Transcripts
1. Intro: The Budget Video Lighting for Beginners: Hey there Peter here from a broken visionary collective and I'm a digital content storyteller, videographer, video editor. Let's just say I've made a lot of online content, not only for myself but for other influencers, content creators and business owners. And there's full-fledged course. I will tell you exactly what it takes to have your own of budget lighting setup. I will tell you exactly what equipment you need, what you need to set up your equipment. Even if you have you don't have a budget at all. I'll show you exactly what it takes, as well as the fundamentals of budget lighting. Because I know how complicated and frustrating it can be. You don't understand lighting, what's the right praised, we have the money for it. So I'm gonna break down exactly what it takes to have your own, let's say your own Billy, online talking head studio like I have right now, whether it is just using the one light that I am right now, just a simple ring light. Or you wanna get a little bit more complicated and use three lights. I'm gonna show you everything from a no budget to a little bit more of a budget. And have everything that tool that you need to have you get started when it comes to online talking content, especially if you want to have your own personal brand. So let's get into us. My name is Peter. I'll show you all of the budget friendly things about your video, lighting.
2. Why lighting is so important?: Before I even get into how you set up your first light, what is lighting? Lighting is so important and why you need to know it is, I think in my opinion, from a videographer for point of view, it's more important than the actual camera gear. What kinda tripod and sound equipment you have? Yes, those things matter. But lighting is so important. I'd say number one is audio, but lighting is pretty up there. So in order to understand, lighting, lighting is what keeps your subject or talent lit on screen. So you can actually get the message that you want to your audience. Let's say if I completely have really bad lighting and I just rely on the camera right now, this isn't good lighting unless you go in for a cinematic look. As you can see, you can't see who you're talking to. And it's just like anything else you want to have. Good lighting. Lighting is what will make the best quality for your camera. So you don't have higher-quality looking videos. It actually in this day and age, whether you wanna make your own skill share a course, or any sort of other social media platform. You need to have an understanding, a basis of lighting knowledge, so you can have the best jumpstart when it comes to a video and creating videos and when you're talking to an audience. But enough yapping, let's get into how you actually set up your light, what you'll need. And although equipment
3. How to setup any light: So when it comes to setting up the basics of a soft box, it's essentially the same thing as a ring light. So what you have is you have your tripod stand. How these new thing work is you have a little twist on the bottom which lets it collapse. And all you do is you kind of just push it down to where you want it to properly be stable. And then you turn this twist here just to lock it in. Next is you really have your, either your umbrella or your actual soft box component. All you do is you just want to push it in so that it actually becomes a box as you can see right here. All I did was there's a little lock here that use push in and each one of these stands does fold open, so it does become a square. And then what you wanna do, there's a little mechanism here and all of the twisting screw. Keep twisting it. And there is your soft box light stand. Twist this guy to have adjust the height. There's these other knob on the back. Same thing applies, but just make sure that these are fully twisted. And last but not least, there's a second knob here, which actually controls your y-axis. So your light. And the last thing we're gonna do now is I gotta open up the light. You want to hold her the base not Nestle right here. And you want to twist, twist to your rate. So remember righty, tighty, just enough so that it is there a secure and there is your soft box setup. And last but not least, the whole purpose of having a soft box is you have your diffuser or your cover for it. So I'll Monday was gonna put this cover on top. Soft box is all ready to go. So all I need to do now is just plug this guy in and set it accordingly to wherever it is that my talent is shooting or is around.
4. What if I don't have a budget?: What you'll need for lighting is you only get to fancy. You can get this from the third party sites. You can get this online by doing a simple search is what I recommend. Let's say you start off with no budget, right? Is a simple window. And make sure it is a pretty wide window that can cover pretty much all of your body and it's bigger than you ideally. And all you need to do is to just put your camera in front of a window and that yourself is the no budget hack when it comes to lighting and understanding how it is that you probably late your subject. What if you want to get a little bit more intermediate or advanced is I didn't say you invest in either a ring light, which is notoriously known for you have your other social media platforms and using a ring light, you put your camera in the middle, that yourself is a pretty good start. What you can also invest in having to soft boxes, there are little bigger and it'll give you more control of a diffused light looks so your overall video can be more well lit. And I'm gonna show you in the next part exactly how you actually set up each one of these guys. It's pretty simple and I will show you how to place your lighting and understanding the fundamentals and the next part as well.
