Three quick tips to improve your videos

Video is a constant these days. You don’t need a full studio to make your recordings look more professional.

Choose your backdrop

Solid colour backgrounds are the way to go. They make it easy to add text and image overlay to your videos to make them more engaging, plus they are pretty easy to execute, and that is key to production. White backgrounds are very popular but require a lot of lights.

Darker backgrounds are much easier to execute the right way and look really good.

Get the right light

A poorly lit video sucks. Do you watch them? Probably not. To avoid issues with your lighting purchase a decent lighting kit.

You need to make sure you are turning off the normal lights in your studio when filming and just using your light kit. You also want to use the same kind of bulb in each light as this will keep it consistent and not shadowy. You will also need to position one light – called your key light – at a 45-degree angle to the left of your subject. You then set up another light on the right side of the subject also at a 45-degree angle, called the fill light.

Consider another light over your head to fill in any shadows and give your subject depth. Keep in mind if you are shooting on a white background or green screen you will need another two lights on each side of the background also both at a 45-degree angle.

The camera and microphone

You will want to use a tripod with your camera. There are loads of tripods out there just make sure when you pick yours for your video studio just make sure it extends tall enough.

When it comes to your camera, it is easy to get bogged down with choices, so just use what you have.

If your lighting is right and audio is crisp a newer iPhone or Samsung smartphone can get the job done. When you set up your camera and tripod, you will want it to be about 4-6ft from your subject. The type of camera you are using will affect this.

Every dealerships’ video studio will need a quality audio source because let’s face it, audio quality will make or break your videos overall results. Just like a camera, you have several choices for a microphone for your dealerships video studio. You can get a great quality lapel microphone for your video that will consistently crank out killer quality audio for your videos, and it doesn’t cost that much. You get what you pay for in most cases when it comes to a microphone so keep that in mind.

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