Pro Lighting on a Budget: How to Light a Talking Head Shot

1. Intro: The best gear is the one you have right now. I'm not saying you shouldn't be buying new useful things, but if you need to create something right now, the best equipment is the one you have in your house or in your pocket. But what if your Skillshare class or YouTube video isn't looking as nice and professional as you want it. You might think only a fancy new camera or a new studio light will fix that problem for you. But in reality, what you need is some knowledge and lots of creativity. Hi, my name is Uroš, but some of you may know me as Umcaruje. I'm a music producer and videographer based in Belgrade, Serbia. Ever since I was little, I was obsessed with cameras and I used to make videos with whatever I could get my hands on. Naturally. I went to college with audio and video production and then ended up working on live television. But lately, I've been shooting and editing Skillshare classes from my sister DUE, which you have made over 15 classes, seven of which were awarded the staff pick. Now, when you start creating video content, you realize that life is what makes or breaks your video. Even high-quality cameras will produce bad, grainy images when paired with a poorly lit scene. And if you have a well lit and balanced scene, even a budget camera can shine through and deliver a great result. In this class, we'll focus on creating a single professional looking, talking head shot. I'll share with you my experience when it comes to making videos that stand out using equipment you already have. This class is aimed at all levels and I want to get you up and running given if you're a complete beginner, will go through writing basics, learning about color, temperature, how to create soft light, and where to position our lights to get the best results. Will also learn how to visualize our lighting setup so we waste less time on the day overshoot. I'll show you two scenarios are complete. No budget setup where we'll just use our phone, natural light and things you can find around your house. And another session with a better camera and then budget light kit that won't break your back. By the end of this class, you'll be armed with skills and knowledge that will help you achieve all your video ideas easily and professional. I'm happy that you're here. So let's get started. 2. Project: The project for this class is to make a single great looking static talking head shot. Now, why did I choose a talking head shot? I feel like no matter what content you are creating beats of log, short documentary or a Skillshare class are talking head is an essential shot. One single static frame where you tell her story that you can spice up with some B-roll or other shots later. It's also a great starting point for learning and you can apply the techniques we discuss here to any other situation. You can use whatever equipment you have available to you, either a camera or your phone. One thing I would recommend is having some way to keep your cameras table. You can prop up your device and some books. But the safe bet is using a tripod. This can be achieved Dollar Store tripod that you attach to your phone to or an inexpensive photo tripod. Try to find a room that is available to you that has the most natural light. And if you all some lighting equipment, use it. If you want to buy some lighting equipment, I'll share some of my recommendations in a later lesson on a budget light kit. And I leave a list of good budget gear in the project and resources section. The best way to learn is by doing so, please feel free to experiment and have fun while doing this class. When you publish your project, feel free to share with us your process and all the things you use to get your shot. You can also include your lighting diagram that we'll be creating, as well as photos of your setup. You can upload your final video on a website like YouTube or Vimeo and then add it to your project. So all of us can see how great you are talking head shot looks. So when you're ready, just click on the Create Project button and add your project. I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll talk about some lighting basics. 3. Lighting Basics: Before we get started with our project, I wanted to give you a crash course in some terminology that I will be using in this class. I will also be showing you various examples so you better understand these concepts. I want to thank my sister and her dog for helping me out with these. And the small disclaimer, please don't feel discouraged by the number of stems or lights you see in these examples. This environment was the easiest way to show you all these concepts. And we'll be recreating these using budget gear later in the class. Now, let's talk about cold temperature, quality of light, and positioning. When we think about light, we usually think there is white light and colored light. But you may have noticed that not all white light is the same color. When you look around your home, some lights are warmer or more orange and some lights or cooler or bluer. For example, old-school tungsten lights are a lot warmer than daylight, which has more blue, cool tones. We call this color temperature. Color temperature is a property of light that tells us how warm or cool the lightest. This is a scale that's measured in Kelvins. The higher the value the bluer light is. So, for example, most tungsten fixtures have a color temperature of around 3200 Kelvin, while daylight is around 5600 Kelvin. Unlike your eyes, which can adjust to these changes in core temperature, your camera needs an internal reference of what white light is, so that whatever we record with it has