(upbeat music)
- Once you've done all the important work
in setting up your space
and designing your generalist aesthetic,
it can often be tempting to just hit record.
But there are a few more things to consider
in terms of camera and lighting
that I'd like to talk about now.
Let's first talk about lighting.
Whether you rely on natural light or indoor light,
you need to make sure that you've got good
and consistent lighting conditions.
Consistency is especially important
if you're relying on light from a window,
since outdoor light changes a lot over the course of a day
and with different weather conditions.
Also be aware that the color of indoor light
and outdoor light is often quite different
and mixing indoor and outdoor light on camera
can be visually problematic.
To avoid any issues related to mixed lighting,
you may want to invest in daylight bulbs
for your indoor lights.
You may also want to work with additional production lights
to fully illuminate the scene.
Common lighting setups for a basic talking head
to camera shoot are either two-point lighting
or three-point lighting schemes.
Two-point lighting assumes a key light
to act as the primary lighting source
and a fill light to act as the secondary lighting source
with each positioned at an angle focused
at the subjects face.
You can experiment
with the lighting strength, color, and angle.
But in general, two-point lighting is a great place to start
for basic video shoots.
Three-point lighting takes that model up a notch
by also adding a backlight
so that the subject is better separated from the background.
In shooting this course,
I bought a lighting kit for less than $80 off of Amazon.
It may look a little fancy,
but it's just three daylight bulbs
along with some light stands and reflection umbrellas.
I've set up two-point lighting
and I've turned off the fluorescent lights in the room
to avoid mixed lighting conditions.
For a simple talking head shoot like this,
you can use so many different types of cameras.
Lots of people simply choose to use their webcams,
which is a very popular social media video option.
While built-in webcams are getting better and better,
you also may want to invest in an external webcam
to increase your resolution, clarity,
and camera angle options.
If given the choice,
I actually tend to prefer using a separate video camera,
even if it's just my phone camera.
I like that it gives me more flexibility
in terms of my camera positioning
as well as higher resolution.
That's actually what I'm recording with now.
When I record with my phone,
I assemble a mobile filmmaking rig.
This just consists of placing the phone in a central hub,
which offers me stability and connectability.
The case I use is made by iOgrapher
and it allows me to easily mount the hub on a tripod.
I can also attach items to the case itself;
accessories like mini shotgun microphones,
and lights and lenses.
In recording this course,
I simply inserted my phone in the iOgrapher case
and mounted it on a tripod.
I just spent about $120 for both the case and the tripod.
And for this particular production,
I didn't use any other add on accessories
except for a lavalier microphone.
So a really simple setup.
Video cameras, and particularly phone cameras,
are largely point and shoot
without too much you need to change
about the recording conditions.
But I will mention just a few things
that I think are important
about shooting this type of video.
First, I'd recommend that you record
at a very high resolution if you can.
I record in 4K, which means that the video has a resolution
of 3,840 pixels by 2,160 pixels.
The reason to do this,
other than the image being nice and crisp,
is that it gives you a lot of flexibility
if you need to cut back and forth
between different shot sizes.
So you can cut from a medium shot
to a close-up, like so,
and the zoomed in image won't be fuzzy.
Doing this on lower resolution footage
will often result in a closeup that's too soft.
And then of course,
you can cut back to the medium shot again when you like.
So why exactly would you want to do this?
Well, before, when I talked
about piecing together portions of takes,
this is one method that allows you to do this
without creating discernible jump cuts.
Or if you need to remove those ums and ahs and dead air,
this is a great way to get that done.
Granted, some people work jump cuts
into the style of their brand,
but I personally like a cleaner approach.
So if you do too, then just record at a higher resolution.
One more thing I want to mention
about recording from a phone camera
is that I use a video recording app called FiLMiC Pro.
This app gives you greater control and flexibility
than the phone's built in video camera.
There are both automatic and manual controls
to dynamically adjust the color balance, exposure,
focus, and zoom.
It lets you monitor overexposure,
check critical focus and more.
And there are a lot of additional settings
to change dozens of other camera characteristics.
You can check out FiLMiC Pro's YouTube channel
for lots of really useful tutorials on how to use the app.
So as you can see,
here's the basic setup for this particular video shoot.
I've got FiLMiC Pro on my phone,
my phone mounted on my rig and set up on my tripod,
and my two production lights set up in two-point lighting.
Other than the phone itself,
this production set up cost just a bit more than $200.
So for just a small investment,
you can really improve the visual quality of your video.
(upbeat music)