What Should I Wear On Camera?

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We get asked a lot, “What should I wear on camera?” A lot of people want to look their best, but from our standpoint, there are actually a couple of rules to follow when you know that you’re going to be standing in front of camera.

A couple of things that you want to avoid, first off, avoid the color red, if you can. First off, it’s just a really intense color. If you’re looking for a dark maroon, or something that’s pretty, a deep crimson, those are fine. But those vibrant, bright reds, probably try to avoid those. The reason behind this is our skin is actually red, even though we look at ourselves as being kind of yellow, or tan, or darker skin. It’s actually red, if you look at it through a camera’s lens. It competes with that skin tone, and it creates a little bit of problems for us in post-production when we’re looking to do some creative pushing with the colors.
Another pattern that you want to avoid is anything with lines that are pretty close together. When lines move, and they’re moving and mish-mashing, the camera can’t quite follow it, and it starts to look a little funky. This pattern is actually called the moire effect. It really can just be very distracting, so try to avoid anything with very close together lines.

Some things that do look good on camera, however, are what we call the springs and the neutrals. Spring colors are anything that are a little bit bright, those pastel colors sometimes. Then the neutrals are your more muted tones, your grays, sometimes your browns. Anything that’s going to be … that’s not necessarily too bright or too vivid. You really want to avoid those neons, and especially if you’re going to be working with a green screen, avoid that green shirt. It’s just going to make it impossible for that guy who’s sitting in the post-production chair to cut out the background without cutting out your shirt. You don’t want to be a floating head, unless it’s a horror film, and then you could probably have some fun with it.

But if you’re looking for something, based on what the location that you’re working with us, give our producers a call, and they’ll help you through based on what we know about where you will be seeing us.