 Hello everybody. My name is Mario. Welcome to the Media Creation Workshop. This is the first time we're running this with the Media Creation Lab at Scott Library. So I am from the University Brand and Marketing Department. So we're the team that manages all of York's social media channels. And I assist with videography and photography for the University and particularly for social media channels, marketing campaigns and all of that. So thank you to the library staff for having me here just to impart on the knowledge that I gained through the years. Okay, yeah, just a little bit more about myself. So I shoot stuff for the University and I actually first started shooting weddings. I took weddings for about seven years of videography. It was a super long day and you have to be on your feet a lot. So I learned a lot shooting weddings just thinking quick and trying to get nice shots, but at the same time trying not to miss an event. If you've ever been to a wedding, if you miss the first kids or if you miss like the cake cutting and that kind of stuff, you can't really redo that stuff. So just helping me to think of my feet and videography would call that running done, running done filmmaking. So just running and shooting with the camera. So that's the term that we use for that style of filmmaking. I also do product ads and social media work as well. That's like the slide stuff that I do outside of York. And just a couple of samples, these are really short to use about a minute or so. So I'll just show some of the videos that I've created for York University just for you to get a sense of the kind of work that I do. Book equipment to book spaces as well as work in a collaboration space. We're located on the site where Scott Library just asked for learning comments. We offer equipment loans such as camera, audio, equipment and virtual reality equipment loans. If you're a faculty staff or student here, you know, by UCAR you can use our facilities equipment. We are also interdisciplinary. So members from different faculty as well as students can come together and work on a project together. We also offer virtual reality rooms and audio recording studio behind me and a media editing lab. On all of our computers, we have open source software. You can use that software and you can continue using it after you graduate. A project that some students have done at the media creation lab is a capstone project where students from various faculties and programs got together and recorded some audio to promote the product that they designed. We welcome users of all experience levels. And so if you're a beginner and you have good experience, you can always come here and you can work on any project you like and we are always more than happy to help you. Another one, the second one is a little bit of a different style of video. It's more of an event coverage but edited into a fast pace social media with a bunch of different transitions. So if you're always on social media, you'll probably have seen some of these things on your feet. So yeah, let's play that one. So the media creation lab is in. So just a little bit of an agenda of the things that we'll be doing today. So part one, we'll be learning a little bit about A-roll, B-roll, camera angles, shot types, and then we have cameras available for you to try out some of these things. You can try them out around here. I'm not sure if you can go out. Yeah. And then we'll have some types of practice. In the second part of today we'll do some lighting work. I have set up a basic three point lighting system at the back. So I'll show you how that works as well as importance of audio. We have some microphones here as well that you can try out. Talking a little bit about camera movement, how you move the camera and stabilization, and then at the end you have some time just to be more hands-on and try things on your own. And the cool thing is that there's no marks for this, so you don't have to worry about, you know, just studying harder remembering all these concepts. But before we get started and continuing, I just want to get a sense of your names and also the program that you're in. Before we continue, always, you know, the best camera you have is the one that you have, right, is the camera in your pocket. And phones nowadays are actually really good. If you're able to implement some of the tips and tricks I'll be talking about later on, you'll be able to get good quality footage just out of your phone. The key here is, you know, audio and lighting. If those two things work well, then even if you're shooting on your phone, you'll have really good video. Okay, so don't worry, don't think that, oh, I don't have like a really expensive camera to go out and buy one. Start with your phone. Start learning with your phone, start learning with the basics. And if you want to try to learn how to shoot manual video, like manual controls, there are apps for your phone that you can install, and that way you can adjust different settings. In today's session, because it's just two hours and there's just a lot, I'm trying to touch a little bit in different aspects of video creation. And that won't be able to go into detail in things such as exposure and how to do that. So these are some of the things that, to keep in mind, so when you're shooting video in the automatic setting, so like just when you just point in this, you shoot video. So, but there's resources I'll be sharing at the end of the workshop for places where you can go to get more information or to just go for online courses that are free provided for your university students. So, okay, so A-roll. So I'm not sure if you've heard about A-roll or B-roll, but A-roll is the primary footage or we call it the A-footage. And it's roll because in the olden days it was filmed so it was like this roll is the A-roll. So it's the main roll for the video. It can stand alone to tell a story and if it's an interview, the footage of the person talking is usually called the A-roll. So in this instance, there's two types of A-roll. We also call them talking headshots because it's the talking head or talking person. So this one is one person talking directly into the camera. So this one would be like directed to camera, eyes to the camera. This is most of the time when you're shooting stuff or social media, this is what you're trying to do, right? Like you're blogging, you talk to the camera. And the second type is the interview setting. For this kind of setting, as you saw in the earlier video, the talent, we call the subject in videos or in photography the talent. So the talent usually is looking away from the camera to the side. And that person they're looking at is usually the person who's interviewing them. So there's the two types of A-roll that we have and the A-roll can stand by itself. So like if you just were to play someone speaking for 10 minutes, it works because you know they're conveying the entire story of the video so it can't stand by itself. But it might not be the most important. If you just include A-roll and just have someone talking for 10 minutes, it can get a little boring, right? So, but that's what A-roll is. Next is B-roll. Oh, actually, yeah, I talked a little bit about that earlier, but before we go into B-roll, any ideas of what B-roll would look like for this scene? Let's pretend this is a teacher or an instructor. They're being interviewed. Just, you know, you don't have to, if you don't know, just shout it out, just whatever comes to mind. What do you think can be B-roll in this video? Camera? Yeah, yeah, keep, keep, keep the office. There's, teacher's office, maybe? Teacher's office? