Electrical extensions This is one of my pet peeves when I have assistants working with me. Never plugged your lights power cable directly into a wall socket. Always plug it into an extension. Nothing drives me more crazy and when I'm working fast to get a job done and have to move my lights and after a couple of feet, I run out of cable and get jerked back. Your lights cables are maybe only 15 feet long. Your light is six feet off the ground.

That means that you only have nine feet. From the wall. It only takes a couple of seconds to neatly put a coil of electrical extension with each light. Then you can quickly move your lights to wherever you need them. Make sure your extensions are rated for both indoor and outdoor use. Let's talk about circuits.

We need to get a little technical for a moment. Besides the water sprinklers. The other thing that can put a damper on a chute is if you trip an electrical breaker. Keep in mind that most circuits are 15 amps. If you plug more than 15 amps into an outlet, you'll trip the circuit and then your shoot will come to a halt while you search for someone who knows where the circuit breaker panel is. It's better to keep in mind how many amps your lights are using and you separate circuits as necessary.

To convert watts into amps, you need to divide watts by voltage. Voltage in this case would be fixed at 110 volts So let's say you plug 1000 watt light into the wall. 1000 divided by 110 is just over nine. So that one light is using nine amps which means you will have six amps left to put on that circuit. You could plug in a 500 watt light without tripping that circuit. After that you need to find another circuit.

Chances are if you're shooting on location, no one will know where the fuse panel is, let alone how the circuits are divided. It's a pretty safe bet that most rooms are on their own circuit. See, if you're exceeding 15 amps, run an extension cord down the hall to another room to get power from a separate circuit. One last thing, make sure you buy spare bulbs for all of your fixtures. When one of your bulbs burns out, your chute won't be screwed. After your shoot, make sure you order another bulb right away.

So you're never left without a spare. Okay, time to light Interview setup, we're going to start with a bare bones to light setup. Then we'll add a third light and finally a fourth light to show you different ways to easily light a scene, depending on how much time you have to set up and how many lighting fixtures you have. We're going to light an interview see now with Andrea. And we can be as creative as you want when you're lighting depending on how much time you have, how many fixtures you have, I'm going to show you several different ways of doing it depending on how many fixtures you have. Now, let's say you're in a hurry, and you got to get up and running.

So the first thing we're gonna do is look at two lights. We have a front light directly over the camera and we're going to turn on a backlight. Everything's on dimmers here so you can adjust all your levels of light. We also have diffusion on the front lights, and we've got some gel and some black foil that we're going to use to the moment. So you can see this two light setups except But it's not really all that creative, it's just kind of flooding out the whole face. Now we're going to move the key light to the right side of the camera.

If that's where our producer was sitting in, Andre was looking over here at her producer answering questions. So we're going to give her face a little more depth and dimension by moving our key light. With our talent looking off camera, I always like to use the key light on the far side of her face. Now this is acceptable, but it's a little bit dramatic looking. So let's add a third light. Let's put a fill light on the near side of her face.

So again, we're going to use our dimmer and we're just going to sneak in that fill light. We still want some shadow on that side of her face to give her some dimension. So far we've got three lights in the scene here. So let's light up the background and try to give that a little bit of depth as well. I'm going to use this light which has some black foil with slits cut in it in some straw gel. We're going to simulate some sunlight coming through window, and you can move the light however you want.

Can highlight whatever pieces you want. I've got a clock and a plant back there. So this is an interview setup. We've got four lights, they're all on dimmers. We've got diffusion, we've got our key light, our fill light our backlight in a background light. One more thing.

If you're stuck in a bind, don't forget you still have your battery powered LED light on your camera. This light can be used either as a key light or provide some fill light as needed. It also can be used as an ilight to add a little sparkle to your subjects. sighs now we're lit and ready to shoot. If you and your talent need to take a break for whatever reason, keep the lights on. If you're breaking for a long period of time and we'll be continuing your shoot later in the day or even the next day, turn your lights off with a light switch.

Do not touch dimmer settings, as it may be impossible to get the same exact lighting look later on. Green Screen. Eventually in your career, you'll be shooting green screen. This is the process we're in post the editor will be key in background visuals to replace the green. While current editing software has very capable cares, there are a few techniques you should employ to make sure you get the cleanest key possible. Rule number one is self explanatory, but make sure your talent is not wearing any green clothing.

If it's too close to the shade of the green screen, the keyboard will cut a hole in your talent Rule number two is to make sure there's room between a talent and a green screen. This is for three reasons. You don't want the lights that are illuminated the green screen to also be spilling onto your talent. Secondly, you want to try to keep the green screen from reflecting back onto your talent. This can cause issues getting a clean key around the edge of your talent. And thirdly, you want to avoid casting shadows on the green screen.

So for this section of the video, I have this handy pop up green screen that I mount with clips to the stands with a crossbar. The setup was fairly inexpensive and it's another good thing to buy if you can afford it. I've used this in office interviews where there was absolutely nothing we could use as props to make the room look like anything bare white walls. Well we use the green screen and and post made some artistic looking backgrounds for the interviews. I've also used the green screen to shoot product shots. Anyway, the green screen is set up and the first thing we want to do is evenly light the screen or use these broad fill lights with 500 watt lamps.

You can use whatever you want as long as the light is broad and even matches the color temperature of the lights you will be letting your subject with you know what this is. This is a light meter. These were indispensable when shooting film. You don't see them much anymore in the video days, but they're very useful when lighting a green screen. I'm using it to check the lighting on the green screen. Make sure it's evenly lit when no hotspots.

If you don't have a light meter, you can use your video cameras viewfinder and see where any hotspots are with the viewfinder zebra function. I set my zebra at 100% and make the green screen just under. If I see any zebra in the corners I know I need to move my light to get rid of that hotspot. Next we light our subject in the same way as before with our key and fill lights and a little backlight. We can be as artistic as we want either Creating shadows are lighting more evenly. Just take care to angle your lights so as to not cast any shadows on the green screen.

And I use my meter once again to make sure my lighting on the subject is the same intensity as on the green screen. If not using a meter again, use your camera if you find a zebra. You've already set your iris just below 100% video. So if your subject is too dark, or is bathed in zebra, don't adjust your iris. Adjust your lights until the level of light on your subject matches that on the green screen. Last point.

If you're shooting with a portable green screen, there is a limit to how wide you can get. If I shoot a close up, there's no problem as the green screen fills the frame. If I shoot wider there comes a point where I'm shooting off the green screen. This is okay as long as the green screen is behind my subject completely. If I shoot off the screen in the corners of the frame, the editor can always crop the sides of the image And still get a clean key like this. In the previous example of lighting for green screen, we use a total of five separate lights, three lighting the talent and to lighting the green screen backdrop.

Now if you don't have enough lights and you don't have the budget to buy enough lights, a cheap alternative is to buy these very inexpensive work lights at a home improvement store. You can use a couple of these to light the green screen. Now the key is this don't just throw any old light bulb in there you got to use a light bulb that matches the color temperature of your lighting of the subject. So in this case, it's quartz halogen, it needs to be 3200 degrees Kelvin. So what I did is I went to a specialty lighting store and I bought some of these bulbs and they're 250 watts. So that's a total of 500 watts on the green screen and they're rated for 3200 degrees Kelvin.

If you find that some of the light from your work lights are spilling onto the back of your talent, you can use this black foil and gaffer tape it to the edge of your work lights, creating a homemade barn door. videography is a creative endeavor. While there are some basic rules to follow, have fun and experiment. Lighting is one of those things that can allow you to unleash your creativity. As long as your video is technically sound, you can do whatever you want with lighting and create any mood you wish.