Have you ever noticed how all movies have different looks? Everything from a Charlie Bit my Finger home video to a Michael Bay’s Transformers film, and everything in between has a different look. And that look comes through camera quality, editing and cinematography. Lets focus on cinematography.
Not many people realize, but without good lighting (cinematography) the film’s quality just looks flat out bad. People can improve the quality of there videos through simple little knickknacks. For example lights: They don’t have to be anything fancy. To the right of this article you will see a light that goes for about $10 bucks at your local home depot. These 
lights are effective and cheap. Another lighting necessity, especially for outside shoots, are reflectors. Reflectors make a huge difference when lighting a person. Opposed to having shadows cast all over the person’s face, now we see there face light up. The light gets controlled with this tool, you control it’s direction. We notice things about that character’s appearance that we may not have noticed before thanks to this. Reflectors can go anywhere $10-$20 depending on size. A diffuser, quite the opposite of a reflector, simply tones down the light. If the person’s face is too lit up, then diffuser makes the light less powerful. With the diffuser the light is more evenly distributed over the object. Some of these go for as low as $3! Any film maker can spare $3 bucks.
From this article I have found that simple lighting needs are quite cheap and are good quality.- dpc
http://www.videomaker.com/article/10053/2/