5. The 3 types of lighting: So if you want to get the super technical fundamentals, essentials of video lighting, that things that they teach you in film school is the basics of there are three lights. First is your key light, also known as your main source of lighting. This lighting should be your brightest light on your set that you have. You have your secondary light, which is your fill light. So it is essentially what is what it sounds. You have something that's filling out the shadows from that main source of light. And only difference from a fill and a key light is that the fill light is a little bit more dimmer than your key. Like, like I said, if you only had one light to invest in a key light, and the key light and newly appointed directly either straight in front of you, which will give you more of a flat profile. But for the most part, key laser pointed off just to the side at a 45 degree angle, creating something called a Rembrandt lighting, where you have shadows within your face like I have right now with my ring light. And like I said, fill light is just to fill out other shadows if the video itself is too dark and increasing a lot of harsh shadows. So you want to have a little bit of diffusers. So it's what we call have a secondary lighting, which is your fill light. So you have one light here, which is your key light, and then you would have a secondary light if you wanted to fill light, but you don't have to. It is completely optional and a look that you're going for. But like I said, the main source of lighting is called your key light. Your fill light is something that fills in the shadows, but it's not as bright as the key light. And your third or tertiary type of lighting is either a hair light or you have a backlight so you can light up anything in the back so it's not completely black. So the purpose of having a hair light as well as the backlight is it creates like you can have a rim light to have outline the shadows so it creates more of a layer. So think of it as when it comes to video lighting. You have your key light, which is your top layer. You have your secondary lights with is your fill light and you have your bottom lines, which is your headlights or your back layers. And the whole purpose of lighting as you want to be able to think of it like photography or Photoshop or any sort of thing that has layers and occurring textures and depth on camera. So the more depth and 3D video will look from the lighting. It'll just little more cinematic, more cool movie like, and just something that differentiates yourself from, let's say, your average person who doesn't know much about lighting. So just have a little review. Everything here is what I said. He light is your main light should be the brightest, as well as your main source of lighting. Directly light up your subjects and usually placed at a 45 degree angle. You have your fill lights, which I don't have right now, but it is optional. I would have it right here and it would be a little less dimmer than my key light. And there'll be more diffused or more soft on my face just to fill out the shadows as well as tertiary. Or thirdly is that you have your backlight or some sort of light that has shining on top of your subject. It's called a hair light as well or backlight, as well as more complicated things like a brim light that creates late from here to here, just to simply have a silhouette of your subject and talent, but that's optional and more so done for movies and cinematics.