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Screen. Screen. Yeah. Maybe people actually filming the interview. Yeah, that could be too. Perfect. Awesome. Yeah, so there's a lot of options. B-roll is the secondary footage or the supplementary footage and an entire video, an unfinished video. So it supplements the A-roll. So going back to the previous example and say here, the A-roll here is this person speaking to the camera. So this interview, this is cut interview piece. This is the A-roll. B-roll could be the filming, the person walking into the room. Maybe you're filming behind the scenes of that person being interviewed. Maybe you have an establishing shot, which is a shot of the scene, like a wide shot of what, what did this look like. Other options for B-roll in this scene could be, for example, the person teaching a class. Right? So when they're talking about, yeah, I started teaching when I was blah, blah, blah. Then you show footage of that person teaching the class. So anything that supplements the A-roll, that's B-roll. And this is what makes a video engaging. If it's just this interview, you just watching it for five minutes, it gets boring. So if you add B-roll on top of it, that's when you, it becomes more engaging. And there's a unspoken rule that B-roll or a frame in a video should change every three to five seconds. So if you are on a frame for more than five seconds, then you might lose your, your, your viewer. So changing things up, putting other types of footage, or even photos. Maybe they're talking about their childhood, how they, you know, got inspired to be a teacher, then you can have photos of them as a child and then the photo would just be in the video. And that is B-roll as well. Okay. Yeah. So establishing shots, landscape, backgrounds, graphics, animations, photographs, all that kind of stuff. So that's B-roll. And in one of the earlier videos, the two videos that I showed earlier, not everybody was here for that, but the second video, would you say that there was, for those who were able to see it, would you say that there was A-roll there? That one's a little tricky. The event footage orientation. Yeah. Sure. Right. There is, because it tells the story of what happened at orientation. It's not necessarily like someone speaking to camera, like the traditional A-roll, but it stands by itself. Right. Another instance of when there's, for that footage not to work, is if it was just a bunch of random footage with no order and no sort of a tying in, then that would just be B-roll that can't stand on itself by itself because it can't tell a story by itself. Okay. So that's one of the main things to keep in mind. Next, we're going to shot types and you'll be able to play around with these things, just around here in the library. But the first one, we have an extreme wide shot. So just like an entire shot of the entire landscape, like a big establishing shot. Next, we have a wide or a long shot. This is usually a shot of the entire person. If it's a person, if it's an animal, the entire animal. It shows a little bit of your of your surrounding, of your scenery, but not as much as the extreme wide shot. From there, we go to the medium shot. As you can see here, it's just medium shot, hand body of a person. Go to a close-up, which is usually the face, and an extreme close-up. So really close-up to your subject, to your talent. In this case, an extreme close-up would probably be the eyes. If you wanted to do an extreme close-up shot of this person, maybe here, an extreme close-up could be the feet of the person running. Here, it could be maybe the hands of the person talking and moving their hands. So all of these things play a big role in telling a story through video that is compelling. If you have, let's say we have this person talking for the entire 10 minutes, you can get really boring, right? Not just that it's only A-roll, there's no B-roll, but it's just that. So using different type of shots can enhance your story, make it more engaging, and more attractive for people to watch. So there's a couple more shot types. We have the cut-in. So this one is similar to an extreme close-up. So we have this person right here, they're delivering a workshop, and then if somebody says, oh, I want to cut in of that person speaking, cut-in shot. So most of the time is you zoom in into parts of that person. So in this case, maybe their hands, they're moving around. If somebody was typing on a computer, and then somebody asked, oh, can we get a cut-in shot of that? Then you cut into just the hands of the person typing on the computer. Next, we have this one, cut-away. Any guesses what this means? Like what this could be? Yeah. I'm going to assume that it's actually when a person, we're focused on the camera person, and we cut away who the people are talking to or what they're focusing towards. Yeah, almost there. So let's say these two belong to the same scene, let's pretend that this is the case. Let's pretend that these people are attending this session with this person delivering a workshop or a presentation. A cut-away is a cut away from the main subject. So this is our subject, and now let's cut away to something else that's happening in that environment. So in this case will be the reaction of the crowd. So if I was being filmed here, a cut-away shot will be a view of your reaction, maybe some people nodding, some people writing notes. So that is a cut-away. So something else that is not the main subject, but also supports the main story. And we have another one. This is very useful for conversations when we have the eye lock, so over the shoulder just to place people in the seat so you see there's perspective. And when you do this, it makes the 2D video frame look a little bit more 3D because now you have a little bit of depth. So there's something in front of you in the foreground, your subject, and there's stuff in the back. So there's like layers as well. So it makes it more entertaining and more engaging. And the last job type I want to talk about today is this one, the point of view. This one's pretty basic. You know, the point of view is as if you were holding a phone or something like that, or if you're cooking, then shot up your hands from this angle from your own point of view. Any questions so far about the shot type before we move on to Good? Okay. All right. Next, angles, camera angles. So these are angles are actually very important as well, and they help add variety into your video. So for example, we have low angles, high angles. Let's talk about these two. So whenever you're using angles, angles can tell something about the character. If you're using a low angle, it makes the character or the subject appear superior, appear strong, they're dominant or something like that. If it's a high angle, it makes the subject appear inferior, maybe they have less strength, you know, less powerful, it depowers them. So when used stylistically, this is how you use it. How you use high angles and low angles and high angles. Next we have an overhead angle for a bird's eye view. This is just the camera just on top, just on top, so it sees pretty much everything, right? Depending on how high the camera is, then you'll be able to see more or less. And then these shot angles combined with the shot type earlier. So for example, they say we want an extreme wide shot that is overhead. Then the camera's going to be really high up so that I can see everything. Or an overhead bird's eye view angle, but close up. So maybe just your hands working on your camera or on your textbook or your notebook or whatever. So these, they work together with each other to create engaging visuals for the video. And then we have aerial shots, which are your drone shots. They're used now, you know, with drones being so accessible, just to establish the scene. Most of the time, let's say you're at York and then you're interviewing someone at York, you can just add a drone shot of the university, for example. And that is your establishing shot that lets people know where you're at or where the scene or the story is taken place. Next, we have a couple more. We have the Dutch angle, which is like a, like you can't say angle. So as you