From the course: Pro Video Tips

Taking 10 pounds off your subject

From the course: Pro Video Tips

Taking 10 pounds off your subject

- This week on Pro Video Tips, I want to give you some techniques to make anybody look better on video. This is a really important topic for me, especially if you work in the world of corporate video like I do because if my clients don't look good then I don't look good. So, it's extremely important and it also goes to my bottom line of making money if you have the right skills and the right techniques to make anybody look better on camera. So, we're going to start with some of the basics. But the first one I am going to show you is how to take 10 pounds off. Contrary to popular belief, as you've heard me say before, a lot of people say the camera puts on 10 pounds, that is absolutely not true. I think bad camera people put on 10 pounds. So, I am going to show you how to be a good camera person and take 10 pounds off of anybody, whether they need it or not. This is just a great, simple little technique. So let's start right away with the actual camera position, so I am going to turn on my key light. And we're going to start off with a bad example. So, don't jump back too bad when we see what we got here, but we're going to improve it. Going to turn on my key light, striking. So, I've got a key right here and this is a common mistake I see a lot of times from many of my students and that is lighting and shooting somebody from below So, this is basically the primary mistake people are making, I think, when they put 10 pounds on somebody, is lighting them from below and shooting them from below. When you do this what happens, essentially, you have no definition around the chin area. So, you can give somebody a double-chin even if they are super skinny, you can totally give them a double-chin just by lighting them and shooting them from a certain angle. So, the first thing that I'm going to do that's going to help out Corey here, who's been kind enough to volunteer and sit in this chair, is that I'm going to raise my camera angle up and we're going to see right away that already her appearance starts to look very different on camera. Again, this is all perspective, it really doesn't have to do as much about what people look like, but really how you shoot and light them. So, let's start with camera position. So, camera position, we're just go ahead and raise this up and as I start to raise up already, we see we took off about three, four pounds, right there just by raising the camera up. So, that's our first step right there, and that definitely helps a lot, but by no means is that the end of it. We still have the other issue of where the lighting's coming from. So, apart from getting possibly a little bit spookier lighting when you're lighting from below, we always want to light pretty much at eye level and generally above eye level. But definitely, never below eye level. So right now, I'm coming a little bit below eye level and we're still getting a lot of light up in there. But, let's go ahead and give her some definition on her chin by raising this light up. So, I'm going to do that now. As I raise the light up, we can start to see I mean literally, you can see the definition coming underneath of her chin and just shaping her face right there. And I am going to angle the q-light down in a second, wait 'til I get it adjusted up there. So now, we're starting to look better, but we still can go a little bit further with this. I've got the light at a higher angle, but you can see that her face still looks really broad on camera because I had this very flat frontal lighting. But look what happens if I bring the light over to the right-hand side. So this is how we are literally, going to start shaving pounds off of somebody. Here's the secret, remember lighting is as much as about the light as it is about the shadows. Anything I want people to see, I'm going to highlight with light. Anything I don't want you to see or pay attention to, I'm going to put in the shadows. So that's essentially what I am doing here on her face and now I'm not using the fill light for this example right here, you can certainly add in little bit. But, for this purpose of taking away somebody's facial profile, I don't really want to fill in too much light on that side. So, this is our kind of after example right there. I might add a little fill for nose shadow, but I'm pretty happy with this. I think I can come up even more. So, I'm going to little bit more. Again, the higher I go, the more we start to cut down on that side. And right there, so right there with those little adjustments in camera angle and lighting, in particular, I've taken off 10 pounds and you can see right there my client Corey is a lot happer so I'm sure she's going to write me a much bigger check when this is all said and done. So, hope you guys learned something. I'll see you on the next one.

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