proper colors. And this is called white balance. Now, why does this matter to us though? When you're lighting something and you have multiple lights coming from the same direction, you want these lights to match in core temperature. So if we're in front of a window and we want to fill out the shadows on her face. Doing that with a warmer light such as a tungsten one will create this very weird effect on your skin tone. And if your camera is and also white balance, it may even struggle to determine the white balance of your scene and you could get weird colors. So when mixing lights, make sure they match in color temperature. Now, let's talk about the quality or the softness of light. If you go outside on a sunny day where there are no clouds in the sky, you can see that the sun creates shadows that have a hard edge. This is what's known as a hard light source. But if you go outside on a cloudy day, you can see that these shadows now don't have such a prominent edge and also aren't nearly as strong as they were on a sunny day. So what creates softness? Well, it's the relative size of your light source compared to a subject. So the sun might be physically big, but relative to us, it's small source of light because it's so far away. It's hard light. Light bulbs are also hard sources of light because they are relatively small compared to us. Now, when they put something in front of our light, like clouds and an overcast day. This increases the relative size of our light source and it becomes softer. This is called diffusion. Examples of diffusion materials that are readily available in your homework curtains. Another great material that you can use, the diffused light is regular parchment or baking paper. You might have noticed that diffusion material also reduces the actual intensity of your light source. So keep that in mind when you diffuser lights, as you'll need a more powerful light source to achieve high brightness. On the other hand, if you have a light source, can control the output. Diffusion comes in real handy. You can put two or more layers of the same diffusion material in front of your light. This won't necessarily make the light softer, but as we're not making the source bigger, it will allow you to cut down the light if it's too bright. Now, why does all this matter to us? Generally for lighting human faces, soft light is more desirable. It looks flat, thundering, softens your skin up a bit, and you have this nice graduated fall off to your shadow area. Hard light can also be used, but it's shadows are harder to control, especially for a beginner. When you look at the shot, a single frame, I want you to think about it like it's made of two layers. We have our subject layer in the front and our background layer. And when you think about your scene in terms of depth, there are three positions that we are concerned with. Lights pointing directly at your subject. Lights pointing at the back of our subject. Lights pointing at their background. So the first light positions we're going to talk about are the key and fill lights. These two lines are in front of your subject and there are pointed directly at them. The key light is our main light, and it's generally the brightest light in your scene. This slide gives shape to our subject's face and it's positioned determines how many shadows we get on our subject's face. So how high should our key light be? Well, you want the light source either at eye level or slightly higher end pointed downwards. And if your light is coming directly from above, this can create shadows in your eye sockets, which looks unpleasant. That creates a log that's more suitable for a prison interrogation scene but won't fit in a simple talking head. A lot of delights in our homes, our ceiling mounted. And so that's why I would discourage you from using them. Exactly for this reason. How about the angle of our key light compared to our subject? If the light is directly in front of us, we get a very flat look with no shadows on the face. Personally, this is a bit too flat and the face of our subject looks just a bit too wide for my taste. Now, when you move your light to the side, you get more definition on the face. And you can see that one side gets darker. And this looks great for interviews and talking heads. The sweet spot is around 30 to 45 degrees. When we increase the angle even further to 90 degrees, you can see that we now have a rather dramatic image. Half of the face is in shadow and the other half is not. When you are doing your projects. I invite you to experiment, move your light, and see what works best for you. Now, most of you will probably working with a window which is immovable. But what you can do in this case is move your subject and camera and look at the results of changing the angle. You can even sit on a chair in front of a window and just rotate with your selfie camera. And just notice how the light changes the shape of your face. What about the quality of our key lights? I like this light to be as big and as soft as it gets. This can be a window with diffusion in front of it or something like a big softbox. Having a big soft key light gives you a flattering look and it's great for beginners. Now, let's talk about the phyllite. Remember those shadows that are key light makes. The purpose of the phyllite is to fill in these shadows. The thing is, this doesn't necessarily need to be another light source. You can use another light that has a lower intensity, or you can use a reflector to bounce the light of your key. Light. Reflectors can be bought for cheap, but what you can also use that is readily available is a simple piece of foam core or poster board. This surface of