- I'm gonna show you how to light your videos
so you can make them look like this if you want to.
And we're starting right now.
(hip-hop music)
What is going on?
My name is Nick.
Welcome to another video.
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Okay, if you are not familiar with how to light
your video, with how to make everything look good,
how to make everything kinda pop a little bit,
then you're really going to enjoy this video
because I'm gonna share my setup
and I'm gonna show you demonstrations
of what the different lights do
and why I use them.
And real quick, let me know what you're doing.
Are you currently using
just the lights that are available in the room?
Are you shooting outside so you can use the sun?
Or do you have some type of studio lighting setup?
Let me know down in the comments.
This lighting setup that I have consists of
only four lights.
That's it.
I have my key light up here to my left,
I have my fill light up here to my right,
and I have two blue lights that are shining
behind me to give that blue color
that you see behind me right now.
Overall, it is an extremely simple setup,
and I'm gonna take you through it right now
and I'm gonna show you exactly what each light does.
But first, we gotta turn them all off.
(snap)
Okay, this is what it looks like
without any light whatsoever.
Now the first light that I have
is the key light.
Now the key light, as you can see,
lights up the one side of my face.
It's basically the main light source
that I use to light myself up.
This is where all of my primary light comes from,
and this light, which I'm gonna show you
here in a minute, is just about,
a little bit more than an arm's length away
from me right now.
The second light that I have
is the fill light.
Now as you can see, the fill light fills in
this side of my face.
It basically fills in the shadows
that I have on my face.
Even with both of these lights on,
you know, it lights me up nicely.
You know, it actually gives me a nice even light.
Now if I wanted to do a more of a
film style video, then I would turn
the fill light down a little bit
so that I don't have as much light
coming from this side, but I personally prefer
a more even look.
Even though that I am evenly lit,
you can see that the scene in the background,
you know, it's bland looking right now
because everything is dark back there
and even though there's a nice highlight on me,
it just doesn't have that nice pop
that you're used to seeing in my videos.
And of course, the reason for that is because
the blue light is not on here behind me.
Now, once I turn on the blue light...
You know what?
We'll actually turn it on right now.
(snap)
And you can see, by using that light,
the big different that it makes
as far as making me pop out
from the background instead of the background
just being kind of dull and boring.
Now the fun part, I'm going to actually
show you the lights that I use.
This first light is my key light.
This is a can light, it is made for photo
or video lighting.
However, using a light for photo
or video lighting is not necessary.
I'm gonna put links down in the
description below to extremely cheap versions
of these that you can use for your lighting setup.
With my key light as you can see,
I have a t-shirt stretched over the front of it.
I basically cut a t-shirt in half,
and I tied it around to soften up the light
that's coming from that light.
By doing this, I'm taking the harshness away
from the light.
I'm basically softening the light
that's hitting my face
which gives everything a more pleasant look
and it softens my skin and it softens
all of the things that that light is hitting.
In a nutshell, it makes everything
a little bit more pleasant,
and there's nothing fancy involved.
I mean, as you can see,
I've got a t-shirt tied around it.
- Nick, that was genius!
Like 3000 units of pixie dust.
Beautiful!
- Brian G., folks.
If you are not already subscribed to Brian,
he also makes videos for YouTubers,
so make sure to head over there
and check out his channel as well.
I'll put a link to him down in the description
and a card up here somewhere for you.
The second light is my fill light.
Now this light I have bouncing off of the wall
or actually reflecting off of the wall
and off of the ceiling to fill in the other sides.
So this light is not soft because I have
a t-shirt wrapped around it,
this light is getting softened by reflecting
off of the wall and the ceiling.
As you can see in this diagram,
the key light is about two and a half
to three feet away from me and the fill light
is about five and a half to six feet away from me.
By setting up the light this way,
it provides enough light onto me that it
makes everything look decent.
These are the lights that are behind me,
the blue lights that you see projecting onto the curtain.
These are also can lights, but instead of having
the white daylight balanced bulbs inside of them,
I just went to the store and I got party lights
because videos on this channel, you know,
they're like a party.
Just kidding.
Back to the demo.
In this situation, I use two of these can lights,
I can technically get away with one of them,
but I like to use the two so that
I can spread the light wider in the particular
situation that I'm in so that it covers
the entire background with the blue
instead of just a small area like it used to.
Now the positioning of the lights are extremely important.
I have both of my lights, I have my key and my fill.
Even though the distances are a little bit different,
I have them at a 45-degree angle.
Now if I move my key light away,
then you can see the effect that it has.
Basically I have my fill light coming in
and it makes the entire scene look terrible.
So you know it's nice to bring everything back to normal.
Now with my lighting I use daylight balanced bulbs.
These bulbs are from Philips and they are
only 24 watt bulbs so they're not extremely powerful,
they're not extremely hot,
but luckily because I'm using my DSLR camera,
it gives me the ability to adjust my camera
around the lights as well as adjusting
my lights around the camera setting.
Now let's say you're using a webcam
or your phone to record your videos.
You can use a similar setup
or the same exact setup really,
the only difference might be that you're going to
have to manually dial in the settings
on your webcam or your phone.
That means that you're going to have to make sure
that your white balance is solid so that
the actual color of the light is
being picked up accurately,
and that also means that you're gonna have to
take your exposure from automatic to a manual exposure
so that you can adjust the brightness of your video.
And it doesn't matter if you're on an iPhone,
an Android, or any other type of phone,
as long as you can put apps into it,
there are apps that can help you manually adjust
if your built in settings don't allow you to do so.
If you are using a webcam for your videos
and you cannot find where to make the adjustments
for the white balance and for the exposure
and all that stuff,
there is software available.
I know I've used MiniCam in the past,
I've used Sparkosoft in the past,
and those will help you make the adjustments manually
so that you are not relying on automatic settings
because when you set up lights like this,
you need to have everything in manual
because if you don't, as much light as
you're putting into it, your camera or your phone
or your webcam, it's going to auto adjust
for the additional lights that you're putting in
and it's going to make everything look crazy.
Okay maybe it's not going to make it look crazy
but you know what I mean, it's not going to look right.
You will also find links down in the description
that will show you extremely budget versions
of the stuff that I use here so if you're
on a tight budget, it'll really help you out
to get started and to help, you know,
help you get your light situation taken care of
for an extremely low price.
And by low price, I'm talking a handful of bucks
for a two light or a four light setup.
Boom!
That's delivering value.
If you enjoyed this video,
remember to give it a thumbs up.
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Help them out.
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Thank you so much for watching, I'll see you next time.