Train the Trainer Part 3: Recording 101

It can be difficult to manipulate light without proper gear, like film lights, gels, and scrims. That being said, there are ways to improve the lighting in your videos with things you probably have at home.

If you are dealing with hard shadows, consider moving to a room with softer lighting, out of direct sunlight or fluorescent lights. High-key lighting can be mitigated by bringing another light source in, like a lamp, to fill in the darker spaces of the frame. Matching the colour of your lighting sources is more difficult, but can usually be achieved by keeping the number of lights limited. If possible, using light bulbs with the same colour temperature will ensure that the colours match. Lighting can be a tricky area to perfect, but the most important thing is that your face is evenly lit on camera. As long as there are no seriously over or under-exposed sections of the frame and no radical shifts in colour temperature, we can easily touch the footage up with a bit of colour correction.

There's no need to get everything perfect so long as those requirements are met. Below is an example of an image before (left) and after (right) colour correction.