Setting up lighting and sound

- All right. This is chapter two, lesson three. Just before I know I mentioned where we're going to shoot a script, just before you do that, there's still two more things you want to, you want to do and test before you get to that point. Lighting and sound. Very, very important, that probably the most thing that everyone messes up before they shoot is getting those two things right. So the first thing, lighting. And the option that you have in your environment depending on where you're shooting, simple, simple thing to utilize is a window. If you can, I'm sure we can find one somewhere in your office space. If not, you know, do the best you can, but window light can act as your key light source and it is a very good light source for that matter. So like the way to do that is basically pretend for example in this video right now that the camera, is just standing in front of the window, meaning the window, I'm faced to it right now. So that light is lighting me. So you would want basically face the window, to utilize that window light and the camera will shoot basically in that place. All right? That's how you basically utilize a window light to light you naturally. Okay? And the key, the key reason why you would want to use window light is because it gives you that natural look and it's the best light source. You don't have to worry about external lighting. Now, you do have an option, you can add a fill light just to pop the face for the eyes, to make it even look crisper. If you don't feel like the window is giving enough light, you can just maybe, you know, purchase an inexpensive, sun gun light, that can be mounted on top of the camera or be placed near the camera. If you don't have that option, you can even maybe use something in your office, whether it might be a lamp or maybe even some sort of construction like that. You can utilize just the pop on the face in conjunction with your natural window light. The other thing that you could possibly set up, which is a little bit more advanced but, is definitely, you know, a nice option to have, is a three point lighting technique and this basically, purchasing three sets of lights and put them into sort of like a triangle, to give you the nice lighting that you have, on someone. So those are your kind of your lighting options right there. Recommended definitely the natural window light, you can utilize that. The next thing to consider, is audio. As you can see, you can hear me quite clearly. There's not a lot of background noise here. So you, the key thing is to find the quiet spot somewhere where there's no background noise or laugh and or phones or which I know can be hard in an office setting. If it's your own private shop or if you, you know, you can find somewhere quiet spot. That is the key. Even after hours, maybe after everything closes would be a nice way to do it. So that step one is trying to find a quiet place. The second thing is going out there and purchasing like an inexpensive lavalier mic. Lavalier mic is what I'm wearing right now. This one is a wired one, and what it is, it's a little clip, a little baby microphone if you will. It can clip to your shirt or your collar, and it basically captures all the audio coming right from, from my mouth, from this general area. The only thing that will happen is it will capture some audio around me as well. So if there were any background noise happening here, it would pick a little bit of that up in the video, which is why you want to pick a quiet spot. The simple thing that set the lavalier mic up is plugin in and play basically. So you basically what you would do for a wire lav is take the wire lav, you're going to place it somewhere nice and neat on your, on your shirt or it's not to in view, especially if it's got a wire too you want to dress the underneath your shirt. All right. And clip it somewhere close to your kind of in your throat area. Not too close, not too far down, but just sort of in the middle. And then you going to plug it directly into your DSLR camera. Now that is the easiest way to do it. The most simplest way. The one sort of weary thing to be aware of is that when you do it right into the DSLR camera, when there's periods of not talking, and so you pause for a couple of seconds. What tends to happen is that there's what they call an auto gain feature with the DSLR camera, which means that the camera will boost a little bit of the sound to capture any sort of kind of air, if you will. It kind of captures some air sound, which doesn't sound horrible, but it can be noticeable. But I mean for nine times out of 10, it might not be noticeable to people. The way to offset that if you, you know, it's more an advanced way, but it is a very, professional way, is to basically get an external recorder, like a zoom recorder and plug in the lavalier mic into the zoom recorder as an external acquainted device. Then you have the camera capturing my audio as well. So you have two audio sources, one from the camera capturing, which is more of like a atmospheric audio capture. Then you have the direct audio coming in, into an external recorder on the side. So what happens is obviously you wouldn't have two audios, right? The only thing is in you have to sync those audios up in an editing function, which is very easy to do. But those are two options, and depending on what you feel that you're most comfortable with, the zoom recorder being the best one to, the ideal one to choose because of the quality. But the, DSLR plugin is the simplest way. In this example, Erica is now clipping her lavalier mic to her lapel. She puts on her headphones and does a quick little test of the audio to see what it sounds like. Then Erica, has someone help her do the white balancing. She gets a gray card and they focus it on the gray card and then she goes into her settings and chooses the custom white balance setting. And that will make sure that she has a proper lighting, balance for her interview shot. Well, you have to do at a miss, basically go ahead and set that up. So set up your camera, tests your lighting, and test your audio, and see how it sounds.