The standard technique of "three-point lighting" looks so damn easy, but it can kill your picture if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Digital video is very light sensitive. It tends to "blow out" images to white when overexposed, and causes "grainy" images when under exposed. Then, there's the "color temperature" thing. This is measured in degrees on the Kelvin scale, and will actually change the color of your picture based on the quality of the light source.

My advice, when it comes to lighting, is to experiment in a very practical, hands-on way. It’s imperative that you know how the camera, settings, filters, lights, reflectors and monitoring device all dance together to create the final, desired result.

A good set of Arri lights can run into many thousands of dollars. They are, professional, well built lights that work great.

Lowel makes a simple, little 3 point lighting kit called the “DV Creator Kit” DV901Z. It sells for less than a grand. No matter how much you expand you’ll always use the lights in this kit.

If that’s still over your budget, you can always try messing with some cheap, clip-on lights and halogen, work lamps from your local hardware store and experiment, experiment, experiment. Just keep in mind that the illumination from those lights may be difficult to control, and the bulbs will not be color balanced. So you may find Cinefoil, clothespins and a wide variety of colored/defusion gels to be a wise investment.