(Techno Music)
- Hey guys, my name is Matti.
Today I'm gonna show you guys
how to light your YouTube videos,
or really any talking head video for that matter.
Here's the before.
This is what my office would look like
if I just had the normal household lights on.
It looks horrible.
And here's the after.
I'd say it's a little bit better.
All right, so first, let's take a look at some basics,
so we can understand what the heck we're doing here.
There's a bunch of different terminology
for different uses of a light.
So we're just gonna go through some of those
so we're on the same page
and nobody's confused.
Let's start off with a key light.
This one is gonna be the brightest light
lighting your subject.
And really it's the main light,
and that's why it's called a key light,
I think,
don't hold me to that one.
But this is your main light,
and this is the light that I usually start off with.
Next we have the fill light.
Now this one's really subtle.
It's just filling in the other side of my face.
So we have the bright side here
and then we have the darker side here,
and it's just bringing a little bit of exposure
to the dark side
so we have some detail there.
But this one's much more subtle,
and you don't always need a fill light either.
This would be a perfectly fine look right here.
This would be perfectly good
without any fill light.
But I like to add just a little bit
to bring out a little bit of that exposure
so there's some detail in there.
Next we have the back light.
And this one's really just to give me some definition,
just some separation from the background.
And then we also have the background light,
which just happens to be the same light.
So I have one light that's working as the back light
and it's also hitting the background,
just giving it a little bit more exposure
so it's not in the darkness like that.
Not so good.
Give it a little bit more light.
You can see what's going on over there.
Lastly we have what are called practicals,
and these are lights that are actually
gonna be in your frame.
So all these other lights,
they're not in the frame.
You can't see them in the frame.
But there is one light that's in the frame,
and that's this one over here.
There's a light behind the lenses.
So I'm actually using this little light over there
just to give it a little bit more depth.
Otherwise, it looks kinda flat back there,
it's all black,
so I'm using this little light
to bring out some of those details,
but also give it more depth.
I don't know about you,
but I'd say that's better.
Right now all these lights are actually Aputure lights,
and there's a reason why I really like
the Aputure lights right now.
First one is that they're just really high-quality lights.
So if you have a low-quality light,
you'll get kind of different color shifts in the lights.
So they might be really green or really magenta
or this light, even though it's the same model,
will be different from this light.
It'll just be all over the place,
and when you mix and match those lights,
you'll just get all sorts of weird colors
and it doesn't look good.
Apurture lights are really high-quality lights, I would say.
Two, they're fairly affordable.
Now before you guys get mad at me
for a thousand dollar lights,
if you look at the other lights on the market,
these are pretty affordable,
especially for LED lights.
LED lights can be really expensive.
They've come down a little bit in price,
but traditionally they've been really expensive.
And then three, and probably the most important for me,
is that I can control them by remote.
So a lot of times like this,
I'm filming myself.
And I have a little monitor right up here.
You guys can't see it,
but I can see myself,
so I can adjust the lights just like this,
or dim them down a little bit,
dim it up.
I can do all that by looking at this monitor here
and adjusting them
without having to go to the light,
adjust it, come back to the camera,
look if it's good,
and then go to that light, adjust it,
go back and forth.
I can do it all just sitting here
with this little remote.
And this is a really big thing,
not only for when you're shooting yourself,
but also when you're filming other people
and you don't have a big crew.
This way you can set up all the lights,
you can go to your camera,
have your talent sit down,
and you can just adjust the lights as you need
without having to go to each of the lights
and just be wasting time like that.
Now we're gonna go through one by one all the lights,
and I'm gonna tell you which light I'm using,
how I'm using it, and why.
All right, we ready.
Oh yeah, that one, too.
All right, so the first light is the key light,
and right now I'm using an Aputure 120d
with their light dome soft box.
So this makes it a really big, nice, soft source,
and that would be my biggest tip with the key light,
is to make it nice and big.
The bigger it is, the softer it'll be,
the more flattering it'll be,
and it just has this nice little wrap.
Also, I like to place the key light
about 45 degrees from my face
so that it's only really lighting one side of my face
and then just this little triangle here and kind of my eye.
That's called Rembrandt lighting.
I think it just makes the face look
a little bit more interesting
with the bright side and then we have
some shadows on this side.
There's some contrast going on.
I think it's a really interesting look
while still being fairly flattering.
And I gotta say,
if you need one light,
this would be the setup.
The Apurture 120d with the light dome soft box.
This thing is just genius.
I love the quality of the light that comes out of it.
Plus it's just super easy to use.
Next we had our fill light.
And this is just doing a subtle lighting on my face
and also just a little bit on the background,
bringing the exposure up just a little bit
so it doesn't look like I'm in a dungeon,
and fill lights I think is where
a lot of people make mistakes.
A lot of times people just blast the fill light,
and the fill light is hitting the darker side of your face
in this kind of lighting setup.
And that just kills all the contrast,
the really nice contrast that you've made with this light.
