Sometimes you may find that a light you’re using to illuminate a subject is too intense. This is especially common with key lights. If all you’re getting is a glaring white spot on your subject’s face, you can diffuse the light by putting something between it and your subject:
_ Cheesecloth: Available at art and cooking supply stores (and some grocery stores), cheesecloth has a coarse mesh and is useful both for diffusing light and straining beans or cottage cheese in the kitchen.
_ Translucent plastic: Sheets of translucent plastic are also available at arts and craft stores. Professional videographers call these gels. Colored gels are often placed in front of lights that illuminate a backdrop for special lighting effects. If you do this, make sure you place a barrier between your key light and the backdrop so the colored light from the gel isn’t washed out by the white key light. A barrier may simply be a piece of cardboard that is held up by a stand or helper. If you diffuse your light, you may have to move your lights closer to the subject.
Experiment for the best results.
Lights (especially halogen lights) tend to get very hot. To avoid fire hazards, you must use extreme care when placing gels or cheesecloth in front of lights. Never attach diffusers directly to lights. Position your diffusers some distance away from the lights so that they don’t melt or catch on fire, and check the condition of your lights and diffusers regularly. Read and heed all safety warnings on your lights before using them.
Shining a light directly on a subject is not necessarily the best way to illuminate it. You can often get a more diffuse, flattering effect by bouncing light off a reflective surface. You can make reflectors out of a variety of materials, depending on what light effect you’re looking for:- Poster board: White poster board is a good, cheap material you can find just about anywhere. Thicker poster board is easier to work with because it’s rigid (meaning it won’t flop all over the place and make noise while a helper holds it). With some spray paint, paint one side of a poster board gold and the other silver. Experiment using each side to gain just the right light quality.
- Aluminum foil: Crumple a large sheet of foil, and then spread it out again and tape it to a backing board. Crumpling the foil provides a more diffuse reflection than you can get from flat foil, but its reflection is still highly effective.
- Black plastic garbage bag: Yep, black plastic bags are pretty good reflectors even though they have a dark color. As with foil, you can tape or staple the bag to a backing board to make it easier to work with.
Professional photographers and videographers typically use several different lights of varying type and intensity. Multiple light sources provide more control over shadows and image detail, and different kinds of lights have different affects. Lights that you’ll use break down into three basic types:
- Incandescent: These are your good old-fashioned light bulbs like the ones Thomas Edison invented. Most of the light bulbs around your house are probably incandescent. Incandescent lights are usually cheap, but the light temperature is lower than with other types of lighting (meaning they are not as bright) and they usually provide wavering, inconsistent performance.
- Halogen: Okay, technically halogen lights are also incandescent, but they usually burn at a much higher temperature (and provide a more consistent light over their lifetimes) than do regular bulbs. Many professional video-lighting systems are tungsten-halogen lights, which means they have a tungsten filament passing through a sealed tube of halogen gas. Good, cheap halogen work lights also work well for video lighting — and they are generally available at tool and hardware stores. Halogen work lights also sometimes come with useful stands, though you can make your own stands using threaded plastic pipe and clamps from your friendly neighborhood hardware store.
- Fluorescent: Fluorescents also tend to give off a high-temperature light, though the temperature can vary greatly depending on the condition and age of the bulb. Fluorescent light is usually both very white and soft, making it ideal for video lighting. Fluorescent fixtures and bulbs can be purchased for less than $20 and can be easily suspended above your subject.
If you use fluorescent bulbs, let them warm up for a few minutes before shooting your video. This should prevent flicker. If the bulbs still flicker after they’ve warmed for a bit, try using new or different bulbs. Also, pay attention to how fluorescent lights affect your audio recordings. Fluorescent bulbs tend to produce a hum in audio recordings, so some practice and testing may be necessary. If fluorescent humming in your audio recording is a problem, record audio separately or use a different kind of light.
My guess is that most of your video “shoots” will actually be pretty informal affairs, where you basically record an event that was scheduled to happen whether you brought your camcorder or not. Thus, you may have a hard time convincing everyone who is attending that they should dress appropriately for video. But there definitely are some types of clothes that work better in video than others — and if you have any control at all over what the people in your video wear, try making these suggestions:
- Avoid clothes with lots of thin parallel lines or stripes: Thin parallel lines (like those you’d find on coarse corduroy or pinstripe suits) don’t get along well with TV screens; they create a crawling or wavy visual effect called a moiré pattern.
- Limit the use of very bright shades of red and blue. Red is especially problematic because it tends to bleed into neighboring portions of the video image. This doesn’t mean everyone in your movie should wear dark, drab colors, however. In the best of all possible shoots, your subjects’ clothing is bright enough to lend some interest, but contrasts with the background somewhat so they don’t get lost in the video image.
For the purposes of shooting video, light can be subdivided into two categories:
good light and bad light. Good light allows you to see your subject, and it flatters your subject by exposing details you want shown. Good light doesn’t completely eliminate shadows, but the shadows don’t dominate large portions of the subject either. Bad light, on the other hand, washes out color and creates lens flares (the reflections and bright spots that show up when the sun shines across the lens) and other undesired effects.
Like a photograph, a great video image must be thoughtfully composed. Start by evaluating the type of shot you plan to take. Does the shot include people, landscapes, or some other subject? Consider what kind of tone or feel you want to achieve. F In the first shot, the camera looks down on the subject. Children are shot like this much too often: This approach makes them look smaller and inferior. The second shot is level with the subject and portrays him more favorably. The third shot looks up at the subject and makes him seem important, dominant, almost larger than life.
If you’re like me, most of your video shoots will actually be pretty informal, so assigning a director, sound engineer, and key grip probably seems a little silly. Besides, people who are formally assigned to such jobs will want special T-shirts and name tags and lattes and all kinds of other stuff that isn’t accounted for in your shoestring budget.
Still, you’re probably going to need some help —with setting up equipment, holding lighting props and microphones, standing guard to prevent passersby from walking in front of the camera, and (of course) hauling gear. I’ve found that my kids are extremely helpful when it comes to videography because they know that moviemaking is cool. (Why are children always smarter than everybody else?) You’ll want to take a few minutes to indoctrinate whomever you enlist for your video crew on the finer points of moviemaking and provide some dos and don’ts to follow while they’re on the set. Helpers should be trained on any equipment they’re going to use, and they should know where they can (and cannot) stand to avoid showing up in the picture. Anyone holding a microphone must be told that little hand movements may cause loud thumps and other noise; anyone holding a light reflector should be reminded to sit still lest strange shadows pan wildly back and forth on the scene.
Perhaps most importantly, remind all helpers that silence is golden. A camera lens may be limited to a specific field of vision, but a microphone isn’t. When little Johnny comes over to you behind the camera and whispers, “Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom,” his revelation will be recorded loud and clear on the tape.
