Thanks Dave. My wife and I shoot and edit all our videos. But, yes, it took me a couple years to figure out how to light a black background. The main thing was exposure. If you run the camera in auto exposure it tends to overexpose large dark areas, e.g., the black backdrop. In fact, the camera's auto mode renders it as gray! So I use manual exposure and set it so the video looks natural, usually one to two stops under the metered exposure. I also use manual white balance to keep the colors from going haywire. Finally, I use a hair light (softbox from above) to help separate me from the background (otherwise my hair would merge with the backdrop) and two softboxes as main and fill.