So keep the fill light nice and subtle,
and you actually don't even need a fill light sometimes.
Sometimes it's actually better to use a negative fill,
which is using just a black cloth
or anything black dark right close to the face,
and that's just gonna cut all the light from this side
and make this shadow side even more pronounced.
And for the fill light,
I'm using an Apurture Light Storm,
I think it's called an LS1.
It's kind of a panel,
and I'm just shooting that straight into the ceiling.
I have white ceilings in this office,
and that just creates this nice ambient light
that's coming down.
It's not this hard light beaming into my face.
It's just a really subtle look
just creating some ambient light.
That's how I would do the fill light.
Make it nice and subtle.
And shooting a light into the ceiling
is a great way just to get some exposure in the room.
That's a really cool kind of pro trick
that you can do really easy,
really quickly,
just shoot it into the roof.
Next we had the back light,
which is also hitting the background.
So this is kind of a two-in-one light.
It's lighting me from the back,
but it's also lighting the background.
And I kinda lied.
There's actually another light in this setup
that I've been kind of using and playing around with,
and it's this little strip.
Man, why is this so hard to point.
This little strip of light right here.
Sometimes it's a little bit brighter
and sometimes it's a little bit darker,
but it's just creating this
little bit of a kick light, it's called.
When it's just reflecting off the face
and bouncing into the camera,
you're getting this nice cool little look.
That is a back light that I didn't really mention.
So I kind of have two back lights going on right now.
The one I've set up
and also just natural light coming in from the window.
And depending on the day,
sometimes it's really bright
if the sun is just poking right through.
And then some days like this it's overcast
and it's a little bit more subtle.
And for the back light I'm using an Apurture LS 1/2,
I think that's what it's called,
and I've just softened it up a little bit
with some diffusion,
and I've also used some black wrap
to make sure it's not bouncing straight into my face.
I don't actually want it to hit my face
and create some harsh-looking lights on my nose and stuff.
So I've black wrapped the side of it
so it doesn't bounce all over it.
It's just hitting my back
and in that background where I want it to be.
So you can definitely be creative with lighting
and even use one light to do two different things for you
at the same time.
And then lastly we have the practical light
that we need to add over there.
And I've been using this Apurture ALM9,
which is just a tiny little light.
You can just put this anywhere.
It's a really cool light.
And it's still super bright.
I really like this one.
I've been using this one in the past.
But they just sent me this one, the ALMX.
This is a new one,
and I just love this thing.
If you guys could hold it
you would feel how just beefy this thing is.
It's tiny, but it just feels like a block of metal.
It's just super high quality, really good build,
and it's even brighter than this one.
It's actually super bright.
Let me turn this on.
This one's super bright for a little guy like this.
And it even has this little boost mode,
booster, it goes even brighter.
So this is a tiny light but super powerful.
If you need just a tiny light to stick in any random place,
this is your guy right now.
So let's put this one where it belongs.
There we go.
We have the practical light.
And this isn't maybe the best example of a practical light
because you can't really really see it.
It's more like an accent light,
but you guys get the point.
It's a light that's in the frame
and not outside the frame just lighting from outside.
But it just adds a nice little touch,
lighting up the silver play button,
just adding some depth over there,
and just making it a little bit more interesting.
And for practical lights, you can use anything,
any normal household lights, anything.
You can go creative with them
and use them to motivate the light in your scene.
So for example, the window light over there,
it just makes sense that there's light
coming in from over there.
But if it was a dark background
and there was a strong light coming from there,
you kind of wonder where is that light coming from?
It kind of hurts the brain subconsciously,
and you think well this is a really lit
or fake lighting setup.
But I think the best is always to try
to make it as natural looking as possible,
so it's not throwing off the viewer.
Again, you do not want to be distracting the viewer.
It's supposed to be enhancing the frame.
Now this is the setup I built over years,
probably like five or six years,
just adding different lights to my lighting setup.
Do not think that you need to buy all these lights at once.
And even though I said it's affordable,
it costs a lot of money to invest in lights.
But lights are one of those nice things
where if you buy it once it's gonna last you
for a really, really long time.
Whereas a camera body might only last you a year or two.
So a light is a much better investment in the long run.
And you can also do this kind of setup
with just normal household lights.
It might not look exactly like this,
but you can get a lot done with just some creativity.
So there you go.
That's how I light my YouTube videos.
And this is the approach that I take
with pretty much lighting any talking head or subject.
I go through all these different types of lights,
see which ones I need and how I'm gonna use them.
I know lighting is a bit of a scary, weird area.
For a really long time it scared the crap out of me
because I just didn't understand it.
But if you guys enjoyed this
and you guys wanna see more lighting videos,
comment down below.
I'd love to hear you guys' ideas on what kinds of things
you guys would like to learn about lighting.
All right, that's it for me.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
Hit that like button.
Subscribe to the channel.
I'd love for you guys to be a part of this community.
Hope you guys enjoy your day.
I have to go to the dentist now.
(techno music)