Hi, I'm Steve Washer with BrainyVideo.com
Today, we're going to tackle and
destroy a problem that is really vexing to a lot of people.
And that is
how to film yourself without shooting yourself in the foot.
And when I say yourself, I mean by yourself,
with no one else behind the camera
to help you know that you look
right or that you sound right.
This is a real problem, and it really kind of messes up your
credibility.
Whether you're selling a $7 e-book
or a $20,000 a year coaching program,
this is something that you've just got to get right.
So we're going to take care of it today.
But here's the problems that we have.
Now, notice that right now
we're shooting outside on a nice
cloudy summer day, so our lighting is all nice and even and we don't really have a lot
of problems.
But if you listen closely,
you'll hear crickets in the background,
you'll hear lawnmowers going,
and all kinds of stuff like that,
maybe traffic down the road. And that's the kind of stuff that really kinda
messes up your credibility as well.
So we've got to do something about that.
Usually
that means we've got to shoot inside.
But when we go inside
we get a lot of problems. We'll go over those in a minute.
The second challenge that you have going for you
is that you're shooting with a consumer camera. Now, a consumer camera processes
video a lot differently than a professional camera does.
There's a lot less room for error.
And the third problem
is audio.
You've just got to have clean audio,
especially for those people who are auditory learners.
So we have to conquer the lighting,
we have to conquer the camera image problem, and we have to conquer the audio
problem--not to mention
the background problem, which is not a problem outside
but once we get inside, it certainly is.
So we'll handle this in three stages: The Plan
The Setup
and The Shoot.
The plan will simply be the decisions that we make
about where we're going to shoot, the kind of background, the kind of
foreground we'll have,
the kind of lighting we'll have
and where we'll place the camera.
The setup will be how we actually set everything up in our space.
And the shoot
will be the fun part, where we actually turn on the camera
and make some magic.
Ok, let's get started.
The first thing we have to do
is find a place to shoot in our house.
And that can be a bit of a challenge, because most houses don't have a lot of
room.
For example, let's take a look at this typical living room right here:
pretty small,
and we've got some challenges here with the bookcases because you kind of tend to
disappear into the bookcases.
But that's not the only challenge.
We also have this big window over here
which lets in a lot of beautiful light.
But it's hard to control that light.
So, here's what we're going to do.
We're gonna show you some easy to find
tools, that are very simple to use.
They're going to help us conquer
all of these challenges.
So come join me
on the other side.
All right,
here we are
in the library.
And we've got all those conditions that we saw were challenges before--we've got the
light coming in from the window over here.
I'm kind of lost in the books, right?
The composition is just all wrong--my head is so far from the top,
I'm not really sitting properly in the seat,
the audio--
that's a real treat, isn't it?
These problems seem
almost impossible to solve, don't they? With this little consumer camera where
there's no room for error.
What are we going to do about this?
Actually, it's pretty easy to fix.
The first thing we're going to do
is pull ourselves out
from the library,
getting ourselves some separation from the background.
That is going to give us the opportunity
to throw that background out of focus
even with this small camera.
I'm going to show you how to do that in just a minute.
Oh, and
we'll fix the lighting. And don't worry, we'll fix the audio, you don't have to suffer with that
anymore. In fact,
I've had enough of it too. Let's get started.
Hi! I've been shopping
for a few basic things that we need for our fantastic shoot that's coming up.
The first one
is a light of some sort and really we're going to show you how to get
fantastic results from this simple
little hardware store light.
It just uses a 100 watt bulb--
if you can find a 100 watt bulb.
Maybe even a 60 watt bulb will work.
But why are we going to use this light instead of just using the light that's streaming
in the window?
The reason
is that we can control this light,
and in video,
video is all about the control of light.
So even this simple light
is going to give us a tremendous amount of control.
Let's see what else we've got.
Ah! Love this.
This
is just a lavalier microphone,
very much like the one that I'm wearing here. Simple little microphone, tie-tack,
clip it to your shirt kind of microphone.
The important thing, though,
is that you do have an external microphone.
Otherwise it becomes pretty unbearable. Remember when you listened to me at the
beginning of this program, when I was speaking directly into the camera
instead of into my microphone?
Well, if you've got an auditory learner,
that's really torture for them.
So get yourself a lavalier microphone of some kind.
And then finally,
the whole centerpiece of this operation
is the camera.
Now this
happens to be
a
somewhat older Canon HV-30 camera--
my goodness,
it even uses tape.
I mean, not many cameras use tape anymore.