the reflector reflects the light and it fills in our shadows. And I like to use the white surface because it gives a really soft, natural looking bounds. And the intensity of this reflection can be controlled by moving the fill light closer or farther away from your subject. If you don't have a fill light, you move your reflector. So if my key light is soft enough, I rarely use a separate light for my film. It's always some kind of reflector. This also has the added bonus of not worrying about matching the color temperature of my lights. Because as we said before, you want your key and fill light to be the same color. Otherwise, it can just look weird. Back lights are lights that are behind our subject and pointing at their back. Now, this light is something that hollywood loves. If you look at your favorite movies, almost all scenes will have a backlight. This is a great addition to our lighting setup because it makes your frame look cinematic. And it also helps it look more three-dimensional. It separates your subject from your background. Where can you position your backlight? You could try having it directly behind your subject, which almost gives this halo effect. But if your subject moves, it could become visible. Placing it on the side is a great option. And having it on the opposite side of your key light is a great look. You can even have to back lights on both sides, or you can spice it up by having a cold backlight. Now, what about the quality of our backlight? Hard light sources can be great as back lights, as they get bright. And because they're not that big, you can focus them only on your subjects back. A backlight is not an essential light and you can absolutely omitted. But I encourage you to experiment. This one light can make your frame pop and might just be what you need to make your shots stand out. It really shines in situations where, for example, you have someone with dark hair on a dark background. Also, sometimes it just doesn't fit. So when I'm doing classes with my sister, and we shoot from two angles, one in front and one from a bow with an iPad on a table. I omit the back-light because it leaves a weird shadows on the table that I just can't avoid. So just look, observe your shot and trust your gut and go with what looks best to you. Background lights are all lights that are not pointed, that are subject, but rather at our background. Alongside the key light, they give the atmosphere and overall mood to your shot. Depending on the mood, you want your background brighter or darker. But what you need to remember is that your background should serve your subject. If it's too bright and jarring, it will attract attention, even if it's stood them or inconsistently let it can look unprofessional. Background lights can also appear in your shots. This is what's known as a practical light. And they can be a great way to add visual interest. Word of caution for these though, they usually end up being too bright in your scene and you will need a way to control them. This could be a dimmer if you're working with tungsten lights or demo herbal LEDs. Or you could even use some diffusion to dim down your light, maybe line up your lamp with parchment paper. Your background light setup can also be really simple. You have a single light pointing at the wall directly behind your subject. This creates a nice gradient lighting that focuses your viewers attention to your subject. Simple, yet effective. Background lights are also great places to experiment with colors. I love using colored lights that I shine on white or gray walls. And because they are more color to my shot and make it more visually interesting. As always, don't be afraid to experiment, use what you have available and try many different things until you find something that is both pleasing and fits with your projects theme or mood. Now, let's talk about pre visualizing our lighting. 4. Previsualizing: Before you take your camera and your hand and start setting up lights, I want you to go inside of this space that you've picked for your project. And just take a moment and start observing. Look at all the various light sources you have there. The first thing I look for our windows, big sources of natural light. I also look for fixed artificial lights in the room. They ceiling mounted. Are they the mobile? What core temperature our day. This will all determine your decision on whether to use them or not. I also look for portable lamps. These can be desk lamps or clamp lights, or sometimes you can even use Christmas lights and add them to your background as practicals to create some visual interests. Now, take all that you noticed and put it on paper. Sketch out your room, draw out your roles and mark where your lights are. Then think about your lighting setup. Find your key light first. This will usually be the brightest light you have in the room. And then roughly mark where your subject will be positioned. This doesn't need to be exact and you'll surely fine tune it when you start setting it up, but it will make your day faster. And if you have multiple spots where you think you can place your camera, try them all out quickly. We can pull out your selfie camera and just look where the light looks best. Now, after that, see what lights you will and won't use. For example, a really don't like leaving ceiling lights on, especially when they are a different color temperature than my key light. In. If you have a light you want to use, assign a function to it. Maybe it fits as a backlight, may be a fill light or a background light. But if that light doesn't have a clear purpose, just don't use it. This is the key to a clean look. I think there's pretty visualizing exercise can be a great way to wrap your head around this concept of lighting and positions. And it can also be a time-saver because you went through the options in your head beforehand. So you can spend more time on actual fine-tuning and setup of your lights on, they should. 