6. How to apply the 3 types of lighting: Behind of behind the scenes. Is that right now all I'm using is just one soft box, like I said. And this is how it would look like if I wasn't using the soft box and relying on the soft box as my main source of lighting. So I will just put the soft box right behind me. As you guys can see right now. Make sure it's camera's pointing straight out me. And now this is me just using one source of lighting, which it looks fine as you guys can see. I am fully lit, but the only downside of using one light is it looks kind of flat. Alright? So what I would do if you want to get more advanced, besides using just a window as a key light and using one light is having, placing your key light and a little bit more of a cinematic lighting. So how I would do that? It was moved awaiting off to the side just a little bit. And simply move the camera just off to the side, creating more of that shadow or Rembrandt lighting. So now as you can see, if you draw a line straight down my face, there is a little bit more of a 3D or depth to my lighting, and this is more the preferred angle you have it at a 45 degree angle, your key light. And this is already a good start to have your own talking head video. But I'm going to go into the more advanced portion, which is having two lights. So what you need to do is I would move this key light off to the side here. And then what I would do is have the second wait, the second soft box study just setup almost at essentially a 45-degree angle. And now seeing how that looks as a back or fill light a little bit closer and other light a little farther. And when you do have two lights, just be wary of how the angle is. Two the lighting and you're always adjusting it. So right now this light may be a little too close and I also need a bump down the ISO just a little bit. And then what I'm doing is I'm increasing the height of this light. As well as I am also going to be increasing the height of this light as well, because this is a jump. Surely my key light, this guy right here. And this is my more of my fill light. Somebody back this guy up just a little bit and have my fill light right here, my key light, Excuse me, right here, right next to me. Turn this guy a little bit more this way. So now I have a little bit of my key light right here. I would turn this just a smidge down. It's always about testing, experimenting, especially. If you're shooting by yourself right now I have my key light, which is right to the left to me, and I have a fill light, which I purposely backed off to my right. So I'm going to show you guys what that would look like if I just had one key light, right? This is my key light off to the side, like I said, super cinematic, little dark in the shadows. You don't know what's going on back. And we have a bookshelf or a bookcase. You definitely want to have a bakelite, which I'll explain in the next part. But right now. And you can see I'm just relying on one key late, super simple. Just make sure it's not in frame. And it's pointing right at your subject at a 45 degree angle. And now I'm going to turn on my fill light. And now this is me with the fill light. And the fill light is purposely placed a lot farther since these are soft boxes and occassionally dim the lights or how I control the lights is there's two options. I can either have this fill light, hit me directly straight on, or you can have it completely bounced up off of the wall. So I would lower this all the way up. So right now what's going on is the fill light is hitting the ceiling and because the ceiling is white, it's bouncing back down onto me. So how this looks is even more of a diffused look, but you are still lighting up your subject. So let's see how that looks with affiliates of the wall. And this is how it looks like without any fill light. So this is something that you want to experiment with. So like I said, key light pointing directly 45 degrees angles at me. And now I have my fill light just bouncing off the ceiling. Going on to me. Third party wise of the ceiling and then back onto my face compared to just having the soft box pointed straight at me. And you can always adjust the fill light and you wanna see how light bounces by just turning on and off the light to see how much that actually fills up the room. And if you want to have the most ideal light setup is you want to have something like a Bakelite. So what I would do is I would invest in a ring light right here, as you guys can see. And this would be my back light. Maybe change it to a different colored tmp, have it bounce off the wall here. And ideally ahead extension cable, I would have this placed a little bit farther so it won't confuse the lighting and it's all about experimenting. So I would turn this backup to a warm light. And now this is me using all three lights. You have your key light, my fill light, and my backlight just to create a little bit of depth, depth and texture. But ideally, I would have it placed here instead of here, but my extension cord doesn't go that long and I'm going to go one-by-one and turn them off to see how much of a difference it makes. So right now, turning off the backlight, right? Turning off my fill light, and then turning off my key light, that's pitch black. And one of the benefits of using all three lightings is the more light you have, the more likely your autofocus on your camera is going to work at it's highest proficiency. So now I have my key light, my fill light, as well as my backlit. And because the backlight is a little overpowering and it's going to turn it down just a bit, just to have a little bit ambulance. And now this is essentially your most, I would say cinematic, but you can do even if your own Hafez, your bedroom, wherever it is, even if it's a client video like this is how you light up how or how I would light up any sort of talking head video. And you wanna make sure that, like I said, your subject is properly lit. So you have the best video and the best way that you can, audience can actually see as well as it looks professional.
