Great lighting begins with understanding factors such as light temperature and lamp type, as well as lighting design and set up. Videomaker’s Lighting for Video Webinar will cover lighting equipment, studio lighting, outdoor lighting, light theory, fluorescents, LEDs, and will help you solve some of those difficult lighting situations.

Following the webinar, all registrants will receive a copy of our special report special report “Lighting: Night Lighting”. In addition to valuable information and a free special report, our Lighting for Video Webinar will also include a live Q&A segment; our team answering your questions. Next week’s Lighting for Video Webinar starts at 11:00 AM (PST) on Wednesday, December 29^th, so be sure to sign up soon!

Not interested in Lighting for Video? Videomaker’s weekly Webinar Training Series is taught by our experts and features a wide variety of video production and post production topics including Advanced Shooting, Green Screen and Special Effects, Documentary Production, Advanced Editing, and much more.

The sun is a great light source to use when shooting outdoors. It’s inexpensive, doesn’t require electricity, and provides more than enough light for your entire set. However, one of the problems with the sun is its hard light qualities. The sun will tend to leave your subject’s faces shadowy and/or blown out. One way to counteract the overall power of the sun is by using a diffuser.

Cloud coverage works great as a diffuser for the sun, though it’s not very reliable. It shows up when it wants, and tends to leave when you need it most. Fortunately, there is an inexpensive way to create your own “cloudy” day. By using PVC pipes as a frame, and a lightweight white bedsheet as the diffusing material, you can create a large diffuser capable of intercepting the sunlight and turning it into a bright light, free of shadows.

Though diffusers work great for sunlight, because of their size, they’re not great for all shot types. Wide shots don’t always require diffusion. However, it is important to pay attention to the changes of light quality between your closeups, medium and wide shots in order to make sure they are all going to match.

Making your own sun diffuser can save you money, while providing you with beautifully diffused outdoor lighting. The sun is a powerful light source. With the right accessories and lighting knowledge you can create great lighting without ever having to plug into a wall.

For more tips and ideas for indoor light diffusion and outdoor diffusion solutions check out Light Source: Using Diffusion.

Interested in more tips on outdoor lighting? Sign up for Videomaker’s free Video Lighting Course. This free tip series is designed to help you improve your video production skills, fast. Learn More.

Imagine you’re in a restaurant and you knock over a full glass of water. To stop the spilled water from landing in your lap you put a napkin barrier around the spill and prevent any further encroachment. This is similar to the way light spill works. You turn your light on, the light spills forward and, if you don’t block certain areas off, you’re going to get light in places you don’t want it.

There are many reasons you might choose to control the spill. Perhaps the spill is interfering with another light source, or maybe you want to strategically place a dramatic shadow that will conceal an area of your scene. Whatever the reason, learning the ways in which you can control light spill will allow you to light your scene more effectively.

You can control light spill in a number of ways while creating either hard edge or soft edge lighting. For example, a barndoor is an accessory that mounts onto the front of a light and is characterized by its adjustable hinged doors. Barndoors physically mask the light from reaching areas that don’t require it, while creating a hard edge where the light and the shadow meet. Other ways to control your spill include using diffusion screens, flags and lights equipped with Fresnel lenses.

Experimenting with different light controls, and the learning the techniques involved with each one, will allow you to successfully mask light spill during your next shoot. Eliminating unwanted spills will increase the effectiveness of your lighting setup while improving the look of your video.

For more information about spill control and techniques whether you’re indoors or outside, check out Light Source: Mop Up That Spill!

The office is bustling, here at Videomaker, as we prepare for our upcoming workshops. The weekend of October 9^th is coming up fast and we couldn’t be more excited. For the first time ever, we’re offering an Intensive Lighting Workshop, as well as our Basics of Video Production Workshop.

Our Basics of Video Production Workshop is a start-to-finish course on movie making. This is a great way for beginners to become familiar with the equipment and the processes involved when telling a story with video.

For those of you who already have a grasp on the basics of video production, the Intensive Lighting Workshop will allow you to build upon your production skills and knowledge by focusing on light theory, equipment and techniques.

If you’ve been to one of our workshops you know that it’s a great way to get hands-on experience with professional equipment, learn new techniques and work with people who are as enthusiastic about movie making as you.

It’s not too late to sign up, so if you have never attended one of our workshops, or just want to build upon your previous experience, now is as good of a time as any to join in on the fun.

Click here for more information on attending a Videomaker Workshop