Self-Tape Lighting

Casting needs to read your face. That is the whole job of self-tape lighting, and it is why an expensive kit badly aimed loses to a window used well. Put your main light in front of you rather than above or behind, keep it at roughly eye level so your eye sockets are not in shadow, and avoid mixing daylight from a window with warm indoor bulbs in the same shot — the colour clash is the single most common reason a home tape looks amateur.

• Face your main light source; never sit with a window behind you.
• One kind of light at a time — daylight or bulbs, not both.
• Check your eyes are lit, not shadowed, before you check anything else.