How To Film Your Talking Head
The “Talking Head” shot is the shot that drives your video. It’s the portion of your video where you capture your host telling the relevant information for the story. So how do you capture this shot? What about framing? Lighting? We’re going to cover all of that in this week’s video - filmed LIVE in Brazil!
All right, so right now I am on the ground in the town of Carpina, and we've been busy with different events. I've taught a class already; it went amazing. There were about 40 people there, including some ladies from the town who wanted to come and just have something to do, so they brought a bus to hear me speak. After two and a half hours of teaching, the biggest feedback I had was, “Oh, I wish we had some time for hands-on. Do we have some time for hands-on?” So, imagine listening to me for that long. You hear me for five to ten minutes every week; imagine two and a half hours and then still wanting more. That was very encouraging.
Needless to say, though, I didn't want to leave you guys hanging this week. I wanted to make sure I'm still sharing content on the channel, so I thought one of the cool things could be: what does it look like to frame out a talking head when you have next to no gear? So, this week we're playing with my iPhone 14 Pro. I'm just using the stock app, using cinematic mode because I'm filming mostly outside, and it works beautifully outside. I've also got my audio and a tripod. My lighting is one hundred percent a light I think you guys actually have too, unless you're in Alaska in the winter. It's called the sun. We're going to be using completely natural lighting to figure out how to make something look good when you don't have all the toys and gear. As I say at the end of every video, it's not about the gear; it's about the story. You just need to figure out how to work within your limitations.
So, just to talk a little bit about the framing I've got right now, I am filming on a balcony at our hotel, and there's a town behind me. This shot would not normally work if it was a full, bright, sunny day. We are in the midst of rainy season here in Brazil, and you can see it's any second now it's gonna start raining again, most likely, or the full sun could come out again. It's been drifting in and out; there's a lot going on with the lighting. This type of shot, if it weren't cloudy right now, wouldn't work out because where you'd be filming me. I'm under a rooftop right now, so I'm shaded, but behind me, you would have full sun, a bright, bright sky that would just get blown out. A lot of these buildings might get blown out, some of the darker roofs might not, but the brighter spots would not make for a good shot.
So, you have to figure out if this is a shot you can do on a sunny day. I mean, you can take a look at it. You might actually still be able to pull it off, but most likely, you're gonna have to reframe. The great thing about a cloudy day is that the sun is being diffused by the clouds, giving you nice, smooth, and soft lighting no matter where you go. The downside is it's not necessarily the most dynamic lighting because it's basically just a flat light being filled everywhere. But depending on where you position yourself, you can make it a little more dynamic. Right now, the sun is coming a little bit off that angle through the clouds, giving me a little more shade on this side, but it's still flatter and not as ideal and perfect as I would do if I were lighting this with my own lights.
With that being said, let's look at a couple of different setups that you guys can use with nothing more than the gear we talked about. When I was talking about lighting working pretty much anywhere because of the sun, as you might notice, I'm going all around, and the lighting's changing a little bit on my face, but it's staying pretty consistent even though I'm in a darker environment filming into brighter spots. It doesn't really matter where I go; there's cloud cover everywhere, so I've got a whole bunch of places I can go.
When you're setting up your shot, the first thing you have to consider is your framing. Obviously, your framing has to work with your lighting, but you've got to make sure you can frame a shot in the first place. There are a couple of things I like to think about when I'm filming a talking headshot. The first is just how much headroom I've got. I try not to have too much headroom—the space between the top of your head and the outside of the frame—so there's not this massive gap with so much space, but also not too little that my head's being cut off a bit. The other thing I like to consider is how I have my talent framed. I'm always a fan of about mid-waist to mid-chest for my talking headshots. It's not too close that it feels overwhelming, but not so far away that the person feels small and insignificant. There's some wiggle room, and it's really just about what looks best for your shot and your framing.