can see, it's not proper straight. So this kind of angle, it conveys tension, confusion. It conveys maybe disorientation or things that are disorganized. So you probably have seen it in movies. And then when you notice that it's something, it's happening in the scene that creates tension. We have these three, they are, they're depending on where you place your camera in correlation to your body. So for example, the, start with the ground level. Ground level, the camera is placed on the ground as close to the ground as possible. Somebody's walking, you put your camera down to the ground. You can see their feet and stuff like that. This is different than having your, they say I have my camera here and I point at their feet, they're walking. This is different than that. Because then this, this is about levels. So you have to lower the camera to that level. And you can make your videos look better or a little bit more professional if you work with angles and levels with your camera. Usually people who are not trained in video, they will just stay in one spot and just try to fill everything from that one spot. Which is, you know, it, it serves a purpose. You can record and document stuff. But if you want to make it more engaging, move around your camera, place your camera in different areas, down, middle, high, behind things. So you can add somewhere, that and stuff like that. So yeah, something to keep in mind. Don't just try to do this, but move your camera, put it everywhere. Next we have hip level. So let's say your camera is on the hip and you're shooting this way. As you can see from this shot, the camera is probably on the hip of someone else, the person who's shooting this. This is how you get this sort of angle. Next we have eye level, eye level. You put the camera at the eye level of the person you're filming. So if somebody is sitting, right, so if my camera is here, it's pretty much eye level. But if my camera was here, let's say, let's just use the same example. If my camera was, you can see it. If my camera was here pointing up, what sort of shot type is this? Come again. Sorry? Come again. Yeah, like a ground or like a low level. And also angle-wise, what is this? Like a low-high? Low. Low, low. And then it makes you look strong, dominant because it's low. But one thing about low angles is depending on the work you're doing, it may not be a flattering look. So I'll show you some examples, especially soon, right? No, video calls. You probably have seen some of these that I'll show you in a bit. Let's see, but we'll go into that a little bit later. So just to summarize the angles, this is what they do and what they show. So I'll tell you about the information that they convey. So again, low angle shot, it empowers the talent, the subject. An eye level shot shows connection, right? And the reason why this shows connection is because when you're talking to somebody, most of the time you're looking at them, you're talking to them at eye level. There may be slight variations in height, depending on the height of the person, but for the most part, it's eye level. And this is the best look to have for interviews or for talking headshots or a-roll when people are talking to the camera. You wouldn't want to have this angle. If you're talking to the camera, you're trying to connect to the viewer, right? Because then the viewer's going to look at you when they look through the screen, you will look like Thor right here. So it empowers the subject and doesn't build connection. So when you stylistically tell a story in movies, creative stuff, play with these two, but if it's more formal, more just connection, this is the best one to use. The next one was the dutch angle, where you tilt the camera. This disorients people, confusion, tension for that kind of stuff. The overhead shot, again, you see everything. And the aerial shot or drone shot shows the scape of magnitude of whatever you're filming. And these are the examples I want to talk about. I've been on Zoom calls, especially early on in the pandemic where people have their... Some laptops are just the worst. Some laptops have their webcam right here. I'm not sure if you've seen any of those. And then when you open those, if you're typing cameras right here, shooting up your notes, and it's not a flattering look that you want to have. And when you're talking, communicating to somebody, you're trying to connect with that person. I don't think I can connect with somebody who's talking to me and looking at that. And I mean, it's Zoom, you know, it's nobody's experience in video, but when you're filming video, it's something to keep in mind. Unless you're trying to show comedy or something else or some creative stuff, just try to avoid this. This is a less extreme version of that. It's still a low angle, as you can tell, but the best one would be just high level, right? And something to keep in mind if you're on video calls a lot and you want to look good. Just keep the webcam at eye level. So that could be just racing up your laptop, having an external webcam that goes on the top of your screen so that it's high level. It can be a little bit higher than your eye line as well, but yeah, just as much as possible. If you want to look good, high level. I kind of gave you the answer already, but what is the best angle to use for this interview or an interview in general? High level. High level. And how about like medium wide? What should I use? Over the shoulder? You could use over the shoulder if you want to show the interview, right? Like talking to this person. And with the terms of shot types, you can use wide, medium, and close up, right? If you do all three, that's the best. And you can cut between the three angles. You can get very engaging video, but not if you won't have three cameras, all the time to work with. You may have one or just two. So in those situations, if you have two cameras, one camera would be maybe a medium shot, another camera could be maybe wider. And that way you have two cameras to cut in, and that makes them more engaging. And if you only have one camera, what you can do is just film your interview and then just be role. Fill it with be role later on. So maybe ask for the talent to spend another 15, 20 minutes with you. You can fill them walking, film them going into the room, sitting down just to have more content for your final product. Okay, so, can I practice? We call this camera composition. And it's how you, you know, you look at the camera, you look at your square, at your frame, and then how do you frame it? Do I put it like this, like that, where is my subject, and all of that? So this is the most basic composition rule that you can learn. And then you usually start with this. Okay, so this is called the rule of thirds. For this, we have two lines, two horizontal lines, and two vertical lines. And there are intersections in between these lines. So you can see here there's four intersections. And then the concept behind this rule, composition rule, is that you want to place the most important elements in your scene, along the lines, or at the intersections. Okay, because that's more pleasing. More pleasing to the eye, it makes the frame, the video frame, or the photography more nice, or more pleasant to look at. So this is the basic one that we should learn before we go into other stuff. So today we just focus on this one. It looks more natural. As you can see this photo, the center of attention in this frame is this house. So we place it right here. And right at that intersection between these two lines, I'll show you a few more examples. This one, the center of attention, is the tree. So because of that, we put the tree right along this vertical line, and then it kind of touches these two intersections. We have the butterfly over here. Again, same thing. We'll put it on the side, right along this one line. And then there are lines here that also touch the main