Lighting a 2-Person Interview?

I'm familiar with the 3-point light system when filming a single person, but how do you setup your key, fill, and backlights for two people?

I didn’t want to write an article-length post, but a quick google search turned up a couple great examples.

Figure 4 of ths article shows a classic approach. I would play the keys a bit more to the side, depending. Keying from the front and filling from the back is sometimes called on-side or strong-side key.

The first setup in this article shows a more contemporary approach. Note that it is keyed from the back, sometimes called a weak-side or off-side key. “Contemporary” because it’s all soft sources, and the keys are motivated from a more natural location representing window light.

These are just starting points of course...

The kino fixtures in the second article are 4’ wide and 2’ wide to get those soft wraps. 4’ can be rented, or, you could use a couple of smaller soft boxes in front.

Thanks SailingAway. I'm lighting this with (3) Aputure Amaran HR762's with soft boxes.

Covering two people with only three smaller lights like this, you have a couple options:

1) Set your lighting for the interviewee. Go through the interview. Let them go, and reset lighting to shoot the interviewer's questions. Have the interviewer nod, act surprised, happy, sad, whatever reaction the interview content calls for. This is an old television news field reporter's trick, mostly used when only one camera is available, but it can apply to limited lighting resources too.

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2) Get a fourth light. This could be a rental / loan, or, perhaps something cheap, or, a 4th amaran.

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2a) Set this up where there's another lighting source. Your amarans have adjustable color temp, right? That helps...

IMHO you can't light two people with three lights, unless one of them is big (like a kino 4' fixture). But, this is a situation where your mileage may vary, because only you can decide what lighting setup produces the results you want to see. How good is good enough?

Actually, no. All three Amarans are daylight. I was told to buy them for maximum brightness, as the color adjustable ones are about half the brightness of the daylight version. I plan on using the 70D's white balance to adjust the color, which works much better than I ever expected. Two of the Amarans are wide angle with 2,080 LUX at 1 meter, and one is a spot with 6,040 LUX at 1 meter. They seem very bright. In fact, I'll likely add a softbox to each, which will help increase the light intensity and soften the shadows. This will also be shot in a model home during the day, so there will be some ambient daylight.

I was thinking of using both wide angles as key lights for each subject, but I'm not sure what to do with the spot light. It would make a great backlight, but then that leaves me without a fill light. And yes, I agree that I could really use a fourth light for this setup, but I won't be able to get that in time for the shoot. I do have a few CFLs I could use for the backlighting.

What do you recommend?

With daylight-only fixtures you'd need to have any additional lights be daylight balanced. Or, if warmer, use additional lights as backlights, or background, or some use that doesn't produce mixed temperatures on people's faces.

I recommend #1, above, if possible. It's really quite flexible, if a little more involved in shooting and editing. You also get a 2-camera shoot with only one camera, in addition to maximizing the use of your available lighting gear.