Filming YouTube Tutorials: Sarah Burchett’s lighting setup
With over 45,000 followers on Instagram and 19,000 YouTube subscribers, Nail Artist and Educator Sarah Burchett knows how to create great quality content that showcases her work. If you’re looking to build an audience or create quality content, take a look at how Sarah achieves the perfect lighting to film her tutorials…
Setting up for filming
I use the Gemini lamp from The Daylight Company and the contents of the bag are going to blow your mind! The centre of the light unit is in the middle of the bag, and either side, held down with Velcro, are where the bulbs are housed- they bend and store in there beautifully. It’s like a Mary Poppins bag! Tucked down the side of the bag is the extendable pole and at the bottom is the base unit. If you have a Roo Beauty case, you’ve got the added luxury of having a dedicated slide-on back panel so you can transport the lamp really easily with your Roo Beauty case.
Filming
Both arms of the Gemini are fully articulate. They go backwards, forwards, and you can twist them pointing inwards. For me, I often bring them down, rotate them in slightly and bring the focal point of light directly to the centre of the piece I’m working on. Because when you’re filming tutorials for things like nails, your area of work is quite small. So you’ve got the general light, and then this focal area in the middle.
You have a central arm as well, which is fully articulate for filming. It’s also really great for those head shots and side angle filming as you can have multiple angles at once. Also, when you want to do those head shots, you can actually bring the lights up directly at you, and you’ve got a great front-facing light and filming arm all in one!
With and without Daylight lighting
This gives you a rough idea of what the lighting would be like without my Daylight Gemini lamp- the top image is without lighting, the bottom image is with lighting. I use a flexible Arkon Mount for nails, to be able to get a little bit closer, and I have the arms of the Gemini shining right down, concentrating the light on the central area, which is where I want to be filming.
So that’s how I set up my lighting for filming my nail art tutorials. I hope this has been helpful for any of you that are either looking to set up a YouTube or Instagram channel or who are having lighting issues.
Take a look at Sarah’s work on her Instagram, YouTube and Facebook channels, as well as her website.
