Speaker 1: When you consider videoing through a light board, you have to remember that there are two sides of this board. One is the camera side and the other is the presenter side. Hi, my name is Reed Schloss and I work for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And today we're going to share with you the best practices we've learned of using a light board. When you consider videoing through a light board, you have to remember that there are two sides of this board. One is the camera side and the other is the presenter side. I'm going to share with you four points that you need to really meticulously watch for and pay attention to on the camera side, as well as three things as a presenter you want to also do so that you can have the best quality in your light board video. On the camera side, the first thing that we want to talk about is lighting and how important lighting is for a light board. What you're seeing right now is a series of about five different lights that are used in different ways to highlight me as a speaker, but also to highlight the glass that we're shooting through. The second thing that we want to talk about is sound. How do we take care of audio and the sound that is happening behind the glass, which a camera normally is capturing, except it's on the other side of the glass. The third item is reflection, which is a nasty little thing that happens when you have glass between you and the camera. The fourth thing that we want to talk about is backdrops, because when you think about it, if every video looked like this, it would get pretty boring. On the presenter side, the first thing we want to share with you is pre-shoot work, which is really important. The second thing that we'll talk about is framing. Different from just your standard whiteboard discussion, where you can write anywhere on the whiteboard, you want to create a frame so that you're still in the shot. The third thing that we want to talk about is your wardrobe, because not everything that you wear behind glass and in combination with your backdrop will actually work. So even though I'm wearing a cool, neat, floral Friday shirt, if that's not what you're trying to depict in your video, then it might not be the right one to choose, especially if you're trying not to distract from the content that you're putting on your whiteboard. So the first thing we're going to talk about is lighting. The lightboard itself is made up of two different lights. One that sits in the frame of the glass, in this case that is a black light that makes the fluorescent chalk markers show up. The other one is actually a white light that's reflecting back to give me as a speaker some lighting. But to create more of that depth for your video, to not seem so flat, we've added a couple of other lights as well. On each side, we have LED lights that are subbed up with barn doors. The reason we use those barn doors is because if you just had the regular light spreading, it would actually create bigger casts on the lightboard, which creates more of a reflection and can actually create the reflection back at me more and kind of skew what you're seeing. So using the barn doors to adjust to the speaker, that gives us a flood of light. We use those barn doors also to highlight the backdrop a little bit more and give the depth of what this is rather than just a flat experience. The last thing that we want is some light from above to kind of give us some lighting of our head to get that little bit more depth of experience. Here, we're using just some reflective light off of some ceiling tiles to help provide some of that. Some of the best lighting that I've seen, though, is overhead lighting where it's projected down. You have to be careful. You have to use barn door LED type lights as well because if you get too much flood, then it reflects back onto the lightboard itself. Number two is audio and the sound that we're capturing. The challenge that we have with audio is that as a speaker, I'm speaking behind a pane of glass and that normally would be projecting out to the microphone or a microphone setup that is part of the camera. In this case, that reflects back and it sounds great to me, but if you're on the other side of the glass with a normal camera, it just reflects back and forth here in this space. So in our setup, what we've actually done is we've taken two Rode shotgun mics and point them in towards an angle. Those mics up here are actually set for a very specific purpose because as a speaker naturally turns to talk to one side, if we only had one mic in the middle, you would hear that dissipate. The same is true on this side. So two microphones we've found plugged into our Zoom recorders actually makes a very crisp and very professional sounding video. The third item that we want to talk about is reflection. This is something that until you actually start shooting and start doing post-production work, you might not even recognize. The first time I did a video shoot with a lightboard, I had so many reflections in it that I had not seen while doing the shoot. It wasn't until after doing the post-production work that you realize there are so many things that can go wrong. For example, I'm going to have Mike take the cover off of the record light that's on the camera. It's a simple little thing, but it actually shows up very distinctly when you start doing post-production work. And the first time I saw it in the post-production work, I thought, oh, that's a sniper trace. That's a reflection though that's happening because the light on the camera side is reflecting off of the glass on its side back at the camera. So you're seeing light on the other side. Another thing that can happen is that the backdrop behind the camera, if it's not thought through, can actually produce a lot of different effects. So when you're setting up for your lightboard, there are certain things that you want to take into consideration about the lighting and on the camera side. In this case, we've put a black backdrop behind the camera. Let's turn on the lights in the studio so you can see the reflection that just happens because of that. You'll start to see different elements that actually appear in the video. And having Mike just take and move a part of the backdrop, you'll see how much of a reflection actually is created by a white wall on the back of the studio. So that's what happens when you get reflection on the other side of the glass. The camera side sees everything. So just be careful and conscious about that. Another part of that experience on both sides of the glass is when you start cleaning up the glass on your side as a presenter. But that actually is on both sides. You need someone on both sides of the glass to be cleaning, especially if anyone's touched or something has happened on the camera side of the glass, because they'll create little shadows and you'll see different effects like there's a little little luminous piece right there. All of that starts to show up. Just a side note about cleaning up the glass, because that's really important when you're shooting in 4K. That camera is going to see all of the little imperfections that you've left on cleaning that glass, like this little guy you can probably see in post edit, or this haze and shadow that you can see here in the corner. All of those are visible to the camera, but you typically won't see it when you are presenting or when you are shooting it. It's in post production that it then becomes visible. The last item that we want to talk about on the camera side is backdrops. We've tried to shoot with a light board with different backdrops, trying to figure out if there are ways that we can be more creative with this. What we have found is that the black backdrop is nice for this type of shooting. However, other backdrops, such as using a green screen so that it can be replaced, is actually very effective. The important thing about green screen is making sure that you have the right lighting to get a smooth green behind you. In this situation, we've actually added extra lights to highlight the green screen rather than just me. In this case, we have two more LED lights that are shooting kind of down in this area to help make that smooth, because they were darker. We're also using more overhead lighting to actually light the screen to make it smoother. That helps in post when you're trying to replace the green with whatever backdrop you're wanting. So there you have it, the best practices when using a light board and shooting. From the camera side, remember lighting. Remember the audio and sound is different. Reflections, they'll hit you after you've done the shoot because you'll see them in post when you didn't see them during the shoot. Fourth item, backdrops. Make sure that you just don't stick with the black. Use that green screen and shake it up a little bit. So there you have it. Those are our best practices for using a light board for video.