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Lesson Info

Lighting Scenarios and Setups

All right, more lighting when a one we're going to start off talking about shooting inside and outside because there are little tricks, definitely the eye wide, more grill up filmmaker type tricks for broke both starting off with the exterior sorts of shots, so it back later front lit is a really, really big thing going back, lighting in front of light by the sun we're going to start off with sort of not midday, but probably two hours after today, not gold. Now we'll get to that in a second, but here's a shot that's front lit on our subject, squinting, having a hard time looking into it's also very flat. We're getting a grow shadow under the eyes there, right? But if we just switch the camera around, we're getting a much more dynamic shot of more dramatic shot that seems slightly out of focus, but we got a nice backlight on him. We're getting a much more dramatic, more filmic shot just by flipping the camera from being on one side to the other, using the sun as our backlit and backligh...

t and creating that difference between the two golden hour is a really big one golden hours that time frame before you know, sunset or right after sunrise where the sun is really low in the sky so you're getting a much better angle of light whereas in midday it's right above you and that's where you get all those shadows I mean the one I just showed you wasn't even midday it's a little past like I said and it was still not looking great this one again is midday but it's backlit so we're doing the best we can with this sort of time frame but once we jumped to, uh more of a golden hour time you could see it's immediately ten times more cinematic, more dramatic we don't even really have a great on this I think there's basic curves to you know not make it so flat but this is basically right out of camera just using color balance you got a very very warm light at golden hour it's gonna be warmer than you know tungsten light usually it's just a lot more interesting a lot more dramatic lot more drama do it this is front let golden hour you could see how much more soft it is how much more pleasing is on the skin and even if you want to go uh well actually will jump back lit from the front front lit we got that great great warm sort of rim light happening there that sounds dirty men if you see what you could do a high key started sorry hi kees sort of light with just bounce and backlit during golden hour so we're still getting that nice kicker and you could see there it's because we're getting these really great long shadows because the angle of the sun so on any kind of building vehicle any sort of object your actors you're getting those really great shot especially on the ground I could start playing with with all those shadows to create depth and contrast it's a great time to shoot and you know there's a there's a wide span of time between those two you know you got at least three hours to kind of grab that sort of feel the closer you get the more gorgeous the light gets more cinematic it's going to get but you know an hour is not great for shooting but if their specific shots that you want to get sort of you know if you're doing have been yet sort of piece that's a great great time to do it directs son versus few son we had this sort of issue on proximity we're starting off with the few son and then we're just going to mute move the diffusion away and you could see how harsh difficult it gets and how unpleased josh is look how maddie isn't may write their first son and that's just diffusion in front of the sun to soften up our light making a lot more pleasing a good example again is from proximity this is we first set up and this is a shot I was getting cause the sun is bursting through the trees and we're getting really weird shadows very distracting shadows especially on his face the contrast is way too much I'm not going to be able to dial this in and post we just bring that diffusion in and there's no difference here whatsoever except bringing the diffusion and now it looks like we have tons of lighting here we're really going to town on the shot and it's nothing more than a pop a pill there it could be that bed sheet was doing exactly what that bed sheet was doing uh bounce sources so we have five and one sort of pop up bounce but again you could do this with almost anything there's so many d I y sources you could do for bounce we're doing it today but we're going to go through a few this is no balance at all then we're going to jump to a gold bounce which is just a reflective gold side. Obviously we're going a little too far to show exactly what it's doing into a silver that is impossible for josh to look at and this is a white bounce with the easiest on your actor's eyes and I like because it's nice it's subtle but it is doing a lot to fill in the shadow area so later you have some room to grade when it's to contrast the there's not much great you can put on it, you're gonna lose all that detail night interiors a few tricks that I've done night for day inside if you want you today it's nighttime all you knew is take a bed sheet, put it outside the window, take a few lights blasted on that bed sheet and blow it out then if you have drapes on the other side now, it just looks like the sun's blowing out that window put your actors in and light accordingly, man daytime all sudden uh the opposite of that would be interior day for night. So for tell it all takes place at night. It all takes place at one location and I had a lot of volunteers, including, you know, the actors were volunteering their time and I really didn't want to piss people off, get a lot of cranky people during the shoot and make it really difficult. So I wanted to shoot during the day, so what we did was we just took you don't painters paper, you know, that brown paper and we just taped up all the windows and we created nighttime this scene right here was shot about two p m in the day and this is just we had black sheets on c stands out. They're just blocking out the sun and we created the night time in the middle of day. So instead of shooting from, like, eight p m to eight a m and having a bunch of cranky people on my hands and you know that hurting the film and the actor's performance, we