subject of the frame. So always think about putting your subject to one side of your frame. I think that's probably the easiest way of going about it. Unless you're trying to create a roll shot, someone talking to the camera, you put them in the middle. But for the most part, when you're taking photos, or when you're getting B roll, or just getting different angles, keep that in mind. Put your subject to one side of the frame. Another example would be this one. This person is not necessarily right at the intersections, but he is kind of along this line, right? And we put him here. His eyes are looking in this direction. So this is the negative space. We call this negative space, which is a space that is not part of the subject, or is not the subject. So he's looking at all of this negative space. If this person was on this side looking over there, we'll have all this negative space over here, but it wouldn't really make sense, because this person is looking this side, right? So it's not as, it's a little odd, and it'll be like, oh, that photo looks a little weird. You may not notice at first what's wrong with that photo, but you can probably tell naturally that there's something wrong with it. And that's because wherever your eyes are looking, you want to give more space to the frame. More breathing room, we call it. Right, so that's how, yeah. Can you explain that again, please? Yeah, yeah, for sure, we'll do. So this person, you know, there's this negative space, right? Yeah. So there's nothing here. The main subject of this photo is this person riding the horse, right? And he's looking in this direction. So this photo looks natural. It looks good, right? Natural to the eye. If we put this person, let's say, at this intersection, right, but he's still looking in that direction, this will be all empty. And when you look at it, you'll probably feel that there's something wrong with that photo. And that's because the person's looking in that direction, but you're not giving that person enough room to breathe or to look into that direction. And you'll have just a bunch of negatives based on this side that makes it look a little unnatural. So that's, yeah. Sorry, the board will often tell you this. You put the subject, you know, in the sections all to the side. Is that right? Yeah, or let's say this side, or this side. Here, he's on this side, right? Along this line. Here, it's along this line. So do you always kind of picture your frame to nine? Yes. Yeah. Quarters of... Yeah. Always put like two lines, two horizontal, two vertical, and you get nine squares. And this... Sorry, is there... Sorry. Yeah, the reason why the rider is on this side and the tree and the butterfly is on this side. No, that's choice. It is completely your choice. Before the rider, it makes sense because the rider is looking in that direction. If the rider was coming this way, then the best option would be to put him here, right? But because he's looking here. So also, depending on where the subject is looking, that's where you want to frame the tree. Yes. Yeah. So let's say, for example, let's say you're taking a photo of me and I'm looking in this direction. Let's actually take your cameras out and then let's try that out. Take a photo of me keeping in mind the rule of thirds. Okay, so you can come over if you like and stuff like that. And how would you compose this shot? Keeping in mind this rule of thirds and then the direction where my eyes are looking. So I feel like a famous person, right? Yeah. Actually, I thought it had this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can see it in your phones. A lot of cameras have the grid lines. We call them grid lines. So you turn it on and it assists you in your composition and taking your photos or your videos. So great. As I was taking a picture, like I know I could put you on this side but you're looking at it wrong. Yeah. I'm not taking this side. Yeah, so it's do I look more this way? Or this way? Just lean towards where your vision is. Yeah, yeah. If you're done, you can share your photo with a person next to you and you can compare. You can compare and see. Yeah. Mary, okay. So this is like, if you're looking in history before you can compose these videos, like if it's about dreams, right? Yes. The subject is always like the center, right? Like any portrait that's inside. Yeah. Is this rule of thirds applies for portraits or is it only for landscape? It applies for portraits as well. Yeah. It really depends on how you're framing and obviously rules are meant to be broken. So you can break the rules and I'll show you some examples actually right now. We're breaking the rule here. There's no rule of thirds, right? We have the subject right in the middle for both of these photos but they still look nice, right? So why is that? Can anyone guess why? Yeah. Symmetry? That's right, because we have symmetry and that is pleasing to the eye as well. So the basic rule that we need to learn is the rule of thirds and once we understand this rule we can break it and get a nice symmetrical shot, right? So it's, again it depends on creative style, creative choice, but by default if you want something to look good, a little bit more professional, go with the rule of thirds and once you are pretty comfortable with that then you can go and do, you know, more symmetrical stuff, maybe buildings and like straight lines, maybe down the hallway, you're right in the middle and you get this nice shot like that with the lines away from you. But yeah, so rule of thirds and you can think about symmetry as well. But I would, if we're starting out I would definitely just keep trying to compose all of your shots with the rule of thirds in mind because that will help you and composition in general for video or for photography. Okay, so now we'll have some time now and we'll go back to your camera and take photos of anything that you see use wide, medium or close up but keeping in mind the rule of thirds. So you can take photos of people, of objects, of chair, but keep this in mind. Going to lighting, this is the next key thing for video. If your video has good lighting then your video is going to look good. If you have bad lighting then your video is not going to do that well. So there's a basic lighting system that we use. This is the base one that you can learn. It's called the three point lighting. This is the most common more professional lighting setup. There are variations of this setup sometimes with just one light or two lights or if you want to use the entire three lights. There are also setups with four lights or more. And if you look at behind the scenes of movies and stuff they're using more than this. They're using a bunch of different lights and setups. So, but this is the more basic one, the more basic professional lighting setup and I have one setup right here. We're going to do some demos so that you can get an idea of how lighting works just to give you an overview and a basic understanding of that. All right, so in a three light, three point lighting setup we have first the main light. So this is our camera. This is our subject and our main light. This we call the key light. So the key light is the main light source. This is the brightest light in that scene. It is set up usually in front of the subject at a 45 degree angle. And normally it's pointing down a little bit from your subject's eye line. So if I was here I had my light maybe 45 degrees pointing down a little bit at me. So that's the main light. This is the biggest, the brightest light source in your scene. From there we go into the fill light. The one opposite to it. So the role of the fill light is to soften the shadows on the other side of the subject. So let's say, I'll show you later on but let's say we have the light here, right? Your face is going to create shadows on this side of your face. So the fill light fills in those shadows. It adds a little bit of light