7. Budget and lighting: So for the complete beginner and you're on a complete budget and you don't want to invest in any equipment and any lighting. I'm going to show you that beginner way is all you simply do is you pick up your camera. Maybe you have a tripod put on the window sill or a shelf or on top of a stack of books. And you just put your camera in front of the window and making sure the camera is facing towards you, meaning your window is your main source of lighting. Pretend this was the window. I put my camera right here that is using the sun or natural lighting. And that itself is using the sky or the sign as your key light. And preferably, one of the things that you wanna do is make sure what time of day it is. You don't want to make sure the downsides of using the window or natural lighting is that you don't get control the lighting is that the sun decides to control your lighting. So if you pick the most brightest time a day, but some may be too harsh. You pick the too late of the day. You're not going to have enough light. So if you want to have a no budget shoot and you just wanna make talking head videos like I am right now, is that you want to pick preferably, let's say noon or let's say around golden hour, you want to pick a time that is consistent with the lighting source does not change and the sun can also mooks, they'll be aware of that. But the super budget thing is just to put your phone in front of a window. And that should solve most of your element tree lighting issues if you have no experience at all. If you do want to invest in lighting and more than intermediate way of understanding and budget lighting is I would get you to invest in a ring light or when soft box. And what you're doing is you are having a controllable source of light. So having a ring light within your videos allows you to control how bright or dark it gets without having to rely on things like the sun and natural lighting. And you yourself can control exactly where you want to place the light. So right now, yes. I have my ring light to set off to the side. But what I can also do is I can put the light right here through the camera, which it does give me that halo effect. And if you want to avoid that, all you do is you put your lighting and just off to the side on a 45 degree angle. But you can also have this exact same setup. The 45-degree angle is you have a soft box in the same place as well, and that will be your main source of lighting. And for the most part, all you need if you want to invest this lighting is one key light. And that key light, if placed in the right position, will actually give you decent source of lights. So you yourself can talk to the camera, you can talk to your audience. You can have your own skills, your course, whatever it is that you want. Just remember that the key light is 45 degrees. The brightest light that you'll have that will light up your subjects. You don't want to have the key light place straight in front of you. If you wanted to get rid of that regulate, you want to have the light be at 45 degree angle, so it's not as harsh. And think about it, the closer you bring to the light, towards your subject, the harsher the light will become, and the more farther away, the more softer and more diffused light will become. So there'll be less harsh on your subject creating either overexposed videos are overexposed lighting, as we like to say. So you get really serious about investing all of your budget and to lighting what I was adjusted. You have three lights. Like the exact setup that I talked about is you would have yourself a key light of fill light as well as a back hair and rim light. Like I said, key late of fill light and a back light. And how you would position all of these lights is you would have both of your key and your fill light and up opposing 45-degree angles when being a key light a little closer, your fill light being a little farther. And then you would have your backlight right behind your subject, either bouncing off a wall, you can get a little bit more technical having late bound up the wall back at you. And you can also do more complicated things like replicate the sun, but we're not talking about this is more the budget. Beginners introductory to lighting. So having a key like close to you as well, having your fill light a little farther and a Bakelite. So you can actually have a more of a 3D space. So the whole purpose of having this three-point lighting setup, it it was it will fully light up your video. You won't have any harsh dark shadows as well as it will illustrate and showcase anything but you have in the background. Or it will look like you're talking in a pitch black cave.
8. Conclusion: So now guys, you know exactly how to set up your own learning and understanding the fundamentals that you can take anywhere. Whether you want to make videos on any one of your favorite social media platforms. You want to talk to your camera, or you just want to have some sort of social media content for your phone. The same lighting techniques and principles apply. Understand that key light delayed back late. Now when you talk to someone, you know exactly how to set the scene. And the more that you watch films, short films, TVs, movies. And the more you start to be able to see how their lighting works and think about where are they getting their writings from an understanding that I'd enduring from natural sources or they have their own key, light fill lights, all sorts of different ways and techniques. The more you break it down, the more user applying for your own self and seeing how video is actually made. And like I said, the importance of having lights for video shoot, especially with the talking head, is so important. If I just turn off my light there. And all I did was rely on having bumping up my camera settings to the highest possibility is not going to look as good as it comes to just lighting. So this was my budget way of showing you guys how you actually learn lading and YouTube and now apply it to wherever your heart's desire. My name is Peter from a broke vision and collective, and I hope this class was able to help you.