For instance, this feels a little too tight tonight, but on top of there being too much headroom, this feels a little too wide to me. I feel like I'm not very significant in my frame; I'm not really the focus of it. But as the one delivering the information, you want me to be a little more prominent, just like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Another thing to consider is filming in an area where you can control the audio levels. Right now, I'm slightly breaking that rule because I'm filming outside on a patio in Brazil in the middle of the day, so there's a lot going on. There was a bell a couple of moments ago that may or may not have come through, there's some music playing very quietly in the distance, I've heard some dogs, and I've heard some yelling. Sometimes, if the environment calls for it, it makes sense that you're going to hear some of the ambient noise. I'm outside, so obviously, you're going to hear some background sound. You just want to make sure it's not too prominent, too loud, or overwhelming for your main audio. That's part of the reason why having a dedicated microphone is important. My camera is pulling the audio from here, so everything happening out there is secondary to the primary audio because there's not a lot of space between the microphone and my mouth.
The other thing to consider is how echoey the environment is. Now, the space I'm in right now does have a bit of an echo, but honestly, I found a lot of places around here have an echo because there are a lot of harder, flatter surfaces. So, it's going to naturally come unless I walk out into the middle of the street, but then there's cars, people, and dogs. There are so many other sounds to consider, so you have to figure out which is going to be the better environment. I determined that the level of echo here and the level of reverb is low enough that it should work out nicely.
The last thing to consider is your lighting. Basic lighting suggests you want to have your key light—your main light—about 45 degrees to your talent's face. Then you might want a little bit of fill light. For example, if there's a black wall here and it was all darkness, I would want to find a way to bounce a little bit of light because the fill literally does what it sounds like: it fills in the other side of the face.
Alright, for our first setup, we're going to use this patio space. It's a great covered space with a nice overlook. I was just in that corner filming my other piece, but if you were filming here on a bright sunny day like I talked about, you wouldn't want to point out towards there because that would be all blown out and I would be all shaded. Right now, my lighting source is about 45 degrees in that direction to my face, which means that on this side, because there's no light coming in from this side other than what's bouncing off some of those walls (which are a little bit yellow, so it's bouncing a little bit of a yellow look), that is acting as my fill light. It gives me a nice definition where you've got your brighter side of the face, your key light side, and then you've got a little bit darker side of the face, which is my fill. The nice thing is, since there's not another light source coming from over here that's equivalent to this one, it gives me some nice definition on the face. I've got leading lines right here and right here that are pointing towards the center of the frame, which guides the viewer's attention towards me. This is one of the shots of the patio, and I love it because it shows a little bit of the background. But like I said ad nauseam, if it was a bright sunny day, if there was full sun (which this is Brazil, it gets bright here), this would not work because that would be so blown out you wouldn't be able to see any detail. So that begs the question, how could I film on this patio if it was a full sunny day?
Alright, so here's setup number two, and this is the setup I would use on a full sunny day. It's not quite as dynamic or as interesting as the first one because you've got more patio and less outside and less cityscape. But the thing it's got going for it is it's got decent lighting. Currently, I've got a metal roof above my head, which means I'm shaded from a harsh sun. So if this was a fully sunny day, I wouldn't have a harsh sun hitting me. The second thing is I'm able to keep my key light 45 degrees to me, to the talent, with me, and keep this side of my face nicely lit up. So, lighting setup, this works out nicely.
Now, I talked earlier about not wanting to shoot a lot of exterior type things darker to lighter if it's a fully sunny day, but you might notice that over here I have a little bit of the exterior showing. The reason that that would work is because that section of the exterior is filled up with darker brick and a green tree. There's not a lot of stuff that's going to catch a really bright sunny light that's going to overexpose, because that's the biggest thing you need to worry about: that section being overexposed in comparison to this. Because if this looks good and I'm shooting into a full sun and that area is all overexposed, this area might look nice, but that should be a blob of white. But not in this case, because we've got basically green and darkish brown, and those are going to catch some of the light. They might get a little bit brighter than we'd like, but they're probably not going to overexpose. Now obviously, if you set the shot up and you look at it and be like, "Ah, those are a little brighter than I want them to be and they're a little distracting," you might have to reframe that out of it a little bit. But I'm pretty confident that at least the tree would be able to stay just because it's darker, it's green, and looks great.