to make to cut away at the shadows. So unless you want a very dramatic look then you might get away with that. But if that's the role of the fill light and it's usually less bright or half as intense as the key light. So the key light, really bright fill light maybe half as bright or maybe even less intense than half. Just to fill in the light, the other side of the face a little bit. Sometimes we may not even need a light for the fill light. Sometimes we can use a reflector or a whiteboard. So if you go to the dollar store there's like the whiteboards, the phone boards. A lot of, I have a bunch of those as well that I use, just the fill light. So what that does is that it bounces light from the key light. And because I don't need this light from the side to be very strong, the light that comes from here, bounces here, hits my face again. So it creates a nice fill light that is soft and pleasing and clever. Yeah? So the key light. How high should it be about the eye level? Because I'm never sure. Yeah, no problem. We'll do a demo after. But I usually about, let's say my eye line's here. Maybe like here. Yeah. And it depends on how big your light is. If it's really small, you'll have to play around with the angles. The thing with lighting is that you want to be playing around with it and see what it looks like in your frame on your camera. Because something may look different when you're looking at it with your natural eyes, as opposed to looking at it through the camera. So it's always good to take a look at the camera, move lights around, and see how your subject looks. And then the direction of the lighting and all of that. So we have that. And then the third light in this three point lighting system is what we call the back light, the hair or rim light. So this is just another light that we place on either on the right or the left of the subject. And it's higher up usually and pointing down. And this will give you a highlight on either on the hair, right? Because it's hitting the back of that person, right? So it's either like around the hair or the shoulder. And what this light does, it separates the subject from the background. So it makes it like, so the subject doesn't blend in with the background. So this is easier demonstrated than talked about. So we'll do a little bit of a demo right now. Just to show you what this looks like. Would anybody want everyone's here to be our subject? And this is the end of the perfect. This is the end. This is right there. Here. This is a little bit more back. We'll turn these lights on. Okay. So let's say that's the key light. So notice the, sir, what's your name again? Kiki. Kiki. Kiki. Okay. Let's notice Kiki's the right side, right? I'll turn on the light. Okay. Okay. Someone else will come up also. You can take a look. I'll turn it back on. Keep an eye out on the screen. Okay. So let's say this is the key light, right? We can adjust it as necessary. But for our purposes, we can leave it at that. I'll turn on the fill light and then you can see what it does. And I'll have to play around with the levels so that it doesn't, so that it can feel some of the shadows. So if I move this light a little bit to this side, what happens to Kiki's left side? You have left, right? Yeah, more shadows, right? Which more shadows? If I put it here, what does this look like? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of shadows, right? And if you want it to a dramatic scene, this is the one that I want to go for. But if something basic or pleasant, usually 45 degrees, can somebody else take Kiki's place so that Kiki can take over this wall? I'll do it. So you can go ahead and take a look at this. All right, so again, keep an eye out on the shadows on the left side. Make them more and bring it here. You see that there are less shadows, but there are still some shadows. All right, let's turn on the fill light. So this is really bright right now, so I have to, so I'll turn it down. And I'll add again, I'll turn it off. Turn it on. You can see that it starts to fill in a little bit of the shadows, right? On the left side. And depending on the look you're going for, you may not want both sides of their faces to have the same intensity of light. To make it more dynamic, usually a gradient, it's nicer. It's more engaging. Unless it's more like news, TV news or makeup tutorials, you see like they have a ring light right in front of them. It gives them an equal proportion of light for the entire faces. So for those kind of videos, yes, but for something that's an interview or even if you want to make your own, you know, talking to camera videos, more engaging, this is something that you can play around with, right? So it fills them nice on this side. Right. And then the last light. So for this demo on this thing, what we call a tube light right here. So these ones are fairly new. These ones are good because they, they can stand and then they're long. So they, when they give you, when you get light from a tube light, you get the direction of this, makes it more pleasing. As opposed to one spot light, where it might be like just hitting your face, might not be as pleasant. Okay, let's try this out here. So keep an eye out on Tim's shoulder and hairline at the back. See what happens. So what happened here? So this picture will keep the line. Yeah. There's like a highlight, right? Like a contour on this side, right? If I turn it off, it's probably really bright. Let me tell you that a little bit more. So notice the interaction between Tim and the background. There isn't much separation right now. Maybe there is because the camera helps blur out the background a little bit. But if you want to emphasize that and separate him from the background, you know, further, you're bringing a hairline or a backlight. Sometimes the effect can be really subtle, but it makes all the difference in the world. I could probably even tone it down a little bit more. I feel like it's still really bright on this side, especially on the side of the face. I could probably move it a little bit to this side. And sometimes you may have a light that is outside of the frame. If we say we had a taller light stand, we could put the light over here pointing down this way. But let me tone it down a little bit. Yeah. All right, so let me turn off the key light and the fill light so you can take a look at what this looks like just where was the backlight. So what happens here is that it's a little hot. He's almost in the shadows. All of him is in the shadows and you have a light in the back. So it's not that great. But see the interaction of now adding a fill light. This is much better than just with the backlight. Because now there's a little bit of light hitting his face. Now when we have the fill light, this is when we bring it all together. And you can tone it down depending on your scene. I usually like to start with the key light and play around things with the key light first and then move on to the fill light and sometimes the backlight. Most of the time, if I'm filming by myself, sometimes I just have a key light because I don't have someone else who can help or maybe has a key light and a fill light. And sometimes the fill light can even just be the backlight. It depends on what you have available. But if you have three lights and you have three stands, then you can try using the three point lighting system. Question on the light. If you don't have it, do you have to hold it in such a way or just position it the same way you would with the light? Yeah, good question. That's a really good question. So I don't have a reflector with me, but let's say if I have something like this, you'll have to take the key light into consideration. So if most of the light is in this direction, then the reflector maybe putting it around here will bounce on light back into our talent. You can put it here as well and it'll bounce on light here that will wrap around his face a little bit. But in that case, this will have to be also a little brighter. Because then light travels and then the further it travels, it loses its intensity. So that's something to keep in mind as well. But in a pinch on budget, just use a reflector. There are stands that have like plants that you can clamp a reflector or like a board to it. Then you can use that to bounce light. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you for what you're talking about. I'm kind of confused on how to use the reflector. Something that's kind of tripping me out is that from my visuals, one side of his face kind of looks darker than the other side. Yes, yeah. So again, it depends on the look that you're going for. If you want it to be more cinematic, let's use that way, that word. There's an gradient. So one part of your face is going to be brighter. Another part is darker. But not too dark to the point that it's a dramatic shot. Like maybe somebody is interrogating you, then you get like shadows on one side, light on the other side. Right? If you want it more corporate video, more just regular talking head, what I could do with this, just move the key light more to the center. So let me show you that. And as you can see that closer to the center, the less shadows they create, and then the more even the lighting in his face. Right? So it's really a matter of style choice, stylistic choice, how you want it. But if you understand the concept of the three-point lighting, then you can play around with the lights, move them around to create the act, the look that you want to go for. All right, okay. Any questions so far? Oh, that's great. Yeah, I can see the question actually. I was going to ask what happens if you put the main light in the middle. For example, I have green light that I use with that camp. It's always in the middle. Yes. So it would be better if I put it on the side. It depends. Again, it depends on... Let me put this in the middle, actually. Or even like outside filming, but should we put the sunlight on our right or left? Not directly? Yeah. So there isn't a hard rule. Again, it really depends on what you're trying to achieve. Like for example, if you're doing... If you look at news, the news anchor, the lighting is mostly not even. Most of the time, the light is right in front of them. You look at my makeup tutorials, for example. They have a ring light and they have the little phone in the middle. And then that's the more even lighting on their faces. But understanding this concept is going to help you so that you can know where to place your light. So there's no right or wrong. It depends on the look that you want to go for. This looks more professional. Yeah. So this looks more cinematic. Like in movies and interviews, professional interviews is what you see. Right? If you have a light right in front of you, it looks more like a video camcorder. Yeah. Long dimension, right? Yeah. Yeah, you create more 3D, make the scene more 3D, three-dimensional when you add different lights. Yeah. Yes? I always struggle with the reflection of the light on the glasses. Yes, that is another one. I have to look at it from my own perspective. This is actually the best example because it has wearing glasses. So, over here. So, right now, this is kind of pleasant. Right? Sometimes, let me take away that thought form. And I'll talk a little bit about what you do. Sorry. Okay, so what do we have here? So at certain angles, you can see that there's a very hard spotlight on the eyes. Right? So that's because the light is... We call that hard light. Hard versus soft lighting. Hard light is just harsh. It just hits you. Like, sun in the mid-afternoon at 12 p.m. It's hard light because it's just hitting down on your heart. When it's cloudy, photographers like it because the clouds act as a big softbox. One of these. So it's like, there's a big softbox in the entire sky. And then it just diffuses the light. We call this diffusion. So this is why, if you want to get rid of those spots, the bigger your light source, the bigger your diffusion, the softer, the more pleasing your subject is going to look. So, first, in this situation, let's put this... And if you lower the light a little bit more at eye level, this is going to accentuate the fact that there is a light spot there. Right? You can see that it's really hard on the glasses, right? Just like a light spot. As soon as I add this, it stops in that spot. So now it's a little bit more... Wait, what? Right? So the spot is still there, but it's soft. Now if you want to get rid of it completely, the light can be a little bit higher. So it comes down a tense phase at an angle that's higher than the rim of the glasses. So it doesn't hit the lens part. So that is the trick to getting rid of light spots or hard spots in your... Somebody is wearing glasses. So, okay, talking about that, we have these two kind of soft boxes. Just a question about the reflector. Is there any guidelines for the size of the reflector that's needed? Or does that depend on light source or this sensor? Yes, so that's a good question. So we have this reflector right here, this soft box. These two are soft boxes, right? Which one will create the softer look? Which one will give you more diffusion? The bigger one. The bigger the light source, the more pleasant your stuff is going to look like or the more diffused you're going to get. This one is good too, because this is better than just having this light like so. Right? Because this is, as we saw earlier, it was really harsh on the tense phase, and it wasn't as pleasant. It's good in the sense that it gives light to your scene when it's dark, when you light. But if you wanted to make it even nicer at one of these soft boxes, and if you wanted to look the best, even better, a bigger one. And if you see behind the scenes footage of photographers or movies, you can see that they have really large diffusion sources. Thanks, Tim. Thank you, Tim. Can I ask one more question about the light? How do you decide what color light you see? That's a good question. So, most of the time, I like to keep the light temperature we call it, so more on the light side, like that. Right? So that's my choice. And if you're trying to add some color or stylistic look to your video, then you can play around with different things. And it also depends with the lighting that you have in your scene, the lighting that you can't control. So, this is the lighting we can't control here. So, if I were to do a better job with this, I would try to match that light to that light. So, to help you then light. If I was outside, obviously, I would match it to daylight. So, like the situation. Yeah, it's more daylight, right? This one? Yeah, something like that. So, just match it as much as possible. Another thing that I like to do is if I have, have you seen the pot lights? Like in houses or office buildings, those are the worst, bigger than photo. Never place a person right underneath them. Because then they're just gonna get like shadows here, shadows in the nose, and just awful. So, if you don't have anything else to work with, just have them step forward, step back, don't let that pot light hit them, straight at the top. And if you're able to control the lighting and you have your own light, turn the lights off. Turn the lights off and you start from scratch. Start in with your key light, then your field fill light, and your other lights. And to see how you can manage the scene. Another thing that I like to do if I have even a fourth light that is more powerful, I point it to the ceiling. So, I point it to the ceiling because I can control the ambient light. And I don't like these lights. I want to bring my own lights. Because these lights are, they're more tuned for video or photography. These lights are not made for that. So, there are certain frequencies of light that caught cast certain color tints on your footage or your