My good friends JT Bennett and Allie Brown were running for Student President and Vice President at Cedarville University. I liked this challenge. It make me set up the best lighting I could yet also focus on content. Also, I knew that I wanted to reduce the grain in the image so I used a lot of light in this shot and my 50 mm f1.8.
Equipment used:
Canon T2i
Canon 50 mm 1.8
x3 PBL 1K MX Lights
x2 PBL Softboxes
Cheap $10 Wired Lav Mic
Edited on:
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Audition
Note: Their twitter, facebook, and email adresses are blurred at the end to preserve their privacy outside of the university.
“I am who I am today because of the mistakes I made yesterday.” ― The Prolific Penman
Things learned:
- 1K tungsten lights take a lot of power. I wanted to light the background and get a nice white shadowless look but that would have required about 5 1Ks and I didn't want to blow the power. Thus the gray background.
- Don't shoot in a location where there is speakers on in the background. Even when there is no sound coming out of them there will still be some static that you will have to clean up later in post.
- Make sure your mics are turned on. Sounds simple but we lost about 30 minutes due to a mic not turned on.
- If you are using the light of the room to help with your lighting make sure they are turned permanately on. There was a motion sensor in the room we were shooting in and apparently we weren't moving around enough so the lights turned off in the middle of a cut. We had to scrap it and keep going.
- Things will happen beyond your control. Don't freak out. Especially if you are the director. Nothing makes your actors lose faith in you more than when they percieve that you don't know what to do. Just keep working and stay dilligent.