The other thing I love about this is there's a lot of depth from where I'm sitting to the background. It's, I don't know how many feet, but a lot of feet or a lot of meters depending on where you're at. But the key is that that allows the camera to throw that out of focus. Now, I am filming this in cinematic mode, which kind of cheats and throws things out of focus pretty much no matter what. If I was using any other camera or if I wasn't using cinematic mode and I was using the rear camera, which has a nicer shallow depth of field with some ND filters so I have all the right settings, then it would be throwing that all out of focus. It would look nice and give me a little bit of bokeh. The phone doesn't give a ton of bokeh, but it gives a little bit of bokeh. Bokeh is really just another word for a nicely looking blurred background. Sometimes you'll see those little blurred out blobs like circles and people say, "Oh, that's some nice bokeh." It's just talking about the blurring. It's a fancy film term for it.
Well, you might notice I'm still able to have a nice framing to where it's about mid-chest, mid-gut, and my headroom isn't too much. I don't have too much space around me, but it's not a tight shot. It just ends up being a very nice shot. So if I were to film an interview with someone, if I were to film a full-fledged talking headpiece kind of like I'm doing now, then this would be a great opportunity. And once again, the only gear I'm using is a tripod, a camera, my audio, and this thing called the sun.
Just a note, I didn't notice this while I was filming that, but apparently that actually was full sun because the sun is actually out behind me. It's just the clouds are deceiving me because there are clouds in the distance. So what you're looking at right now is a shot if you're shooting from darkness into full sun brightness. You might notice why this type of shot wouldn't normally work. So while it works with some of the opening content, it's not gonna work right now because we've got full sun right behind us. Whether you might notice that if you flip around from exactly just where we were, I just pivoted a little bit. I'm now using the full sun to light just the side of my face and that green tree I talk about is not overexposed and it overall looks like a pretty decent shot. Framing could be tweaked a little bit, but in terms of lighting, it looks decent.
So literally all I did to make this look good was I set myself in a spot that had some depth. So we got the doorway back there, we got a little bookshelf there, and in order to light it, I went ahead and I opened the blinds ever so slightly so there's just enough light coming in through that window. If I open them all the way, it's way too bright. It was overwhelming for the room. But by leaving it open just a little bit, it gives a little bit of a nice fill over here, a little bit of a nice key over here with just a little bit of fill over here bouncing off that wall. And then I just made sure to slightly tidy up the bookshelves. Probably could do a slightly better job on that, but you get the idea. Like, it's not the best shot. It's not going to win any awards. It's probably the worst shot in this video, but considering all I have is a hotel room with pretty much nothing on a bookshelf, it's pretty crammed in here. There's luggage in here, two beds, like there's not a lot of space to work with. I was still able to get a decent talking headshot.
Gotta walk to the next spot, three flights of stairs, get my workout in. That being said, these stairs are a pretty cool environment and I can see a cool shot here, but that's not part of today's curriculum.
Alright, so I'm not going to do a full setup in here, but you can see visually you probably could get a pretty nice shot on here. This window right here, the lighting is pretty decent, but the echo and the reverb is way too much, so nada, no good. So consider your audio when you're setting up.
Alright, so here's our last setup, and this is literally in the middle of a parking lot. There is a tree right here next to me and there's a car right over there. So you might not think, "Hey, that'd be a great spot to get a shot," but it's secluded from the road so it's pretty quiet. It's somewhere wet in the back. It's got some decently interesting elements between that bush there, the wall is really nice, they've got some nice gardening there, the yellow lines hit or miss, but in general like meh, sure, not a bad shot. Lighting wise, the sun is still back over here. You can see based on the light on my arm, the sun's still over here and it's coming through and it's coming through slightly diffused, but it's giving me a nice key light on this side and the tree is blocking any bounce and so I'm getting a nice darker fill. It's actually acting as what's called neg fill, negative fill, which means it's pulling light away on this side of my face. So, you know, is it gonna win an award for the best frame shot ever? Probably not, but it's going to get the job done. It's going to look alright. Honestly, the biggest thing I think I'm fighting in this area is the wind in this little courtyard is kind of swirling around, so what I probably should have done, just to be safe, I think I'm gonna be okay, but I probably should have put the wind sock on top of my mic just to protect against stronger winds like what you're seeing or possibly hearing right now. It wasn't this windy until I got down here. So here's the key: don't overthink your shot. Ultimately, you just need to work within the constraints of the fact that your camera is going to hide things that are off camera. The viewer doesn't know what's off camera. If I didn't tell you,
