so you suck at lighting your YouTube videos it's as bad as this but don't
worry we're gonna fix that oh that was a big wave in the video coming up so if
you're new to my channel my name is Brett Caramella with Brett care mellow
calm and in today's real raw vlog I got a comment from Tom X who said hey Brett
you should do a video about how you light your YouTube videos okay Tom so
I'm gonna answer that question in this video but before I get into it I just
want to explain what gives me the credentials to make a video like this
because it is a big proposition oh you're great at lighting you know
lighting you know a lot of people say that but I've really spent a lot of time
so I've been doing working in photography and film for more than ten
years and I used to work in New York City at a big film production company
and it was there that I met a lot of talented people and that really helped
me learn lighting the other part which actually helped me even more was reading
books watching tutorials and then experimenting in my own so watching
YouTube videos buying tutorials buying books and just trying different things
out so you're in the right place if you are searching on the net all over and
trying to find the answers to how to light your videos better then you are in
the right place because I'm gonna be doing a lot more videos about lighting
and I'm gonna be coming out with some in-depth tutorials if you want me to do
that and if this video gets enough interest I will make a lighting tutorial
series that shows you all aspects of lighting and really breaks it down
because it's hard to do everything in one video I am gonna answer a bunch of
your questions in this video but if you do have interest in me doing a much
longer series please leave that in a comment below and if it gets enough
interest then I will do it as I said and talk is cheap but to be honest most of
my youtube videos aren't lit as well as I'd like them to be lit when I have a
high production and I have a lot of time and really good equipment you can see
what I can do so I made a film with a friend of mine and you can see it up
here this short documentary film it ended up doing pretty well won a lot of
film festivals ended up qualifying for an Oscar
so I was really happy with that but I've also spent a lot of time working on
lighting for photography so if you want to see my portfolio for photography how
I light stuff just so you know that I dunno what I'm talking about in terms of
lighting you can see my portfolio right over here and so you know over the next
two months I'm really gonna be working on my website adding a lot more
tutorials and things like that so please go check that out in the near
future because I'm gonna have a lot of things on the site okay so let's get
into the video so how do we get good lighting how do we light our YouTube
videos one way to do that is to get up really early on golden hour the first
hour after sunrise or actually I like to go right before sunrise because the
light is very flat and then right around sunset because those times the light is
very flat no matter where you shoot it's gonna look good alright I shot a little
drone footage today as you can see here
and for today's video I am in a cool secret location not going to disclose
all my secrets in one video so if you noticed in the intro to this video the
lighting was really bad because the sun's already come up the light is not
as flattering the quality of light has changed from the morning so the color
temperature and the quality of light changes as the Sun rises so therefore I
went over here with all this nice shade and this nice background so part of it
is actually in terms of lighting is whether to avoid the light or to use the
light a lot of times after sunrise and and during the middle of the day you
don't have good quality lights so you need to find a shaded place that can
help a lot now this is assuming you're not using artificial lights and we're
gonna get into artificial lights but not quite yet so for natural light another
thing that I like to do is shoot backlit so what I mean by backlit is I mean the
Sun is behind me so a lot of people when they're starting out photographers
filmmakers they think they need to have the Sun facing the subject okay you can
do that during Golden Hour when the Sun is really low right around sunrise and
right around sunset but during the middle of the day you really want to
have the Sun at your back or somewhere in the back that way you're gonna get a
nice flat lighting another reason why I like to light with the Sun in the back
especially when you're shooting yourself or other people is that you won't get
that like weird racoon shadows under the eye is a bridge of the eyebrows that
really doesn't look flattering if you have the Sun in the back you properly
expose through the face the face is gonna be nice and evenly lit you can get
into advanced lighting techniques where you move the Sun around and that leads
me into my next tip which is you can actually use your hand if you move your
hand and I it's hard to show you right now because there's no there's not a lot
of Sun here if you move your hand in the Sun or in any situation where there's a
light source moving your hand around and looking at the light you'll see where
the light and where the shadow is so if you look at your hand you're like oh
that looks good oh my hands facing that direction okay
I'm gonna face in the same direction as my hand so you can use your hand as a