photos. And this is why most of the time I like to just turn the lights off and then just start from scratch. But that is not always realistic, depending on if you are a 1% crew, then you don't have like capacity to bring all the lights. But that's something to know and keep in mind if you ever have the opportunity to try that out. So, yeah. I mean, there are a few more things about lighting. Here. Okay, yeah. So, we talked about hard light versus soft light. You can see that the soft lighting here, this person, it's still darker on this side, but brighter on this side. But it still looks nice. It looks natural. On this side, it looks more dramatic, right? Maybe more, you can create more tension. Maybe you're shooting a horror film or something like that. There's parts of your shadows and the nose and the side here. So, that's why you need soft boxes. To create this effect, the soft lighting effect. And then these are examples of soft boxes or diffusion sources. So, that one right there is similar to this. These ones are bigger. Some of these can be this big. For something like that, you need a bigger stand, like a more heavy duty stand, because it might fall down on you. But something like that is good, because it's collapsible, you can bring it everywhere. Then we have the more professional ones, like this one, like a big frame. And even for products, products for products you definitely want to have soft lighting. So, a trick is, let's say we have our light with our soft blocks. And if that's not soft enough, add another layer of diffusion. In this case, just a white sheet of paper, or even a white cloth, you can add it in between your subject and the light. And that's going to make that product or your subject look even better, because it's going to be even softer. So, obviously, the more diffusion panels you add in between, the less intense the light is going to be. So, if you have a light that is not that powerful, then you really have to play around with what you want to have. You want more light, or you want more diffusion. So, there's something you can do. But generally, we want diffusion. We want soft light, because we want things to look nice. Right? Okay. And another thing, free lighting. Free lighting is our windows, the sunlight. Let's say we have a window over here. The best thing to do is to take advantage of that light, is just to place ourselves in front of the window. Right? This person on the first frame, he's not taking advantage of the light coming from the window. And this is what it looks like. It's underexposed, it's in the shadows. You can't really see it. On this side, they flipped it around, and now they're facing the window, the camera is at the window coming in. And they get a more diffused look in their lighting, and it's more natural. Right? In this instance, if you wanted to make this a little bit more engaging, or cinematic, like earlier, what would we do in this instance? What can we do? We cannot move the window. So, what can we do? What if we just want to use the window? But we want more of a gradient look in our face. You can turn the person a little bit, right? So, let's say this is my window. If I'm here, all the light's hitting me. Like, I have an even light hitting me. What I can do if I want more of a gradient look? Just turn a little bit more, and have this more towards the shadow, or towards the interior. So, when the light hits me, there's this gradient from bright to dark. Now, my background's going to change when I do that, so that's something to keep in mind. But if I had to go with me, normally I like this look more than this look. But this look is still better than this look. Right? So, there's something to keep in mind. Free lighting. You can play around with your phone in the window, at home, or wherever you are. So, before we go and practice some lighting on your own, I'm just going to quickly talk about audio. There's different types of audio that you can use. So, audio really makes or breaks a video. If you're on YouTube, you're watching a video, if you can't really hear the audio properly, it might, you know, you might not want to keep watching. So, keeping an ear out there for audio is really important. No pun intended. No pun intended. So, there's different ways to get good audio. There's shotgun mics that you can plug into your phone or your camera that are like this one, or there's lavalier mics like they want to have here. So, it's wireless. It goes into the person speaking and then you just plug the receiver into the camera. So, this is a more expensive system, but there's cheaper systems on Amazon as well. But with these things, one thing you want to keep in mind, or with any mic in general is, the further you're away from the mic, the worse the audio is going to be. If I'm using one of these for shotgun mics, usually the length is about an arm's length. Once you're further than that, then the audio quality is not going to be as good. It's still better than not having a mic at all, but always like as closer as you can. With this mic right here, right, it's really close to me and it sounds good. If I were to have this on the table and I'm speaking here, it's not going to be good audio. But it's still going to be better than the camera, right? The camera's really far from me. You're not going to get good audio with that. So, let's say I'm filming on my phone. Like I have filming on my phone. I don't have a mic here. Some new phones have better microphones than others. So, if it's here, it might be okay. But the further you go, the worse the quality becomes. So, my advice is to always keep audio in mind. Lighting and audio, those are the two main things. Even before composition or shot types is getting your audio and lighting correctly, is going to make your video look professional, or a lot better than not having that kind of sound. So, that is audio. So, before we go on to the next part, we will have some time to... You can come up and play around with the lighting. We have a couple more lights here. So, we'll have... Yeah, you can come up and then come in place, move the lights around, and then have one person to be the model or whatever, and then just play around with that. Stabilization, that's another one. This is more applicable for video. You know, if you're just walking, you can't mess up that. People are not going to enjoy the video, unless you're doing like horror or like, you know, Blair Witch Project with long POV, and it's like moving all over. But, for the most part, you want it to be stable. There are different ways to keep your camera stable. The easiest one is a tripod, or you're holding it with a steady hand. There are other types of stabilization. There are handles that go on the top of the camera, so it improves the center of gravity on the camera, and that makes it more stable. There are gimbals, which is what we have over there. So, these are motor rides, and they help keep your camera stable. So, we've probably... I'm not sure if you've seen one before, but you hold the gimbal, you bring your camera, and then you can get really nice shots that are pretty stable. And, this is in more professional setups. It's called an easy rig, so it's just something that helps support the camera, so it's not all the weight of the camera on the camera operator. But, to get started, if you have even like, so let's say a small mirrorless camera tripod, and then just techniques on how to hold your camera, that's going to help as well. And I'll be talking about some of those techniques in a bit. And, just quickly brush through some of these things. So, camera movement, a big thing about videography or cinematography is how the camera moves. So, we looked at angles, composition, there's also camera movement. And, this is something that photography doesn't have, because you're just capturing it still. But, in video, the camera moves, and it conveys different things. So, not every camera movement