Help. Any Ideas On How to Create This Kind of Flattering Ambiance for Vlogging??

N

New10

hi guys!

would love to see if any of you have advice on the following-

i really like the lighting the lighting in these 3 people's videos:

Jack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Ed0j-dxhc&list=UUTqEu1wZDBju2tHkNP1dwzQ
Michelle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxowVvM-0Z8&list=UUuYx81nzzz4OFQrhbKDzTng
JJ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwjSXNBwzlE

how would one achieve this kind of extremely flattering lighting for vlogging purposes?
before anyone says "just use a 3 point light system"

Take a look at this video by Oxana using a 3 point light system ...the result is vastly inferior:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj41Ikz3FeA
same goes for this guy Tyler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHxSRFlWDq0
both Tyler and Oxana seem to have enough light in their videos yet their vids look sullen and drab .

Yes i know that JJ in specific has punched up the colors in post for her video, but even if we took tyler or oxana's video and punched up the colors it still wouldn't look like JJ's video.

I would really like some tips on how to create flattering lighting like michelle, jj and jack and avoid videos that look like Oxana or Tyler?

any advice would be appreciated.
 
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Oxana and Michelle are lit nearly identically. Oxana's description says she is using Premiere Elements so clearly she is doing nothing to color correct; as a result her skin tone is flat and dull.

For sh*ts and giggles I downloaded Oxana's video and loaded it into Resolve. 60 seconds of color correction goes a long way - it's far from perfect, but better than it was: http://imgur.com/1jzqPP7

In truth I think a lot of it can be accomplished via in-camera settings as well. If she's using Premiere Elements to edit I suspect she probably doesn't have a camera that can be white balanced manually.
 
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On the lighting side it's more than just 3-point lighting - you need large, diffuse sources of light. Either softboxes, large fluorescent fixtures like kino-flos, or hard lights placed behind a large source of diffusion - the cheap option is to get something like a semi-translucent shower curtain and hang it between you and your lights.

A simpler option for a vlogging setup may be to use a ring light - these LED ones are small, battery-powered, relatively inexpensive and work well:

http://www.fvlighting.com/store/118150010201.html

We used it as the sole lighting on the actress in this film:

https://vimeo.com/71374301

The other important aspect is to get your exposure right, white balance to your light source, and create some separation/contrast with the background. Add some contrast and boost the saturation either in post or in camera (if your camera has picture settings) until you get an image you like - Oxana's video is both low contrast and low saturation, and her skin looks a little underexposed as well.

One final thing I notice about the first three that's specifically missing from the Oxana video is 'catch lights' in the eyes - the reflection of the light sources that adds a sparkle and draws attention to the eyes. Her lights may be too far away, or positioned at too much of an angle relative to her body, to reflect strongly. She also may be shooting in a bright room where the white walls behind the lights are reducing the contrast between the reflected light source and the ambient light. You'll generally get the best results if you shoot in a dark room where you have control over all the lights, and which is big enough that your lights don't reflect off the walls to raise the overall ambient exposure.
 
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two questions....

1-- When you have a bright light in front of the actor, why does it not make them squint?
I've seen live sets, pluts lots of online photos of production scenes and it all looks rather bright. Is it a case of having to adjust to the brightness?

2(more of a comment)
I liked that short ItDonnedOnMe. I saw a movie recently that used a similar look, but it was a bit flat ( horror movie called The Den).

The brightness in the your film made the background shadows more frightening.

When you're filming in a dark room with the light fixed on your actresses face, why is she able to not squint? I'm correlating it to someone shining a light in your eyes, but this must be wrong.
 
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The room isn't as dark as it appears on screen in our film - the key is having enough difference between the foreground and background, then exposing correctly for the face which allows the background to drop off into darkness. Part of that is having enough space between the subject and background, so that the light on the subject falls off significantly and doesn't light the background much. You can also push the background down even farther with color correction in post.

As far as squinting though, it's a combination of things. Diffuse light sources help - if your light isn't diffused well the intensity of the point source will definitely be hard on the eyes. If you can put the light in front of a white wall or something so that the light isn't the only bright element in front of them it can help too - but you want to be careful that the white wall isn't reflecting so much light into the room that it effects the overall exposure too much.

If I remember correctly though we were also running the light at a very low setting, and achieving the exposure we needed by running a higher ISO in camera - this way the light isn't glaringly bright for the actor. The problem with this is you need a camera that works cleanly at higher ISOs so your image doesn't look too noisy; we shot her angle on a C100 which is very clean at high ISOs. You may just need to experiment with your camera to see how high an ISO you can use and still get an image you're happy with.
 
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Part of what makes the first three videos stand out more is the attention put into the background. A nicer background that's lit with a decent exposure, and a soft light to fill the face.

The other two have terrible backgrounds, aren't white balanced properly and look to be using cheaper cameras.

In regards to squinting: it's actually pretty rare to shine a direct, high-powered hard light right into an actors eyes from a relatively small distance, even as an eye light.
 
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