[Travis Roesler]

I’m going to start by adding the light near the camera.

[Travis Roesler]

Guys… absolutly fantastic suggestions.

I do have some keep sunken eyes… it prevents fists from getting in there 😉

The purpose of the videos is to interject brief notes into my mixed martial arts video series at howtofightnow.com.

my most popular video is right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSX0PCQXiO4

Either way, I leave myself a large frame because I like to move around, and I don’t like when my hands get cut off in the shot. It just seems weird. I do little bits of demonstration and need people to be able to see my entire torso as well.

I am actually moving AWAY from green screen because I got sick of the Chroma Key, and I can’t separate myself from the background enough that anything ever keys out really well… I’m doing this in a converted bedroom. I find that the shots look MUCH better when they are real, and not a product of a rendering process.

I will make these next adjustments and send you a 5-10 second clip of what I’m working with.

Thanks again guys for all of your time… you’ve made a huge difference in my product already.

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[Travis Roesler]

Ok… I think this is it… jesus I hope this is it.

Please ignore the shadows on the edges… my paper has gotten a little wrinkled and I ordered a new role.

[Travis Roesler]

Hey Craig,

Thanks for the heads up… I will throw another diffusion sock over the backlights and see what happens. I don’t really have much room for an umbrella, which brings me to my next point… I’m pretty much stuck 3 or 4 feet away from the background! I’m shooting this in a relatively small office space, and my camera is back against the wall.

… 4 hours of tweaking later …

I have my next shot… I’m going to post it as a response to the entire thread… if that’s possible.

[Travis Roesler]

Damn… I know this is good advice. Ok… let me reposition that top light to make it a little less bright around my head.

Thank you for the feedback… I also felt as if my face wasn’t standing out enough.

—Trav

[Travis Roesler]

Ok… I think I have it. Please note that the picture actually embeds slightly darker on the site than it actually is.

I really really really appreciate your help… the difference between this post and my first one is huge. I can’t thank you enough.

1. Key all the way up to the ceiling.
2. Shadows virtually eliminated to create a smooth gradient in the background.
3. Researched the rembrandt patch, and you can SLIGHTLY see the “triangle” under my right eye… at least as much as my facial structure tolerates.

Any more “Patch” than that and my right eye looks unusually dark.. as my eyes are kinda sunken in.

I’m pretty sure this is my final product… I don’t think that I’m going to get it any better than this!

[Travis Roesler]

Ok! You were absolutely right about a lot of things! Here’s my next submission!

[Travis Roesler]

Great suggestions and feedback!

1. Key Light raise – done… and good call.

2. So you would agree that my video guy that the key is slightly overexposed? I am shooting with an FS100 so I can definitely adjust the zebra stripes. I honestly think the key looks pretty good, I don’t think that I’m losing too much detail in the face, so I guess I’ll let the camera sort it out.

3. I actually already turned down the fill a bit to give my face more contrast, so I completely agree with that suggestion and already fixed it.

4. The background is meant to be slightly lighter right behind me… it makes me seem like a glowing beam of martial arts knowledge. I kinda like the gradient effect that it creates, so that was fully intentional. Before this, I was using a poorly executed green screen and just putting in a plain white background. Trust me when I tell you that this is a drastic improvement.

5. With respect to the genaray’s, I really really like them. They are light, sturdy, durable, they lock into place like a rock, have remote dimmers (in addition to on-light dimmers), they don’t put out much heat at all, and in general, I think that they are very well contructed.

The only COMPLAINT that I have is a very light squeal that is emitted from the light at anything brightness setting other than the highest and lowest settings. It doesn’t appear that my mic picks it up, but it will wear on your nerves after a while. My solution is just to position my lights correctly at the highest settings and go from there.

This would be easy to remove in post production even if the mic did pick it up, but still, it’s a little irritating.

They come with their own little diffusion sock that fits like a glove, and that’s all the diffusion that I’m using currently. As far as I can tell, it’s more than enough as might light doesn’t appear too harsh.

I got these so that I could just secure them to the ceiling, and raise them when I want them out of the way. My goal here is to be able to flip and “On” switch, step in front of a screen, and be filming it 2 minutes or less. So far, it’s coming along very nicely.

Thanks for your feedback, and I hope my genaray review helps!

[Travis Roesler]

Yea… I can fix the key, I guess just by softening the edges a little bit.

Why does it default back to SD? Is that something that I can fix by compressing correctly?

[Travis Roesler]

Thanks a lot guy!