Director's Chair: Just What Should I Wear?

So you are getting ready to shoot your big interview or scene, and your on-camera talent looks you straight in the eye and asks, "What do you want me to wear?" This is not a silly question. What your talent wears while on camera is very important, and there are some cardinal rules you should follow when establishing the wardrobe of the day. In this column, we will take a look at the do's and don'ts of clothing, jewelry, hair and makeup for the camera.

While today's video technology is a lot more forgiving than the video of the past, you still need to be careful when making a wardrobe selection for your on-camera talent. There are four major areas of concern when dealing with clothing and other accessories: pattern, contrast, color and shape.

The clothing's pattern can be a big problem. Close, high-contrast pin stripes, corduroy and herringbone all create a wavy rainbow-colored pattern called a moiré effect on television. The reason? As you probably know, standard American television has 525 horizontal scan lines. Horizontal scan lines have trouble displaying vertical lines in your video, and thus you get a moiré effect right in the middle of your talent's shirt, jacket or tie.

High-contrast clothing is another major problem. Video cameras cannot handle high contrasts between bright and dark objects, and this includes skin tone and clothing. Dark-skinned people should avoid wearing white or very light colors. If they do, their shirts will glow when you set the camera to expose the face properly. Extremely light-skinned talent should avoid black or very dark clothing. A black shirt will become a formless hole in the video, because it will have to be very dark if you set the camera so that the skin tone is properly exposed.

While video does not handle high contrast very well, it has even more trouble handling some colors. Reds and oranges have a tendency to glow on camera. Yes, there are some television talent who insist on wearing red or orange on camera, but unless it is a deep, dark red, it probably glows in the television lights. Cameras have a hard time recreating the red and especially red/orange colors, and thus you should avoid them if possible. Additionally, many consumer camcorders tend to over-saturate the red channel to warm up skin tones, which can magnify the existing problem.

One of the major considerations when choosing an on-camera outfit is its shape and fit. Video does tend to make people look at least ten pounds heavier. Think about it. When you look at people, you see not only them but also the world around them, and that has a tendency to make them look smaller than they actually are. In the video monitor, you see only the talent. There is nothing else to make them look smaller, so they tend to look bigger. For this reason, it is very important that you make sure your talent is wearing something that will emphasize shape, emphasize a waist and give a taller look, not wider. Shapeless clothing will make the talent look bigger and lumpier on ca…