It wouldn’t take a lot to bring these pre game and post game pressers up to standard. Inconsistent audio levels, no press mic and poor lighting are killing it. Let me fix it for you—

Lighting - use a basic 3 point lighting setup

• Back light - ideally mounted to ceiling grid but can work from a tripod. This is what creates the halo effect of making the people pop from the background.
• Key light - forward facing light toward the subjects. For a multi-ethnic group of subjects, use diffusers.
• Fill light - use to remove shadows.

Camera - if they have pro-style cameras, great. But an iPhone Pro 15 or better can produce excellent quality.

• Camera 1 straight on 1x shot of the table is most important. Coach needs to learn to train eye contact on this camera. If we can only manage a 1-camera setup, this is it.
• Camera 2 super wide shot from corner of room so we can see the press asking questions.
• Camera 3 at a 45 degree shot of table. Gives some flexibility for a different angle when coach forgets to look into Cam 1.
• iPhone has excellent cameras which are limited by the default Apple camera app. Blackmagic makes apps (free versions even) that allow professional level control of multiple iPhones as cameras from an iPad. A few hundred dollars for a USB-C input box will allow external audio and timecode.

Audio -

• at minimum need two channels, a mic at the table plus either handheld or shotgun mic for the press to ask questions.
• better would be a lavaliere mic on each interviewee and press mic to a 4 channel mixer. Coach is a table-toucher, so a table mounted mic is not ideal for him.
• The university likely already owns audio racks with Shure wireless systems. If they didn’t have access to that, there are actually pretty good Bluetooth wireless mic and mixer setups geared toward content creators from Rode at a fraction of the cost.

Room Setup

• use some velour pipe and drape around the room perimeter. If it’s a hard floor, put a rug under the interviewee table. This will soak up some of the echo and they already have this stuff in the ARC. If it’s always in the same spot, consider an acoustic sound cloud above the table.
• hats off. They make it harder to get a good shot of the faces.
• use a grey or Tahoe blue backdrop. Navy jerseys on Navy background (especially if some folks have darker skin), you would need a really capable backlight to overcome the dark background to make that person pop.