is a pan, so if you're not very experienced, you say, oh, can we get a pan of this? Can we get a pan of this? And pan is the generic word for everything. But, pan is only this type of movement. So, I'll just use my phone. So, for a panning movement, the camera's on the same spot, and it's just rotating from one side to the other. So, this is panning, right? The next one is tilting. Same thing, camera's in a big spot, and then just go tilt, up, up and down. And they do different things. With a pan, you're trying to reveal your scene, maybe somebody's walking, you're trying to follow them. With a tilt, as well, you reveal something, but maybe there's height on the subject you want to reveal. So, that's a tilt. Then we have a zoom in and out. This is normally with a zoom lens. So, with the lens you can zoom in or you can zoom out. You can also do this by walking forward or walking backwards. But, with a zoom lens, you're going to avoid the camera shake. If you don't have a stabilizer or on those gimbals. So, zooming in will give you a more steady zoom in or zoom out. Similar to that, we have a dolly in or dolly out, which is similar to a zoom in or zoom out, but in this case, you're not zooming in on the camera. Here, the camera is moving in and moving out. So, to get a steady shot like that, you'll need either a gimbal, a stabilizer that keeps your camera stable, or, if you've seen behind the scenes in movies, there's rail tracks, right? They put a little cart and they push the guy with the camera or the person with the camera, then the camera moves forward and backwards. That's able to keep the frame steady. So, that's why it's called dolly, because traditionally they put it in a dolly. But now we have gimbals, so we may not necessarily need a dolly in order to get a shot like that, okay? And then we have a tracking shot or a tracking shot. Okay, somebody tell me what the difference is between this and a pan shot? How is the camera moving here? It's stable moving. Yeah, but how? Like, is it rotating? Rotating? Oh, very easy. There you go, there you go. So, a pan was this, right? A tracking or a tracking shot, the camera's moving together with the subject, right? So, this is the big difference. And in my opinion, this is what, this kind of shot is what's going to make your video look more professional, rather than just a regular pan. If you can move your camera sideways, left or right, along with the subject or the scene, it makes so much, elevates the production quality of the video. So, for example, if I'm filming somebody walking, let's say, can we have you just walk from here to here? So, let's say I'm filming a gentleman here walking. Yama. Yama, okay. Yama's walking to his seat, so you can walk. So, what shot is this? A panning shot, because the camera's not moving, it's just rotating, right? So, how about this? Go ahead. This is a tracking shot, because the camera's moving with their subject. And which shot you prefer? It really depends on the stylistic choice, but if you want it to look nicer or step above, you move along with it. And it's also harder to do, because for a panning shot, you don't have to move, right? But with this, you really have to move with it, and then with movement and walking, you introduce camera-ship. So, there are a few tips that will help to keep your shot steady. And also, a lot of phones have stabilization that it's really good, actually, as long as you know how to use it. What I mean by that is, this phone has stabilization. This is an older iPhone, I think it's the 11th. I can get really stable shots without one of these gimbals. So, the way I do it is, I try to keep, I try to do the ninja walk, we call it, new videography, so it's heel to toe. You bend your knees and heel to toe. So, what that does is you roll your footsteps. So, instead of just walking and then the camera goes like this, you're trying to roll your footsteps so the camera kind of floats with you, right? So, that's why, if you do this, it's going to be more stable than just walking. And if you're going, if you're doing a tracking shot, let's, for example, is that Yama walking again? Let's see, I'm doing a tracking. Let's say I'm doing a tracking shot. Is that yet? This is not good. The way I'm walking, why isn't it good? It's shaking. It's shaking and also because I'm walking, this is not natural, right? It's hard to avoid shake. So, what I'll do is walk forward with Yama and then just put my camera here. And I would do it again here. And then I can now roll my footsteps, right? Heel to toe and then let's shake. So, it's very simple tips that you can use with your phone, with a camera. Another thing you can do is, if your camera has a strap, there's one here with a strap. Can I roll yours? One for this. Another hack with camera straps is if you have them here, create some tension with yourself and the camera. And that way, instead of this, right, there's tension. And now you can use that tension to create more stable footage. So, whether it's in a pan or even like, you're moving a little bit this way, that tension is going to improve the ability. So, something to keep in mind for better handheld stable footage. Another thing to do as well is to keep the camera as close to your body as possible. So, this, let me ask you, is this better? Or is this better? Keep it at the bottom. The second one, why? Why is that? Looks like you have more control as you're holding it. There you go. Yes. Because now I have, you know, it's further away from me. And then my arms will introduce more shape. Like, closer to my body, to my core, to my center, the less shape there will be, right? So, it's like, think of yourself as being one with the camera. So, like, if you're walking or if you're moving. Another trick that I like to do is just swaying back and forth to my camera. If I don't have, like, one of those things. So, let's say I'm doing a tracking shot and I want to move the camera from left to right. You don't have to do, like, a very far movement. You can just, even a little bit of movement is going to make a big difference in your video. So, let's say I have the camera here. And I'll start with this. Let's say I cover my frame with this. Maybe I'll show you on this screen. Put the camera as close to me as possible and then just sway with the camera. Nothing, right? You get a mini tracking shot that way. And then, if you have one of this here, let's say I do a reveal. Actually, it's used to TV. You can do a nice reveal shot. Let's say we start like this. And we'll sway with the camera. And you reveal the scene. Very simple, but it elevates your video for that clip to the next level, right? So, just things to keep in mind. Adding movement to your shot is going to increase the production quality of it. So, let me see a couple more things. I think we're done. So, originally, I had this planned out so we can go and practice with camera movement, but because of time, unfortunately, we can't do that in the session. But I encourage you to go home and try all of these things out. Try camera movement, try angles, composition, lighting, audio. Then when you put it all together, that's when you create a masterpiece, a work of art in video, right? There are a couple of things as well. Not sure if you knew, but there's LinkedIn Learning. That all students and staff have access to for free. There are a ton of courses there. You go in on that site. You have to log in with Passport York with your app. If you just type video production, video 101, or whatever, you're going to get a lot of courses that you can further your knowledge from the base that we learned today and go from there. And I also teach stuff on my own, on the side. I also do videography tutorials. So, just my own socials if you're interested. But that's it for today's session. I hope that you learned a little bit and that you can take your video to the next level. And thank you again for coming. Thank you.