Cheap Umbrellas!

Here's link to what appears to be a pretty snazzy deal on an umbrella lighting kit -

LINK -Handheld Items

I'm guessing that none of this gear is particularly beefy, but the price is right and it's one of those things that's very useful to have in your bag of tricks.

An umbrella give you a nice soft light source, very flattering to the talent. I suspect this particular kit still gives a bit of a hotspot, since the light source has no reflector directing all of the light into the umbrella. Still, this could be useful for lighting someone in an interview, or for lighting up a green screen.

One popular methods when working with umbrellas is to actually us the light coming through the umbrella, rather than the reflected light. So you aim the pointy part of the umbrella at the talent. You get less light, but it's very soft and even.

The down side of umbrellas is that you have very little control over the light, which tends to spill all over your set and background. This can be a problem, especially in small spaces. That's why most soft lighting for video is done using Chimera's, which provide much more directional control over a soft source than an umbrella. They are also much more expensive, but in my own experience they are a worthwhile investment, making it much easier to achieve a nice lighting effect quickly.

Still, having a couple of umbrellas in your kit is a good thing, and at these prices it's hard to go wrong.

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Your Basic Green Screen Shoot

Here's a quick example of a fast, simple, yet very effective green-screen setup.


A total of four lights. We're using the 1K ARRI open face light with a Chimera as the key light, bouncing light off a Flexfill for the fill. This soft lighting is very flattering to the talent, and also easier on them to work under when there are a few hours of video to shoot with this setup, which is what we had here. We've got a 150 watt ARRI fresnel as a back light, on a dimmer so we can dial in the right amount of light. The green screen, which is simply a 24' x 12' piece of medium weight fabric designed for this use, is hung from the drop ceiling using spring clips. It's being lit with a pair of well-worn MiniMole 200 watt fresnels, one on each side.

Here's a screen capture of the resulting shot -



There are a few things to note here. First of all, we have the luxury of being in a big room here, allowing us a lot of distance between the camera, the talent and green screen. Having some distance between these elements enables us to use a long lens, which in turn makes our background go soft, helping to minimize any issues with wrinkles in the green fabric. Using one of the camera's neutral density filters means we can open up the iris, which also helps give us a shallow depth of field.

Having the green screen a good distance from the talent minimizes the amount of green light spilling on the talent, making for an easier key. This is an important point - it's a common mistake to blast the green screen with light. Even light is the most important thing here. In this particular case I ended up dimming the key light in order to make the relative level of the green screen higher, since I had plenty of sensitivity in the camera. I also tend to make my backlight a little hotter than I otherwise would, since having a nice rim on the talent helps separate them from the background. The light is falling off a bit in the top right corner, but that's okay since we'll be using a garbage matte when we go to key this.

Next time we'll load this footage into After Effects and do some keying. Stay tuned...

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My Favorite Light Kit

Lighting is probably the most important element for creating quality video. As a friend of mine likes to say, "Videos without lighting are just home movies." Yes, there are certainly plenty of moments when you need to run-and-gun, and have no choice but to use available light, but most of the time (and with good planning!) you should be able to have control of your lighting.

One of the most common set-ups we find ourselves shooting is the single camera talking-head interview. No, I don't mean a sit-down with David Byrne, (My high school english teacher taught David Byrne. He used to do her bulletin boards. How cool is that?) I'm talking about a simple, straight-forward single person interview, the kind where you don't see or hear the person asking the questions. Think more Ken Burns and less 60 Minutes.

My favorite light kit for this situation is the ARRI Softbank IV. Two 150 watt Fresnel's, a 300 watt Fresnel, a 600 watt Fresnel and 1K open face with a Chimera, providing a nice, soft source. This kit is almost perfect, but you'll want to add an additional light stand (which will fit in the wheeled case), some colored gels, diffusion, wood clothes pins (when you're on-set you'll want to call them C47s), and a few other odds and ends we'll cover in upcoming posts.

I know, I know...if you're just starting out, you're probably saying, "Holy crap, Dave! This light kit is almost three grand! That'll buy a lot of burgers, pay a lot of rent!"  Yes, indeed, it will, but investing in a lighting kit like this one is one of the best things you can do for yourself when starting out. Why? Several good reasons.

First, because lights don't become obsolete. I've had by Softbank IV kit for over ten years, and I'm still using it all the time. My kit has travelled all over the world (it was a lot easier pre-9/11), collected its share of battle scars, but other than a few minor repairs and regular lamp replacement it's been a workhorse. And in that time we've been through several tape formats and camera packages, from Betacam to DV50 and now HD. Good, quality lights can last for decades when properly cared for, and ARRI lights are top-notch.

Second, because fresnel lights provide a lot of control and are much safer than open-faced lights. The more control you have, the more creative options you'll be able to explore. Remember, good lighting is as much about where light isn't as it is where light is. 

When I first started out I had a Lowell Omni kit that I purchased used from a friend for a few hundred dollars. (I still have it, and it does occasionally see use. Lights last forever...) Lowell makes quality lights, for sure, and there are circumstances where they are the perfect tool for the job, but I found myself frustrated with the lack of control I had over the lights, especially in the small spaces we often find ourselves in when doing corporate talking-head interviews. Investing in the ARRI kit gave me so much more control, and my work got better because of it. There were so many new, interesting creative possibilities to explore. It was thrilling!

To be fair, Lowell has come out with some really nice kits in the nearly twenty years since I bought that kit. Still, the ARRI Softbank IV remains my favorite, all-around go-to kit for quality and versatility. The wheeled case makes it relatively easy to tote around, and my crews never tire of hearing me joke about how heavy a light kit is. (Right guys? Anyone?)

In a future post we'll go into detail on how I like to light a single-camera talking head interview. In the mean time, what's your favorite light kit?