I'm very impressed with the lighting from the interview segments in this video, it almost looks like it was lit with one light? At first guess I'm thinking a very large soft box, with some obvious background lighting.

I'm not seeing any hair light, and possibly only minimal lighting for fill?
I was hoping someone could take a look and guess how this was lit, as I'd like to do something similar.
If you skip around in the video there are a bunch of different interviews, all in the same location.

IBM Centennial Film: They Were There - People who changed the way the world works - YouTube

Thanks,

Yep, looks like a fairly large and soft single source from the front; with almost certainly some blacks used for negative fill on the sides. Then the background's either been lit with practicals, or some additional lights have been rigged up to add interest.

Mark, by "blacks" are you referring to possibly some black flags on the sides to create that dramatic shadow on their face?

Yep, either black flags or styrofoam panels would be my guess.

+1 but English narration with english subtitles is disturbing over 30 minutes, and they start getting out of sync from 24.36.

Think twice before you do that, they're only for the hearing impared but they take away from the vision, which is great in that program btw.
Maybe there's an on/off subtitles button in the menu.

Cheers.

Yeah, not sure about that. The only thing i'm looking at is the lighting of the interviews.

The eyes and hair usually tell you everything you need to know about the shape, position and intensity of the light sources.

The eyes and hair usually tell you everything you need to know about the shape, position and intensity of the light sources.

I don't usually find hair useful as a telltale for lighting plans as it has a lot of texture and variation. With an extreme closeup you can see enough of the reflection of the lights in the eyes to get a sense of the sources' placement and I suppose relative intensity.

I usually take as my clues the modeling and shadow caused by nose and jaw. This will also indicate the hardness of the source, which is another important factor. A large hard source may read the same in reflection as a large soft source of the same shape, but it will have quite a different effect.

Look at the eyes at 1:11 - I see 3 lights.

This piece was directed by Erroll Morris, who uses the interrotron, so one of those spots in his eye might be the teleprompter screen.

The guy at 8:02 has a very odd look, the front of his face is lit up, but the sides of his face are dark.
How do you "bounce" black back onto them? This is the part that I'm baffled by.

This piece was directed by Erroll Morris, who uses the interrotron, so one of those spots in his eye might be the teleprompter screen.

The guy at 8:02 has a very odd look, the front of his face is lit up, but the sides of his face are dark.
How do you "bounce" black back onto them? This is the part that I'm baffled by.

Looks like It was a soft light a couple of feet above and on the left side of the camera. On the back wall it looks like the reflection of the softbox. It doesn't look like there's any back or hair light on him. The might have a little bit of bounce on camera left. They may have used another instrument bouncing off the ceiling or a card to just bring up the ambient light to taste to get the background just light enough to give it a bit of definition. That would be my start to recreate the setup then make slight tweaks.

That source is dead center, not off to the left, as can be evidenced by the shadow under the nose and chin which is perfectly centered.

Without knowing anything about the space, it's hard to say if solids were required to create the negative fill on the sides of the face. I'm sensing an impression here that doing so will "reflect black" into a face--that's not the case. It's simply the absence of light. If there is no ambient light coming from anywhere but the front source in the room, the solids won't do anything extra. Likewise, without knowing what the background actually is, it's impossible to tell how it was lit.

Can you focus soft light? I've seen the lowel pro lights, the dedolights, etc, that can be focused, but those are rather harsh sources. Even using an egg crate I do not believe it would be that directional

That source is dead center, not off to the left, as can be evidenced by the shadow under the nose and chin which is perfectly centered.

Without knowing anything about the space, it's hard to say if solids were required to create the negative fill on the sides of the face. I'm sensing an impression here that doing so will "reflect black" into a face--that's not the case. It's simply the absence of light. If there is no ambient light coming from anywhere but the front source in the room, the solids won't do anything extra. Likewise, without knowing what the background actually is, it's impossible to tell how it was lit.

I was thinking that the light was dead center also but couldn't figure out how his right side could be lit while maintaining the shadows on the left side of his face. It almost appears that he is slightly turned to face slightly to his left and he has turned his head to look into the camera. Looking at the whole segment it does look like the light is in line with the camera.

Not sure which side is which--I would say his right side (which appears on the left side of the frame is less lit than his left. To me it looks like natural bounce back from the background, creating a very slight and soft edge on his left side.

Regarding Paul's comment--while soft light doesn't focus per se, it can be controlled in the fashion that one may associated with focus. An extended egg crate designed for narrow throw will tighten the spread of a soft light to a considerable degree.

Slightly off topic but would anyone happen to know the lens and f-stop used for these interviews?

This piece was done by some pretty serious Hollywood types, so i'm sure it was done with an Alexa, F65, Red, or some other kind of cinema camera. I've looked for BTS information on this doc, nothing exists.