If you’re producing a lot of video content for TikTok and you’re not getting enough attention, one reason might be because you either don’t have very good lighting or the audio quality is not very good.
In this lesson, we’re going to take a look at what you can do if you want to improve your equipment and your production quality. This will not only help you on TikTok but on other video-centric platforms too, like YouTube for example.
What are the most important elements of a video?
If you want to invest in equipment to improve the quality of your TikToks, there are four main things that you could consider:
- Camera
- Lighting
- the stabilization of the camera
- and microphone or audio
We’re not going to cover the camera because that’s pretty simple if you will improve the quality of the video you can just get a better phone or a professional camera. But that can be very expensive.
We’re going to focus instead on the stabilization of the video, on the audio quality, and the actual lighting.
Lighting
There are three main options for lighting.
Number one is a natural light , and that’s the best option because it’s the cheapest. Sometimes when you record indoors, the quality of the lighting is not very good.
The first you can do to improve this is very inexpensive. Just put your phone inside a window when you’re staying inside, so that the natural light comes directly in your face and the things behind you.
If you’re doing the other way around – and you’re staying in front of the window, the light will come from behind you and make your face appear darker with more inaesthetic shadows.
The second option is to use a circle lighting.
This is a little circle of led light, called ring light, that either goes around the phone or somewhere nearby the phone. This is the most common method used by tiktokers. You can find affordable ones on Amazon, you don’t need anything fancy.
If you pay attention to TikTok you can spot the ones using a ring light – they’ll have little white circles in their eyes. The influencers that are taking it sort of more seriously are the people that produce a lot of videos indoors actually use this option.
But it’s not necessary.
Some of the biggest creators just use natural light and just put their phone in the window. But if you don’t have that option, a ring light is a pretty good second option.
The third option for lighting is more of a professional studio. Two big lights pointing at your face and lighting up the entire studio. This is more expensive and a bit of an overkill for TikTok. The two lights are strategically positioned so you don’t have shadows behind. But again, this is heading into professional territory and it’s much more complicated.
Definitely not necessary just for TikTok.
The best option you could do is get the ring light if you don’t have access to really good natural light.
Stabilization of your camera
Now, if you do get a ring light as we discussed in the lighting part of the lesson, you do not need a stabilization because it comes with a tripod that you can use to fix your phone to it.
So that’s the best option because you have both: good lighting and stabilization. You don’t need anything else.
Otherwise, you can simply put your phone on any kind of piece of furniture or anywhere else. You don’t necessarily need tripods.
However, if you want to invest in a tripod then you can find affordable options depending on the type of videos you usually record. For example, if you record mostly outdoors you can search for a flexible tripod that you can attach on anything like a tree or a branch, a bench, and so on.
Microphones for your videos
For the majority of your content, you don’t need anything else than the default microphone inside your camera or phone. But if you need to record a lot of original audio in very windy conditions or you’re outside and the mic is not good enough, you can use some of these other options:
So to recap, you know that you don’t need professional gear to create a really good TikTok. Unlike Instagram, on TikTok, the production quality doesn’t matter that much as long as the audio is good enough and the lighting is good. You don’t have to create polished, professional made content like on Instagram, for example.