5. No Budget Lighting: So for recording my no budget lighting project, I picked my bedroom. This is a relatively bright room, as you can see with three big windows. And when we have no budget, big windows with lots of light are the key to getting a clean image. Because as long as your light is bright, your camera has enough information to work with and doesn't give you a noisy image. Now, after noticing the three windows I have in my room, I also looked at what fixed slides I have. I had two ceiling lights and one mounted high on the wall, but all three of them gave off warm tungsten light. I also looked around my house and find two house lamps. One had a warmer bulb and the other one had have cool daylight color temperature. So for my key light, I decided to pick my second window because the first one wasn't that usable due to being next to my table. As far as fixed lights go, all three were unusable for me because they were ceiling mounted and also warm and they could mix too much with the daylight. Now, the two lamps were very promising and they decided to use the daylight one as a backlight. And the tungsten want to light my background as it's warmer color temperature would complement the color of my wall. So before we start with the setup, I wanted to mention that when you're working with natural light, you need to think about when you will shoot your video. This is important as some levels vary throughout the day. I usually shoot my videos from ten AM when the sun is already up and until the afternoon, depending on the season, you want to use an interval where the sun outside is fairly consistent for at least a couple of hours. Soup can set up everything and not rush. When it came time to set up my shot, I had to get creative. First. I removed all of the furniture that I wouldn't be using out of my room. Then I put some diffusion on my second window, my key light. And the reason I did that was because it was relatively sunny day and I wanted to even out my window and create a big soft light source out of it. Then I set up my shot. I use my iPhone and a dollar store tripod. And to get it to the height of my sister, I had to put it on a chair with a bunch of books on it. I placed my sister at an angle from my window, so I hit that 30 to 45 degrees sweet spot with my key light. After that, I put my blinds on my first window to remove it out of the equation because it just didn't fit in any of the other lighting positions. To get a clean shot, I zoomed in a bit so I could avoid any walls or door openings. And then after all that, I did a long press on my sister's face on my phone screen and swipe down a bit to lock the out-of-focus and now to exposure and to make the shot a bit darker so the left side of her face looks perfect. The next step was adding the fill light for this. I opted for a sheet of poster board I had lying around my house. I fixed it between some letters and held it down by some books and a Bluetooth speaker. Remember, we have absolutely no budget to spend here. So you need to get creative with replacements for stance and other things. I moved my fill until it was just out of my frame so I get as much evenness on the face as possible. Next up was the backlight. I tried fixing the cool daylight land on a chair but it's clipped, broke in half on my first try. So my second option was just taping it with as much tape as I could find. It worked. I got the shot. I opted for a side backlight on the opposite of my key. I moved it until I got to just out of the frame and making sure I don't get some weird highlights on my sister's knows. The final step is setting up the background light was the easiest. I fit it behind my sister on the floor so it doesn't interfere with any of the other lights and just pointed it to the wall trying to get an even coverage. So the background was consistently lit. And this is our final shot. Now let's add up all these different lights to see the progression. First, we start with just our window light with no diffusion. Then we add some diffusion to our window. Next comes the fill than the backlight. And finally, the background light. I hope the difference between the first and the last stage can show you just how much you can achieve. But the things you have, I think this is a great result, but it does depend on having a room with a lot of natural light. I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll be making a budget light kits. 6. Budget Light Kit: Okay. Let's talk about budget lighting gear. Being a broke student, I always had to find ways to maximize my purchases and look into things that will give me the best bank for the buck. So what you're looking for is maximum output for the lowest amount of money possible. The first slides I ever bought were some cheap Halloween work lights in a home improvement store. But I think this is exactly what you should avoid buying. There are three things working against these lights. They consume a lot of power. They get really hot, so you can risk burning herself. They have a warm core temperature, so you can't mix them with daylight. What I found as a great, cheap solution that doesn't use a lot of power, has a daylight color temperature and gives me enough brightness so I can diffuse it. Or compact fluorescent bulbs are CFLs. These are great and you can find photography, read the 100 plus what bulbs for very cheap online. They're easy to use because they