guide and move it around 360 and you can really see the different light okay so
when you're not sure of the light you don't have any special tools or fancy
equipment just use your hand also try to make sure that you have a dark
background so if you notice this background is is not the bessel if I
stand like right here you notice it's dark right here but if I move over here
it's a little too white right here and you actually you can see the Sun coming
through now too because the Sun is moving so it's a little too white so
your eye naturally goes to what's brightest so it's going to go over here
so if I move over here now my face is almost like the brightest part of the
scene so in terms of lighting always try to make your face the brightest part of
what you're shooting the viewers eye will naturally go towards what is
brightest okay so I'm gonna move over and now I'm right here and see this is
much darker so now you're gonna look over here and is obviously where I want
you to look so wherever you want the person to look that should be brightest
just remember that of course there are exceptions but for most cases just keep
it that way one way to make your face or the subject
that you're shooting the brightest is to position it in front of a window window
light is fantastic but there are a few keys the smaller the window the harsher
the fall-off of light so you have to be really cognizant of where you position
yourself if you're using a much bigger window it's a lot more forgiving a lot
more softer light so you want to make sure that you don't get direct sunlight
or that it's a cloudy or rainy day and that will provide really really great
light if it is too bright you can use a curtain or a shade or any type of
diffusion that will soften the light and make it flattering on the face so you
can only do so much with natural light sometimes you're gonna need artificial
light actually for my photo shoots a lot of my video shoots I prefer to use
artificial light because it gives me full control and I don't have to wait
for the right situation where the sun's gonna be low or I have to relocate to a
special a different location if I want to be in a specific location if I use
artificial light then I can set up for that location light it properly so you
can use the hand with artificial light as well or
you can just move your head around okay you can move your head on a swivel and
see how the light look you can have a mirror your screen flips out on your
camera you can do that as well but what I suggest you do when you light this is
every single lighting situation whether you're a complete beginner or you're
like the best lighting person in the world you're working on a Hollywood set
and you have you know 500 lights it doesn't matter what you want to do is
light one light at a time you can't really know what the light is doing if
you turn on multiple lights at the time because you get the light pollution one
light believes into another light so what really helps me is just doing it
step by step one light at a time so what I do is I turn every light out see how
it looks just with the natural light if it's not looking good with the natural
light then I'll add one light most situations you're only gonna need one
light or maybe two lights then I look how that first light is and that first
light should be lighting your face should be the key light or the main
light that's lighting your face then you add another light in you can see what
that light does so one thing that's really important is after you have that
first light perfect and you want to add a second or third light make sure you
turn off that first light and then turn on the second light then once you get
the second light perfect turn the first two lights off then you light only the
third light remember you're only doing one light at a time so you do one then I
put the two together I see the two are working perfect all right I want to add
one more light what I do is I add that third light just by itself then I put
all three okay it's kind of like a puzzle you got to do one step at a time
a lot of people get overwhelmed and really confused and frustrated because
they're trying to do multiple lights at a time so start with natural light
then do one light at a time so guys I could go on and on about lighting it's
something I'm really passionate about I haven't really done it a whole lot on my
channel I'm working right now on a long in-depth Mavic to tutorial series so
that has about 37 to 40 video so it's taking a lot of my time and I'm
hopefully gonna finish it next month so that's where I'm putting a lot of my
energy but once I finish that if you're interested in a lighting
course or a lighting tutorial series let me know please like I said leave a
comment below I'm really interested in doing that but if there's not enough
interest I don't want to invest so much time and make it really awesome and then
only a few people are interested so if you are interested let me know below I
appreciate you watching guys and now the fan of the day is Ora Ora is probably my
most dedicated fan you always comment on every one of my videos usually the first
person to comment so today you're the fan of the day if you want to be a
better content creator with drones with photography with filmmaking this is the
channel for you ok so please press that like button if you enjoy this video
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before I go guys remember siempre Avante knockabout that