Light forms the basis of all visual media and is a fundamental part of video production. Good lighting is key to a good video and can improve image quality, while bad lighting can make even an expensive camera look bad. When shooting video near windows or outside, position the subject with the light shining directly on their face or at an angle to create highlights and shadows. Studio lights on stands provide brighter, more directed light over a larger area and allow more flexibility in camera positioning and lighting of subjects and backgrounds.

1. George Pratt
Lighting
Light is the "raw material" for creating visual images. Everything related to vision is related to light.
Whether the medium is still photography, motion film, video or computer-generated images, light
forms the basis of everything you see.It is important to think of lighting not as something extra
which is added in some situations, but as a fundamental part of all visual media production.The key
to any good video is in the lighting. Good lighting can make a cheap camera look good and bad
lighting can make a pricy camera look bad.
If you are able to shoot video near a window or outside on a nice day, then position your subject one
of two ways; either shoot them with the light shining directly in their face (if they can be
comfortable and don’t feel the need to squint too much) or at an angle so that one side is hot and
one side is not. The sun has a full spectrum of light and it renders colours well. Try not to shoot at
noon, because the shadows come from above and are hard avoid. Early morning and afternoon
means the light is softer, has a more golden tone, and fills your subject better.
Lights with stands can be plugged into the wall and provide brighter light over a larger area. Now
you can move your camera and not upset the lighting. Your subject and his or her background can
now become part of your story. When you set up a light and stand, place it slightly to the left or
right of your subject's face to create a gentle shadow on one side. Make sure you are careful to
isolate your light sources, i.e. close or open the shades and turn the office lights on or off. When you
mix light, your primary source has to be the brightest.
Focus
Due to the optical properties of photographic lenses, only objects within a limited range of distances
from the camera will be reproduced clearly. The process of adjusting this range is known as changing
the camera's focus. There are various ways of focusing a camera accurately. The simplest cameras
have fixed focus and use a small aperture and wide-angle lens to ensure that everything within a
certain range of distance from the lens, usually around 3 metres (10 ft) to infinity, is in reasonable
focus. Fixed focus cameras are usually inexpensive types, such as single-use cameras. The camera
can also have a limited focusing range or scale-focus that is indicated on the camera body. The user
will guess or calculate the distance to the subject and adjust the focus accordingly. On some cameras
this is indicated by symbols (head-and-shoulders; two people standing upright; one tree;
mountains).
Some cameras have post focusing. Post focusing means take the pictures first and then focusing
later at the personal computer. The camera uses many tiny lenses on the sensor to capture light
from every camera angle of a scene and is called plenoptics technology. A current plenoptic
camera design has 40,000 lenses working together to grab the optimal picture.
Depth of field
In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field (DOF) is the distance
between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image.
Although a lens can precisely focus at only
one distance at a time, the decrease in
sharpness is gradual on each side of the
focused distance, so that within the DOF,
the unsharpness is imperceptible under
normal viewing conditions.

2. George Pratt
Colour Balance
In photography and image processing, colour balance is the global adjustment of the intensities of
the colours (typically red, green, and blue primary colours). An important goal of this adjustment is
to render specific colours – particularly neutral colours – correctly; hence, the general method is
sometimes called grey balance, neutral balance, or white balance. Colour balance changes the
overall mixture of colours in an image and is used for colour correction; generalized versions of
colour balance are used to get colours other than neutrals to also appear correct or pleasing.
The colour balance operations in popular image editing applications usually operate directly on the
red, green, and blue channel pixelvalues,without respect to any colour sensing or reproduction
model. In shooting film, colour balance is typically achieved by using colour correction filters over
the lights or on the camera lens.
Exposure
Exposure is the amount of light allowed to fall on each area unit of a photographic medium
(photographic film or image sensor) during the process of taking a photograph.
In photographic jargon, an exposure generally refers to a single shutter cycle. For example: a long
exposure refers to a single, protracted shutter cycle to capture enough low-intensity light, whereas
a multiple exposure involves a series of relatively brief shutter cycles; effectively layering a series of
photographs in one image. For the same film speed, the accumulated photometric exposureshould
be similar in both cases.
Camera Angles
The camera angle marks the specific location at which a movie camera or video camera is placed to
take a shot. A scene may be shot from several camera angles simultaneously. This will give a
different experience and sometimes emotion. The different camera angles will have different effects
on the viewer and how they perceive the scene that is shot. There are a few different routes that a
camera operator could take to achieve this effect.
Framing
In visual arts including cinematography, framing is a technique used to focus the viewer's attention
upon the subject.
Framing can make an image more aesthetically pleasing and keep the viewer's focus on the framed
object(s). It can also be used as a repoussoir, to direct attention back into the scene. It can
add depth to an image, and can add interest to the picture when the frame is thematically related to
the object being framed.
The frame of an image is determined by many factors, including:
Depth of field - the range of focus within the image
White space - the empty space surrounding the subject
Colour and lighting
Crop