Lighting Basics for Making a Digital Video

Video Transcript

Hey, Welcome back. This is Glen Cornish with Expert Village. We've been talking a lot about how to make your videos look professional. Now, we're going to talk about lighting. Let me say something about digital video in general. It is very, very crucial that you pay attention to lighting. Especially low light levels. They don't do very well. Even some of the things you've seen in theaters, some of these digital movies, especially Star Wars, which was one of the first digital movies shot in all digital format, they still, if you look closely, have problems with lighting. I think I mentioned before, when you have dark levels of black and grays, it makes the camera work harder to figure out what it's seeing. Keep a really, really close look at your lighting and your exposure levels. That means yes, you'll have to invest in a lighting kit of some sorts if you haven't already. You don't have to spend a lot of money. I have two lights here I've had forever. It only cost me a couple hundred bucks. Basically you can choose whatever kind of lights you want. These are the most basic with what they call barn doors here and that is just so that you can control some of the light in certain areas. Obviously, wider means a wider, bright light and then you can narrow it down. There's also, you have the umbrella here. That's perfect for diffused lighting. Other words, if you're shooting somebody, you never point the light directly at them. You usually point it up, but if you want soft, so it's not so hard, the shadows aren't hard, you should avoid shadows anyway, but to soften everything you use umbrellas. One of the best things to do when you're shooting indoors is to use a single light, if it's super bright, and just simply point it, bounce the light off the ceiling. That's how I'm being taped right now. Is a single light that is pointed up at the ceiling and that diffuses the light because the ceiling is white, and gives it a nice glow. If you can do it with one light, great but, two lights is better and really nice professional quality you use three lights. You use one as the main, the fill, and sometimes a spot. Basically, that's it with lighting but there's one other issue. If you can't afford these that's ok. I would still advise you to invest in some kind of lighting. Maybe you can buy the kind of light that sits on top of your camcorder, in your shoe, and you can mount it there. Always pay attention to your lighting. You can buy a light that goes on top of your camera, if you can't afford lights like this that fits in the shoe. Pay attention to the lighting cause it's the most crucial part of digital video. Next, lets look at how all this works with your computer.

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