Phone videography: Lighting is key

With cell phones getting better and better cameras every year, small businesses with tight budgets may not need to hire video production crews to create videos for social media marketing anymore. With a simple YouTube search of “mobile videography,” you can find some impressive looking videos. 

However, there is at least one major element that these YouTubers are better at than most cell phone users — lighting. The function of a camera is to capture light, so it's pretty obvious that lighting is the most important aspect of creating a video — and it's the most difficult to master. 

We won’t be able to make you a lighting master with this simple blog post, but we can give you a few tips that will help you start paying attention to lighting. 

Natural light

When you start looking to buy lighting equipment to improve your videos, you will notice the price is so high that you might as well just hire a professional to shoot the video for you. So what’s the most cost effective way to get good lighting? Sunlight.

Setting up your video near a large window is the best way to get beautiful lighting. Your lighting will be even better if you have some thin white sheers in front of the window to soften the outside light.

Creating shape

A big difference between a person who is good at lighting and someone who has had no training is the placement of the key light (a.k.a. the brightest light that is shining on the subject). An amatuer places the key light directly in front of the subject.

This will make the light be completely even across the entire subject, making it look flat and two dimensional. To fix this, move the key light (or move the subject if you are using window light) so that the light hits the subject about 15 to 30 degrees from the left or right side of the camera.

Backlighting

If your subject seems to blend into the background of your video, then what you are missing is a backlight. It can be pretty easy to add a backlight even when you are on a budget. All you need is the brightest lamp you can find. 

If possible, find a lamp that has a removable shade, because direct light will do the best job of creating a backlight, and simply place the light somewhere behind your subject. Make sure to put the backlight on the opposite side of your key light — so if your key light is on the right side of the subject, put the backlight behind the left side of the subject. Also make sure that your backlight isn’t in your shot and only makes a subtle change.

Background lighting

Once you have moved closer to a window for some natural light, you may notice that if you point back towards the interior of the building, that the rest of your video will be very dark. Sometimes this can be good if it matches your branding.

If not, try adding some small points of interest in the background of your shot. To do this, just turn on some lamps that are in the shot, or move a lamp into the shot. Be careful to not go overboard on the background lights, because you don’t want to distract from your subject.

For more tips on using your phone as a camera, check out this blog post — it applies to both photography and videography. These tips aren’t going to help you master every situation and style, so if you need more help with lighting or other videography techniques, contact us to see how we can help.