How to Shoot a Video with an Infinite White Screen Background

Hi! Today I am going to talk about how to create this effect; this infinite white background. If you saw the Apple commercials; Apple versus PC, or even if you go back to 1999 with The Matrix, you remember that there was a pure white background. You see it on TV all the time these days. It's an effect that makes things look professional, so if you have a spokesperson, kind of like the way this is right now, if you have a spokesperson, or talking, having a pure, white background really enhances the professionalism of the specific shot that you're doing. The one thing is, most websites, not all, but many, are white in background, so if you put a video with an infinite white background on top of the web page with a white background, it kind of looks like the person is floating on the web page, so it's a really great way to look very professional. So, today I am going to show you kind of my secrets behind the scenes if you will. Some truth in advertising, I am doing this not in a studio, but in my apartment. so I am going to give you a little tour, how to set up, and hopefully I am not going to miss out on anything in terms of details. I'll also have this transcript below this blog post, and, so if you want to read you can read it, and I also list all of the materials that you're going to need all the equipment so that you can figure out exactly what you need to make this effect work. So, let's get started. Ok, basically a little behind the scenes. You can see that this is my apartment, and yeah it's the holidays as I am recording this. This is actually a white screen. Now what I did was purchase a white projection screen because I needed to be able to put it up and take it down. I didn't want this thing in my, you know, I didn't want to put a sheet there. Basically, this is a white screen that you can buy on Amazon for about $70. I will provide all the details below. You could also use a white wall, a white piece of fabric, or even a, you know, kind of a bed sheet type of thing. You could do that as well. I preferred this because there are no wrinkles, fabric you would have to iron, and it gets to be a pain. A white wall probably would work if you have the room to do a white wall, so you can see my walls are greenish in color, and they're not white. So, I got the screen. The next thing you want to do is you have here the lights. Now, you can see that there are two sets of lights on this side, and then we have two on there. Those are the screen lights, and basically what you want to do is these shop lights are available at Home Depot or anywhere else, Amazon, wherever you want to buy it, and their shop lights, 13, I am sorry, 10-inch shop lights, they are available for $13. The next thing is I have in here, sorry to blind you, these look like gigantic CFLs because they are, so on both sides of the screen I have these four gigantic high, very high lumen daylight CFL bulbs. Basically, I would go with at least a 50 watt, 2300 lumen bulb. The one I am using is an 85 watt, 4800 lumen bulb. What you want to do is make sure they are daylight, so you are looking at probably, you want to choose something that's I'm sorry, you want to choose something that's 5500K or higher in terms of the color temperature. You want to go below 5500K, 5500K is about daylight, so it's just the minimum part of daylight. The ones that I have I believe are 6,000K, 85 watt, 4800 lumens. Ok, so you can see the setup basically, it's a very simple setup. You have the two lights that are on either side side of the screen which illuminate the background. Now, what I am going to do is switch around so you can see what I am looking at as I am facing the camera. Ok, here is my setup so what I am doing when I am reading from the screen, when I am doing a professional video and looking at the camera, this is what I see. It's in my kitchen my little dining area. Basically, it's a real quick setup. You have two lights, I am sorry, two lights on either side, so a total of four lights. Those are usually called the "key lights," and they illuminate me as I am doing my videos. Now, if you zoom up, or if I zoom up I should say and focus there a little bit, you can see that they're clip-on lights. They are the shop lights, eight inch shop lights. Inside those the bulbs are actually lower wattage, they can be 26 watt cfls Now, you want to choose ones that have a warmer appearance, so you are talking about warmer bulbs, you don't want to get the daylight. You want to get 3,000K to 3,500K color temperatures. The ones that do the screen that illuminate the screen, those are daylight. These you want to warm, you want to have more of a warm appearance to whoever is on camera, and those are 3,000K to 3,500K color temperatures Next you see, now normally, that right there, you can see the iPad that is sitting there. Normally, the iPad, there's a camera, and the camera I am holding right now. The camera is there which I'll go over in a second, and then you have the iPad. Of course an iPad is expensive. You can get a Droid tablet, that's fine. You can also rig up something depending on how it is, rig up something so that you could put a table, and then use a laptop as your teleprompter if you even wanted to do a teleprompter so now let's talk about the camera. In fact, let me go ahead and get my cell phone camera to talk about the camera. Ok, so I gave you a little tour. A real quick recap as you have the screen, I use a white projection screen. You have the two screen lights on either side, very high lumen bulbs to wash out the white background, so it's over-exposed. Next, I have on either side of me I have the key lights which are on each side, I have two lower wattage, I think it said 26 watt bulbs, and again, held within the shop lights. I also forgot to mention that it's, I use photography stands that usually hold lights. They are about $15 bucks on Amazon.com, but you can go as simple as getting a bucket and putting a stick inside of it and put in cement, or sand, or something like that, get dowel rods. So, the camera itself, I use a Canon T4i [corrected from video] It's a great camera, high quality, that's the one I've been using probably for the past two months. I also before that had a lower expensive, the Canon I am using now is about $800. The next I had was a traditional video camera, consumer grade video camera. That ran about $400, and it was a Canon, I think it's the HF 200. If that's not it, I'll put it in the space below. I would also suggest that if you can't get those, get a cameral like the Kodak, I think it's called the 8zi, or the z8i, I think it is. That camera has an external microphone jack. You have to get a camera with an external microphone jack. If you don't, it's going to, it's going to sound like you are in a cave, so you get the crisp quality because this camera has a microphone jack, so if you need a low cost camera, it's the Kodak, again z8i, I believe it is, has an external microphone jack. Now, on the settings you may say, "Well, ok, what about these things?" You see I purposely am leaving this ugly stuff on the side here. Basically, when you go into you whatever video editing software you have, you just, that's it. You just crop out the sides, you put a white background, and voila, you have a perfectly professional infinite, white background, so thanks again everybody If you're not, if you didn't download my free e-book, go to the side, it's on How To Create a Video That Persuades Customers To Take Action, to buy a product, click a button, whatever it might be, so go to the side, put in your information, and I will send you that e-book. Thanks for watching, browse around the site, and remember everyone can make! amazing videos.