Talking Heads 05: Lighting
The best lighting of a talking head, whether Hollywood produced on a sound stage, or in a living room with a web cam, boils down to the same basics. Good lighting produces pleasant video. Hollywood three-point lighting is not always possible; the most difficult of the three points being the back light that highlights the hair and shoulders. But, a cool trick can simulate great, three-point lighting. The basics; you'll need three light sources. A Key, Fill and Backlight. The Key and Fill are directed towards the talent with the Key light being the one that is brightest. You don't want even lighting. You want some depth, thus the varying light levels produced by the brighter Key and the less bright Fill. These two lights should be far enough away to produce softer shadows. Using soft white bulbs will help. The backlight is the trick. This usually is achieved with a special boom tripod that suspends the light behind the talent and up high, shining down on head and shoulders. Simply placing the talent under the living room or dining room light fixture can achieve some of the effects of a proper backlight. Make sure to position the chair such that the talent does not have weird looking shadows falling down their face from the ceiling light. Since the ceiling light fixture is pretty "fixed" in its position (it ain't going anywhere) setup the chair location under that light first. Then set up the Key and Fill. Positioning Key and Fill should be something near a 45 degree angle to the line of lens to talent, on either side of the camera. Everyone has different facial features that cast different profile shadows. Experiment. The 45 degree angle is just a starting point and is not even a hard and fast rule. Some things to watch for. America is in the middle of a culture war right now regarding our source of light bulbs. Even though we are told that the fluorescents are "greener", they are being produced in less than desirable conditions overseas without green laws forcing them to protect the environment, not to mention the dangerous mercury issue inherent in all fluorescents. Silly, I know, but there it is. So, my opinion is that the jury is still out on this one. Until we find out who wins, we all will be caught in lighting situations from time to time that mix different colors and temperatures of lights; from fluorescent to incandescent, from day light to cool white. Compounding this challenge is the reactive response that individual video cameras have towards the automatic white balancing firmware onboard. Testing is really important. Make sure that your talent doesn't have pink and orange skin tones from the mixture of real daylight from the open curtains and the mixed lighting in house. If weird looking colors show up, you are probably mixing light sources somewhere. Choosing one color of light for all fixtures is the quickest way to success.If you found this article helpful and would like to know more about [http://www.ezwebplayer.com/]web video streaming and to discover a simpler solution to making it all happen you should visit [http://www.ezwebplayer.com]http://www.ezwebplayer.com. Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Talking-Heads-05:-Lighting&id=5811551] Talking Heads 05: LightingComments [0]