But we're going to show you how to get fantastic results
from this simple camera.
Why are we using this?
The main reason we're using this is that it has
a place to put an external mic.
And a lot of HD cameras today that you'll find for consumer use just don't
have that.
It also gives you control--manual control--
over both the focus
and the iris.
That's really important. So whatever camera you use,
make sure that it has those three things.
And then a couple of other little
doo-dads that
will be helpful to us.
This is a tripod.
This is a simple little tripod. You can get this at almost
any department store.
It's about
$20 in the U.S.
and very very light, you can take it anywhere.
You'll use this for your camera.
And then finally,
we've got this light stand.
A light stand, we're going to use this for a couple of things.
We're going to put our light on it,
but we're also going to use it for another reason entirely,
and that is to help you
get the right composition from your camera, being as you're doing this
all by yourself.
One of the first things that we have to do
is set our composition.
And we're going to set ourselves up so that we're to one side of the frame,
since we have this large rectangular frame.
And that's a little bit of a subtle thing. We can't really do that
without being able to see what we look like from behind the camera--but
we're only one person, so how are we going to do that? And besides,
there's another problem:
we want to have our eyes in a particular place
on the frame.
Imagine, if you will,
a Tic Tac Toe board,
right over here.
Now a Tic Tac Toe board has nine squares.
We want to make sure that our eyes
are in the top
row of squares.
And again, how are we going to do that
from sitting in this chair?
Well, we're by ourselves,
but that doesn't mean that we can't have some help.
And in this case
we're going to have some help
from Iris
the bag lady.
Now Iris is very happy to help us, but she needs something to sit on,
and that's why we're going to use this light stand.
And basically,
we put the light stand at our own head level
and then just ask Iris
to sit on the light stand.
Iris leans a little bit
to the left.
So now,
we can just replace the chair
with Iris,
and we can go behind the camera and set everything up, composition-wise.
By the way, the technique of Iris the bag lady comes to us courtesy of
Ken Gerber of Mind over Media,
so thanks a lot Ken.
So, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to replace me with Iris, and then I'm going to go behind the camera
and set up the lighting for the rest of the shoot.
So, now we're ready to start
start lighting Iris the bag lady.
And as you can see,
her eyes
are now lined up
on the top row of the Tic Tac Toe board.
But where did this Tic Tac Toe board come from?
Well, it's a feature right inside this camera.
Some cameras have it, some cameras don't.
Fortunately for our purposes, this one does.
And it's really important to get that eye line right,
because
that's really the main indicator that you have now
that you've got this thing set
compositionally
correctly.
So we just had this old TV laying around, and it has an input in the back
for video. And if your camera has an output for video then that's great, but
you don't strictly need this
because as long as you can see
that you've got your eyes lined up in this viewfinder,
you'll be okay.
So, the next step--
set up the lighting.
To get maximum control over the light,
we're just going to close these curtains.
Now that our window light is no longer a factor
we can just set up this backlight as our first light.
So we just turn it on.
Notice this light is just a simple light attached to a simple stand.
We raise it up as high as it will go,
because that's where real light comes from.
And we're about five feet away.
We aim it on Iris, and that's it.
Now this is pretty cool,
because what we've done in setting up this light in just a few seconds
is created a condition
where it's about 99% better
than any of your competitors.
Just from setting up a backlight.
Now, our second and final light
is the front light.
Again, just a simple light attached to a simple stand here.
However, we're a little bit lower and we're about four or five feet
from our subject.
Now here's the tricky part:
we don't want to
have this light go directly on our subject
because if we do, it's just too harsh. It's too directional,
and we want a nice, soft effect.
So, we're just going to bounce this light off the wall here,
and it gives us a nice,
smooth, even
soft light on Iris that's still
coming from one direction.
That's about all there is to that.
Now, all we have to do
is set up our sound levels
and we're ready to shoot.
Okay so, let's see if we got it.
All right, compositionally,
I'm to one side of the frame
and my eye line is on that top third of the Tic Tac Toe line.
I've got light coming from over on this side, which lights this side of my face
a little bit more than this side
of my face, and gives me a little more three-dimensionality. We've got the backlight
coming from back here, which separates us from the background.
It makes the background a lot less important.
And the audio--
lavalier's plugged directly into the camera so i'm a little bit more pleasant
to listen to.
Folks, that's just about all you need
to have a really credible video,
regardless of what products or services you might be selling. That's all for me
for now. I'm Steve Washer at BrainyVideo.com