORE. I know because I’ve made this same transition to higher day rates and have talked to a lot of DPs whose work you have seen all over Netflix, HBO, and other streaming platforms who make a lot more than this. And the skill that they are best at? DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEWS.

So, if you’re on this filmmaking journey and want to enhance your cinematography and make MORE money as a doc cinematographer or just any type of filmmaking, consider checking out my course: THE 10 STEPS TO CINEMATIC INTERVIEWS.

I’ll see you there.

• Curren