just simply blocked out the windows and they go and that's, you know, a lot of what we've been talking about is really simple solutions. Two problems that would really hurt the film and d I y solutions it was painter's tape. It cost us, like twenty bucks to do this and it made for a lot of happy people in the end. Lamps thes air great let's, actually, due to things just let's kick open this this window to see what we got there. And stark, you want off fly in this light right here this this tall let's grab that bounce uh, you wanna grab this balance, you wanna grab the camera and just real quick talking about bounce and daylight? You sure this is locked way gotta kick everything on a little bit further, it might be good, actually, no good stew you could back up a touch so they can see on the screen here and just zoom in you go ahead and stage it right there just not you uh you're good right there and then josh why don't you come stand right here could actually dim these lights real quick way get you right okay, so we're using the window as our key right? So we're shooting indoors let's switch over teo you got that uh we're shooting indoors and I'm gonna get you right over here and we have no lights all we need is court board now we're going to raise it up a bit and come this way we'll fill it in now uh stark let's quit that off and down let's move that out. Move it out totally. You could see how contrast c that is and lets him in your way you gotta bring it back up and it looks like we just have another source on him now we could get anything again we get a chair, we could get a ladder and just hook this one dollars, two dollars piece of board to it then we have a nice balance looking scene cool. Thanks. Bring in that chair. Can we get a stinger on that light? You'd stepped aside just for a second, but hold onto that for me right here is good you didn't bring that uh actually, just why don't you shut that sam, you want to help bring that over here let's, just stage right here. So I love like I was talking about before I love using lamps, not just as, you know, props in the scene because it will make it so make the scene more interesting to have those different points of light throughout your scene putting, you know, lamps in the background just to balance out. But just purely lighting with these things, especially something like this because you're almost getting like a china ball type like from something like this. These little floor lamps that you can get from target. Like, what, twenty five bucks? Thirty bucks? Something like that. Good. Sit down for me, josh. And then, bill, you wanna come over here with that way, switched the tungsten way? Just got so blue. It looks like it's just like going through way. All right, so we got a lot of blue spill from outside, which isn't great. But if we bring this in really tight to the actor, we can fill it in back up a little, get a little tighter. Let's, bring the exposure of just a touch that's. Fine. Right there. All right, let's. Move it out. So you can even have either have a really contrast, really cool looking shot in my opinion. Or bringing the bounce bounce it out a little bit, or move it back to control your fill right there, bring it back a little right there and then bring it more forward. So we're getting a little less of that line, and so you're just filling the shadow side, so you have more room to play later on, so it just depends on how high or low key, which we'll get into later, that you want to be pulled out a little bit, a little bit and frame left, and then we could put a dimmer on this guy if we wanted to bring down the intensity or some indie, maybe for these hot spots and you also have a prop and seeing which, of course, we called practical you. Khun move that up. You could put that down and sit down for a second, so I really love starting there. I forget what cinematographers said it, but once in photography, says he walks on set turns on the first practical and start from there and sometimes leaves it at that. And I really love that just having a lamp right on a desk and letting that play out the scene, I think sometimes could be some of the most dramatic and cinematic things you could do. Changing light bulbs and ceiling fixtures again going to home depot and just looking at the array of bulbs that you could switch up, too. They have these really big, like, part typos, abdomen, soft, white, they have an open face, but just taking those and flipping them out in the fixtures in your house, I mean, they have one hundred thirty water believe they have, like, a hundred fifty watt just really, really bright light that I've used in different films, which if we switch over, so I put I put in one, just that one center spotlight cued him where he should stop, and we get this really great top light happening from him from the picture. There are no lights on the scene whatsoever other than the light they're in the house, and we just plug that into the top film because it's pretty much impossible to rig lights in there with the type of rigging that we had, we didn't really have the grip here that we needed, so we just have a lamp at the end of the hall there, and then we have a bulb switched out for the centre fixture, and we're good to go three point lighting, we're going to get into this, we're gonna try, try to do some stuff, actually, when we get the the chair back out here so we're going to key like feel like feel like backlight pretty sure all you guys know what that is for but for anybody who doesn't you have the key light which is your main source of light you have the backlight which is exactly what it sounds like a phil light which is filling up the shadow areas to control how lower high contrast you want it to be so I wanted to man the camera again why don't you guys come up here let's get uh let's do kino let's bring it right here so it's let's stage it here you want to grab a stinger for them uh do you courtney you wantto walter there so let's just stage it right here actually let's get rid of the chair will just stand here with that let's uh you want to help grab this this mole bring it back here actually you want to grab me a dimmer now we're gonna grab right here back here you know loosen that your hands on it and turn it way down you go walking up yeah yeah cool