WEST COAST Video Productions

Are you the star for the company training video? Or are you shooting your own video resume? The clothing patterns, colors, and accessories you choose will enhance your video or detract from your message. The camera sees color, pattern and contrast differently than the human eye, so the outfit that really catches the eye in person may hurt the eye on video. For all of you men who landed on this blog, this information is for you too.

• Clothing: Avoid fine checks, stripes, herringbone or other busy patterns. Men, skip the authoritative black suit with the red power tie. Your bold logo on a t-shirt may be too distracting on video.
• Colors: Solid colors are best, but not too dark or too light. Pastels and neutral colors such as beige, gray, green, brown or blue present well on camera. Avoid white, black, bright red, or orange and any combinations of highly contrasting light and dark colors such a black and white, dark brown and white or dark blue and white. When choosing your clothing colors, consider your hair color – if your hair is light blonde or all gray, light gray, pink, light blue and most pastels are fine, while if your hair is dark, medium range to darker colors film well.
• Accessories: Avoid glossy, metallic or shiny accessories or jewelry. And skip the beautiful silk ties or scarves as they make weird noises on the microphone, and of course, clanging jewelry. Remember to silence cell phones.
• Glasses: If it makes you really uncomfortable to be without them, or if they are a central focus of your visual identity, then they may be alright to wear, but you might ask to see how they will look filmed and make your personal decision accordingly. It is not so much whether you look good or not in the glasses – it has to do with how they reflect light in the video.
• Make-Up: Both men and women might need to wear light, subdued and simple make-up for filming. Eyeliner and mascara can be used lightly, but eye shadow should be avoided. Be cautious if you use rouge, and only use a little, as the camera accentuates difference, and be sure face powder closely matches your skin coloring. Lipstick should be light so that it doesn’t appear garish on camera. On location, a little powder for both men and women to the nose, forehead or bald spots works well to cut shine off the skin.
• Hair: Style your hair to keep it away from your face and out of your eyes, and try not to get a haircut within a week of being on camera. If you wear a hairpiece or wig, have the camera person film a preview for you to look at, as video may alter shade of the color. If you have whiskers, shave as closely as possible to the filming time, as the camera will focus on the hair more than the human eye does.
• Hands: If there will be a close-up of your hands, give yourself a manicure.