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Chapter 10 Shooting Professional Videos 121

big bucks in Hollywood and New York; the right makeup can make normal people
look like stars, whereas the wrong makeup (or no makeup at all) can make even the
most beautiful, blemish-free people look average on camera.

So, even if your talent is nonprofessional, you still have to work through the
makeup angle. If your stars want to look good on camera, especially when shooting
close-ups in high definition, they have to wear the proper makeup. And make sure
your people know that this applies not just to women, but also to any males in front
of the camera—it’s an important issue.

One problem in producing your own videos is that you probably don’t know beans
about makeup. This is another area where a pro video shoot differs from an ama-
teur shoot; when you hire a video production firm, a makeup person should be
included as part of the deal. The makeup should be tonal to get rid of glare on the
face; if the subject’s hands are visible in the video, tone them, too.

Learn Your Shooting Angles

You’ve heard Hollywood types tell photographers to shoot them only from their
good side. That might sound vain, and probably is, but there’s also a bit of truth to
it. Most people look better when shot from one side than the other. A skilled cam-
eraman or director knows this and positions the camera accordingly.

In addition, you don’t always want to face the camera head-on. A better shot often
results from the subject’s body turned to the left or right of the camera, with the
head turned to face the camera. This slight body angle is more visually interesting,
and avoids a boring “talking head” appearance.

Wait for the Lighting

One of the things you have to get used to on a professional video shoot is the wait-
ing; there’s a lot of it. You might spend a full eight-hour day just to get three min-
utes of finished video. Although some of that time comes from multiple takes (the
talent almost never gets it perfect in one take), much of the time is spent waiting
for the technicians to get the lighting right.

Lighting is important in a professional video. That’s why they use more than just
one light in the studio; there’s typically a bank of lights above the stage and even
more sitting around the side on stands. The director wants to light the subject (and
every other important item in the shot) as flatteringly as possible, which takes time.
One light aimed here, another aimed there, maybe a diffuser added in front of this
one and a reflector to the side of that one—it’s all very involved.

Lighting experts talk about direct lighting and indirect lighting, fill lights and
bounce lights, main lights and hair lights. You don’t have to know what all these