Mind Readings: Cheap Lighting

In today's episode, let's talk about a misconception. I saw an ad on Instagram not too long ago from a company that makes very expensive lights. And it was positioned at us, at marketers, uh as content creators. And the ad copy said cheap lighting equals cheap content. Let me just say, as a uh a person who did uh lighting and sound design in theater, I can confidently say this is mostly false.

Yes, there's a there's a certain minimum level of quality um that indicates that you know your your cut your content you've invested at least a little something, but it's not much when it comes to lighting. It really isn't. Theaters, even the most professional theaters, even the you know the the theaters that you know that you've heard of, the Ed Sullivan Theater and stuff, even the most professional ones are held together largely with gaffer tape. Right? Everything is MacGyvered together in ways that probably violate multiple safety regulations and things, OSHA regulations, fire codes, a variety of other rules.

When you look at some of the lighting ups that have happened in theaters, and on movie sets and on TV sets, and any entertainment production, and you see how everything's sort of taped together, you would not think, wow, that's really expensive gear they've got there. You would think, wow, that's that's really taped together. And yet, from the audience's perspective, you'd never know as long as as we did our jobs right. Got a got a broken red Fresnel, cool. Get out the roll of uh, you know, red plastic wrap, uh, slap it over a clear Fresnel in the days before LED lighting.

Hope that the light wasn't on too long because the plastic would melt. Um, you get the get the scene lit and done, and then you know, take the smoking uh blastic wrap off the light. Um got a broken light box, tape it back together with some shims and gaffers tape and cardboard. I'm not saying that your desk or your home office lighting, you know, uh should be dangerous or unsafe, but I am 100% saying you don't need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on all these fancy lights to do basic videography, right? What you need to learn is how to do lighting properly.

And that's stuff that you can you know watch YouTube videos, read tutorials online. Uh you can light a home office video uh with a professional, expensive look with a couple of lamps from the thrift store and look like a pro as long as you position the lights correctly. Um in my office here. I've got a uh a major light here, which is a thing I picked up off the street. Uh it's got a single bulb in it.

I've got a fill light here in the ceiling, and it does the job. That cost me nothing. I mean, the bulb's like five dollars. That bulb is just built into the ceiling, it was like five dollars. I could maybe install uh a side light here, but I actually like the way this looks.

You don't need a ton of stuff. You certainly don't need to spend hundreds of dollars to get a good look. You just need that overhead key light about 45 degrees from your head, right? So this is shining at a 45 degree angle. Uh, and a dimmer backlight.

Something to backlight the scene and make it look good. If you got some shadows that are unflattering, get me, yeah, that's when you get the third light, maybe fill a fill light or something. You know, even something as simple as like this little ring light here. Uh this, oh if I put this fur far enough away to take away some of those shadows, turn the turn it down a little bit, there's a nice little fill, right? This is like a $2 widget.

Um you can see the difference in the shadows and things. So it's just a question of experimenting, right? With inexpensive lights. What most people do wrong with lighting is they have a key light right in their face, right? They do this, they have a ring light, like wow, that's really right.

You know, and it is just this does this doesn't look good. This is like that hostage video look. Um so they have that, or they have just crazy amounts of light in general, just washing everything out. If I put this here, uh you can see it doesn't do a great job. If I, you know, if I've got just lights everywhere coming up from every direction, it doesn't look good.

Get a couple of handheld lights or a lamp and so and just move stuff around and see how you look best. But understand that we're not spending hundreds of dollars. That ad is just almost offensive. Lighting, like almost everything, is more about what you do with the tools, not how expensive they are. Once you've got once you're above, you know, broken or dangerous um uh levels of quality, it's all about the technique and not the price.

So if you're thinking about doing more video, if you're going to do more video, learn how to do lighting with good technique and save your dollars for something where the the quality really matters. A photon is a photon. As long as light is safe, you can do a lot with it. Thanks for watching. Talk to you soon.

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