The Importance of Lighting in Video Production

Series Summary

Digital media is the next big thing, but we don't have to leave it to the big shots anymore. It's wonderful that this technology is finally trickling its way down to the amateur hobbyists, the art school drop out, the film school graduate, or the mother of three. Digital video cameras make it easy for you and your friends to create dramatic indie films, documentaries, or home movies. Computer editing software is as close as your desktop and fingertips, giving you the same applications the professionals are using right at home. You can even make animation and DVD menus! Get on board and make your professional quality digital videos and media from home.

If you are starting your own video production company or you just want to make home movies, this free video series is perfect for you. Lighting is one of the most important parts of making videos. Clearly, if you can't see well, the video doesn't do you much good. Let our expert, Drew Noah, show you how light a video. He gives you tips about everything you need to know: supplies, diagrams, color temperatures, and more. Also, learn how to use various kinds of light in your videos. Drew shows you how to use key lights, back lights, fill lights, background lights, and more. Learn how to use light diffusers and natural light. So, shine some light on the matter, and learn how to professionally light videos today!

Video Transcript

"Today I'll be showing you a little bit about do-it-yourself lighting for video. Before we start, I just want to talk about the importance of lighting. It's something you might overlook, you might get your video camera and then you just try to go out there and shoot. It's just not going to look great until you get real great at lighting. It's just very essential to making things look good. Lighting's a little bit weird. You may be putting all these lights on your subject and it looks like you're just, it's just way bright, it's weird. But when you get it on camera, it looks right. The cameras see things differently than your eye. First off, they see things a lot darker. You may think that there's plenty of light in here or something but actually there's not. Well, right now there is. You're in a room, there looks like there's plenty of light but there's not. You get on camera, it looks dark, you're getting grainy results because there's just not enough light. So that's when you need to know how to throw your own lights up like we got here. I'm going to be showing you how to do this little do-it-yourself light kit. Light kits can be expensive so I've been doing this for awhile and just doing my own thing. I'll show you how to build your own kit and get some pretty good results for how much you paid for it. So, let's get started with the do-it-yourself light kit."