Lighting your videos properly is something that may take more time and definitely more money but it is something that will surely take your videos to the next level. It will raise them to a level above 99% of online video content. Like I said before, the best way to improve your video making skills is to go out and practice. This post is here to prepare you to do so. Use this as a beginners guide to video lighting. Even if you already know how to light videos, you may still learn a trick or two.
Before I give you any tips, lets talk about the different kinds of lights you can use. Professional film sets use lots of lights ranging from tiny 200 watt bulbs to 10k watt fake suns. Each light has their own use and knowing each light’s use takes years of practice. There are many basic starter kits out there that will get the job done. A basic lighting kit will include three lights:
- The Key Light: This is your main light source that you will use to light your subject/s.
- The Back Light: This light shines on the back of your subject’s head to create beautiful edges around you subject.
- The Fill Light: This light ‘fills’ in the rest of the frame that needs more light. Typically the key light isn’t pointed directly at your subject but rather at an angle. This creates shadows on the opposite side of the face and body. The fill light offsets those shadows.
While there are many professional and semi-professional kits that you can buy, you can even create your own lighting kit at the local hardware store.
Lighting Gels
I’ve seen people use work lights and china balls to create beautiful videos. So it doesn’t necessarily take hundreds of dollars to start lighting your videos. As always, purchase something that is in your budget and play around with it. You may be surprised with what you can do with a standard 200 Watt bulb and some gels.
Gels are bluish, orange-ish, and sometimes white-ish sheets that go in front of lights to change the color temperature (make it warmer or cooler) of the bulb.
Tip 1 – Carry a Reflector Around
Carry a reflector with you wherever you shoot. Before you even get lights, it may be a good idea to practice lighting with a reflector. A reflector is one of those big round shiny discs that you see photographers using. You can use reflectors to bounce sunlight onto your subjects face. You can also use it to block the sun and make sure your subject doesn’t have to squint. If you only have one light, you can use the reflector to bounce that light onto your subject as a fill light or back light. I always carry a reflector in my car on shoots just in case. They are way easier to carry around and set up than lights and sometimes you don’t have electricity to use lights anyways.
Tip 2 – One Temperature
Make sure all of your lighting is one temperature. As you may or may not know, all light has a temperature. Some is warmer than others and some is cooler. You probably have noticed this when you switched from the old halogen bulb to new energy saving ones. The old bulbs have a yellow-ish tint to them. The new ones are bluer or white.
Filmmakers uses the Kelvin scale to rank lights from warm to cool. Pure sunlight is 5600 Kelvin while old light bulbs are 3200 Kelvin. The most popular and cheaper lights are 3200 and the more expensive ones are 5600. Go down to Home Depot or Lowe’s and you can see all the different bulbs and their specific temperatures.
The biggest thing to remember is to try to use the same temperature of light throughout your shot. Don’t mix and match different light bulbs or this will make it impossible to properly white balance your video. You can even use gels to change a light’s temperature (i.e. turn a 3200 tungsten light bulb into a 5600 one). So carry around some gels that you can pick up from your local photography store or online.
It may be hard to only have one lighting temperature when you are shooting inside a building. You may have 3200 Tungsten lights but sunlight, which is 5600, is shining in through the window. If you white balance to the more orange tungsten lights, the light coming in from the sun will look very blue. If you white balance to the sunlight, the light coming from the light bulbs will look too orange. You can easily fix this by adding some blue gels to the lights inside.
Tip 3 – Use Available Lighting
At the very least, use a regular desk lamp to light your subject. Nothing is worse than trying to watch a video where you can’t see your subject. Your camera may try to compensate for the lack of light by raising the ISO but this creates grain and makes your video look like garbage. Especially if you are shooting interviews inside or doing some sort of product promotion, try to light your set with whatever available lights you have.
All of this being said, you may not need to light your video if there is enough available lighting. If you are shooting outdoors, lights are probably impractical and unnecessary. But make sure you bring your reflector!
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