fit in any light socket and give you flexibility. Now, one thing I don't like about them is that they are fragile and if you break one, you need to clear the room for a couple of hours because there is mercury vapor inside. There are also LED lights and these are great. You can find them in many styles. As high output light bulbs, LED panel, or chip on board lights that you can attach different accessories to. Now, the problem with LED lights is that some of the cheaper ones don't give you a proper full spectrum light. This means some colors will be more prominent than others, leaving you with washed-out red or a color shift. To combat this, always look for lights that have a high color rendering index or CRI, around 90 or higher, is what you should aim for. And if an LED light doesn't have a listed CRI, just skip it. There are also RGB LED panels, and these are amazing. I bought these small LED panels from Yulan z that can do both RGB and by color lighting, which means their color temperature can be adjusted. And they paid just $15 for them. They are really versatile and I use them a lot for giving my background some color. They also work great as it back lights. Now, what about diffusion? We already talked about parchment paper. And another great diffusion material is shower curtains. Hang these and some kind of frame and shine a light through or put them on Windows to achieve a softer light. But one underrated sorts of amazing soft light that I wanted to talk about, our paper lanterns or China balls. These can be bought for really cheap in ikea or home improvement stores. And I paid $3 for my 50 centimeter China ball combined with my large CFL bulb and then inexpensive cable. This is a dirt cheap package that gives you great soft light. And that's exactly what I used for the key light for my budget project. Now, when it comes to reflectors, foam core or poster board works great. If you want something portable, having a collapsible reflector can really be a lifesaver. These come in different sizes and in many variants, but even the cheapest ones do their job. You also need to have a way to mount all these lights. Dollar Store tripods can work with some smaller LED panels. But my budget heck, is that I use cheap Mike stance. They come with a boom arm or adjustable in height and come cheaper than regular light stance. Note that most mike stands have a three-eighths inch screw on them for mounting LED panels and the like. You'll need some inexpensive three eighths inch to one-quarter inch screw adapters. All these budget recommendations will be in a downloadable PDF in the projects and resources section. So make sure to check that out. Now, let's talk about our project. I wanted to pick a scenario where there isn't a lot of natural light. And I picked this spot right next to my kitchen. These two windows don't get a lot of light, especially later in the day. So they were a great spot to show off what you can achieve with some of our budget gear. Before starting out, I decided these windows aren't going to be used as my key, but rather are used them. The texture of their blinds as an interesting background. The first thing I set up was my key light. This is 135 watts CFL light bulb that I put inside of my 50 centimeter China ball hanging out on a mic stand. This gives me some great soft light. I placed it on the side at around the 30 degree angle. I set up my camera and it's exposure according to my key light. For the fill light, I used my collapsible reflector on its white side and they just can't get up on my Mike Stan and taped it up a bit so we just doesn't move too much and they moved it just out of my frame. For my backlight, I use the cheap small LED light that I mounted on my mic stand using a square root. After I said this LED lights to a daylight temperature so it fits with my key light. And as my Mike Stan doesn't get nearly as high enough as I needed it for my backlight. I had to get creative and put my stand on a chair to get it high enough. I also made sure to weigh down the stand when I put it on the share so it will stay there and be secure. I placed my backlight on the opposite side of my key light, as they did in the previous example. For the background light, I already had my window that was illuminating the blinds, but one of my corners were just too dark. So I took another one of my small LEDs and just pointed it to the shadowed spot to even out the background. And this is our final shot. Now, let's add up all these different lights to see the progression. First, we start with just our window light and our subject is in silhouette. Then we add our key lights. Next comes the fill, the backlight, and finally the background touch-up. I hope these two examples give you some idea what you could do on your own projects. As always, experiment, move things around, look at your frame, and repeat until you're happy. Once you're done, share your project with us. And I can't wait to see what you come up with. 7. Thank You: Hey, I just wanted to say, thank you for spending time with me and watching this class. I hope you enjoyed this whole learning process and learn new techniques that will help you with your video projects. I would love to hear what you think about this class. So make sure to rate and review it. As always, if you have any questions or something I was showing wasn't clear, feel free to ask anything in the discussion section of this class, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can to get notified about my next classes. Follow me here on Skillshare. And you can also keep in touch with me on Instagram at home. I hope you enjoyed my first-ever Skillshare class, and I'll see you in the next one.