So you wanna use a virtual background, ey? Read this first...

Before you go all in on virtual backgrounds for your conference...

...make sure that it looks good before you go live.

I was shooting a virtual conference earlier this week that involved a slew of virtual speakers from all over the country. 

Like many of these conferences that I’ve photographed over the past year, they opted to use a consistent, virtual background for each of the presenters. 

And, much to my dismay, every single one of the presenters looked mehhh when they enabled this background. 

Why? 

While leveraging a virtual background is as simple as hitting a button, making it look good isn’t quite so automatic. 

Quite frankly, I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve shot speakers on virtual backgrounds where the look was seamless. 

Why?

If you don’t properly light and stage for a virtual setup, it’s going to, in most cases, look like total and complete dog shit. 

And anyone who has ever attended a virtual event knows exactly what I’m talking about. 

The speakers look like apparitions disappearing and reappearing the moment they move around and talk. And when they’re done looking like ghosts, their body movement often reveals what’s going on in the backgrounds of the space in which they’re broadcasting. 

Folks - please stop allowing for crappy production quality, will ya? 

If you still want to move ahead and use virtual backgrounds, here are a couple tips to keep in mind when staging and lighting for this look.

1 - Make sure that your background is a solid color that you’re not wearing. 

The reason why “green screens” are that color is because that shade of green is rarely seen anywhere else in life. As a result, it’s easier for Zoom to know that wherever that color shows up in the frame, it will be replaced by the image you want to use as your background. 

Now if you don’t have a green screen, you can also get away with using a solid wall as your background before you flip the virtual background switch in Zoom. If you post up in front of a background with a million different colors and patterns, that will make life harder for Zoom to create a solid virtual background and that’s when you start to look like Caspar the friendly ghost. 

2 - Light yourself separately from the background

While most people are on the same page with tip #1, lighting is where things start to fall apart. If you want to create a clean and even virtual background with no visual hiccups, the key is lighting. 

You need to light yourself separately from the wall.

How?

Most people have the lighting themselves part down, and there are several ways to achieve this. One of the best ways is through cross lighting - placing one light to the left and the other to the right at about a 45 degree angle from the camera.  Simple, right?

But, you also need to do the same thing to the background, whether a green screen or a solid wall. 

Why? 

You want to help Zoom out as much as possible for it to know which parts of the frame need to be replaced by your virtual background, and if part of the wall is darker than other parts, that’s when bad shit starts to happen to the look of your shot. 

The goal is to have every part of your background evenly lit with the same intensity, so that’s why multiple lights are suggested to do this. 

Yup, it’s tricky, but once you get the hang of it, you’re good to go moving forward.

3 - Be mindful of your shadow on the background

I’ve had some clients remark, “well, I have the green screen. I use separate lights for the background and myself, and yet, it still looks wonky. Why?”

9.9 times out of 10, it’s because they have a shadow of themselves popping onto the background and their background lights aren’t strong enough to wash it out. 

You know all those ring lights you people like so much? Well, this light is problematic for virtual backgrounds because the shadow created by that light goes DIRECTLY BEHIND YOU, which causes all sorts of problems for Zoom. 

All lights creates shadows, that’s just science, but you do have the ability to tuck these shadows out of sight from the camera with a little maneuvering and adjustment - provided you don’t simply use a ring light. 

If you cross-light yourself and adjust the height of each light on the stand, that gives you the chance to move your shadows off of the background that Zoom doesn’t see, which will go a long way to keeping the virtual background clean. 

If you want to use your ring light, then be sure to use background lights that have the intensity to blow out the shadows directly behind you so that it doesn’t mess with Zoom doing it’s job with the virtual background.

4 - Give yourself space from the background

Another way to help optimize the look of your virtual background involves the distance between you and the background. 

Why is this important?

This prevents the color of the background reflecting back on you and creating that “halo” effect that you see on many people standing in front of a virtual background. That halo is partially due to reflected light that’s being picked up on your hair, shoulders and arms. It’s annoying as hell, isn’t it?

The further away you are from the background, the less that issue comes into play. 

Give yourself as much space between you and the background that your space can afford, but, at the very least, 5-7 feet will help.

5 - Video enhancements in Zoom

Fortunately, Zoom affords it’s users some built-in technical wiggle room to massage your look in front of the virtual background. By adjusting some of the default functions, that will offer you solutions to help increase the production value of your presentation.

For more information on Zoom’s built-in video enhancements, check them out here.

Long story short, creating an aesthetically pleasing and high-quality virtual background is not as simple as hitting a button in the menu options. 

The good news?

Once you figure out how to make it work with your staging and lighting challenges solved, you never have to worry about figuring it out again.

But, if you’re a conference organizer and are thinking about leveraging a virtual background with a group of speakers that haven’t done the work to create a well-produced background, perhaps a Plan B to brand your conference, and avoid a slew of visual hiccups, is in order. 

After all, watermarks, wallpapers and other visual assets are afforded to you through Zoom - and they won’t look all jacked up from speaker-to-speaker. 

Something to think about before your next event. 

Turning to you…

What has been your virtual background experience? Been happy with them? Left you aggravated and disappointed at the results?

Please share in the comment section below.