# Home Office Video Setup

How lights, camera height, a plain backdrop and a close microphone combine to make you look and sound clear on a home video call\.

By Jacob Mooney

Topic: Art, Music & Film

[Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/k6Rb4NJq2mOU)

## Transcript

### 1. Your recording corner

This desk is set up so you look and sound good on video calls and recordings\. Three lights, a camera at eye level, a microphone on an arm and a plain wall each do one job\. Tap a light, the laptop, or yourself, or drag the mic arm, to try them\.

Good video depends more on light and sound than on an expensive camera\.

### 2. Sit forward, supported

Posture is how you hold your body\. Sit slightly forward with your lower back against the lumbar support, the curved part of the chair that holds your lower spine\. Slouching back makes you look tired and moves your face away from the camera and the mic\.

Keep your feet flat and your elbows bent about 90 to 120 degrees\.

### 3. Camera at eye level

Predict how a low camera sees you, then raise the laptop\. At eye level, about 50 to 70 cm away, the lens sees you as a person across a table would\. Put the meeting window right under the lens so looking at faces means looking at the camera\.

The blue dashed line is your eye line from the lens to your eyes\. Aim for it to be level\.

### 4. Key light: soft and high

The key light is your main, brightest light: in front, off to one side and a little above eye level\. Soft light comes from a large, diffused source, so the edge between light and shadow on your face becomes a wide, gentle band\. Make the diffuser bigger and compare\.

Moving a light farther away does not make it softer\. It makes it smaller and dimmer\. Diffusion softens light\.

### 5. Fill and rim lights

A fill light on the other side, at about half the key's strength \(a 2:1 ratio\), lifts the dark side of your face\. A rim light behind you, on the side opposite the key, draws a bright edge on your hair and shoulder that separates you from the wall\.

Key, fill and rim together are called three\-point lighting, used in film and TV\.

### 6. Be the brightest thing

Your face should be the brightest thing in the shot, but not washed out\. Overexposure means so much light that skin turns flat white, and the extra light spills onto the wall\. Turn the key down until your face is bright and the wall is calm\.

Light spreads out with distance: illuminance falls as 1/d²\. At twice the distance the wall gets a quarter of the light your face gets\.

### 7. A calm, plain background

Keep the wall behind you plain: one soft colour or white\. One small thing on each side, like a picture on the left and a plant on the right, adds life without competing with your face\. Clutter behind your head pulls viewers' eyes away from you\.

Viewers look first at the brightest, most colourful, highest\-contrast area\.

### 8. Mic close, out of shot

A boom arm clamps to the desk and holds the mic 10 to 15 cm from your mouth, low and out of the camera's view\. Halving that distance makes your voice about 6 decibels \(dB\) louder than the room noise\. Swing it away when you are done, then tap the laptop to record\.

The decibel \(dB\) measures loudness on a ratio scale: \+6 dB is about double the sound pressure\. A cardioid mic mostly hears what is in front of it\.