let's bring it up about a foot and a half I'm gonna go hold off on that have put the go ahead and put the dimmer on there so you're gonna connect that to the dimmer and then the dimmer to the wall and then you guys can go ahead and have a seat for now axel gonna grab me a clamp light and let's get another stinger over here as well let's just hollywood for now but we're gonna need a stinger for it a nice thing to do every now and again especially if your hollywood ng is just tie it together so it doesn't unhook we won't be here today but just tie the two together so you know somebody doesn't trip on it on huh mid scene let's wrangle that a little bit better all right let's go ahead and kick that on looks like that's not on there well probably didn't all the way down okay now let's get it up to about here and let's aim it right on his back good god that len slave now josh can you come this way just a touch this'll wait little more there you go waylon tungsten right you want to take that on? You know I was getting a lot of flair let's get a you know, it's got a flag in here you want to grab a c stand in the flag start can you grab the flag? Actually, you know what? Put that back just bring the c stand and uh black crap let's get ghetto with wei don't need no stinking flag's start going to grab me a pony how's that perfect all right? So I'm just cutting that flare from the light so we're creating a flag toe block off that fogging that's happening on the light you might want that it can look kind of cool but we're just bringing it down into frame until we fully cut it and don't get that in frame so that fog and can be cool sometimes depending on the project that you're doing but also again it's all about the tone and what you're trying to do although sometimes there's with certain lenses the lens flares just ugly and you want to get that out of there just easy way since we're locked down this is gonna work uh if your handheld and moving around that's also obviously not gonna work, we're gonna want to attach it there so we have our key like here we're using is the kino the backlight which is crazy hot right now we're using from our mole which is a one k we're going to just use a fill with this can light here let's bring that down let's kill that for now so we could see what's happening give me like uh half keep going down doesn't seem like it's killing much does okay we're everywhere we weren't on them now give me about half a touch more right there so it also depends on how pronounce you want this to be is their streetlight behind him or you just trying to accentuate the shot a little bit let's get the fill on all right, so this would be like more of a high key shot. We want a little more contrast. So let's, start trucking it away. Why don't you come toward me? Actually, I usually want to keep, uh I feel like more towards the camera. E stupid six dollars can light grabbing the other if you shake it enough here. That's how you baby sit too following advice with ryan connolly. All right, so this point, that man just keep backing up and this is if you don't have that going on us too. And this is if you don't have a dameron and if you don't have the fusion rnd you could just start truck in your light away and now just slowly bring it actually let's pan it away entirely let's see what it's doing and then towards him and paint it that way. So we're not getting any bounce either, and then towards him so you could see how much it's actually doing it first. It doesn't really look like it's doing much until you painted awaits doing quite a bit it's still a little more high key that I want for the shots that we would want to jam it or keep trucking it away, but now now start bringing it toward him. No what? Stop right there what if we're in a tight room and this is far away from is you can get you could just paint it off of him a little bit so it's just paint it all from the touch a little more and right there so we're still getting the filth from it but we're not getting the full intensity from him now painted often completely and back so you're still getting a little bit happening and alice just go through the lights real quick we'll keep the back light on uh you can pan the phil away and then go ahead and put the pill on and then the key that's that's like a basic three point lighting setup and why don't we take the back light down a little bit, take it down from all about a quarter from where it's at now keep going actually keep going cool we're just getting that nice rim on his face there and usually I won't want to do a kicker on the same side that I'm doing the key to shape a little bit more you'll do it on the other side but in this case maybe we want to keep it contrasts on the one side out of state you want to keep it dramatic but that is a basic three point light set up but there's other ways that you could do it let's can you kill that for me and we could kill that as well let's uh you want to grab the bounce say we only have one life two minutes what is a camera okay uh let's bring it this way just step this way touch painted over see if we can get away with that alright come this way little josh right there all right now let's just bring that up actually let's raise the stand a bit let's say two feet let's just hold that away from him for now. All right, now let's crank it up good now let's bounce sounds like I'm saying we should leave get it more like right in this area so now we have backlight in a soft key light with one light we could bring in another bounce source which we have somewhere with and do the same on the other side which I don't think you guys can see that canyon if you look behind you you could see it so if we get it on the other side we're getting, uh bring that we're getting the phil as well so we got feel like key light backlight happening all with one white light just using bounce lights we could take that away have a very dramatic shot and again one light uh two pieces of foam core and we've got our full three three point lights set up going on you could take that down uh yeah why don't you bring the can light over so we get to hollywood you can kick that off many of the things that you'll hear people talk about like a hair light and a kick late you want to just stand right here hopefully this stays uh together uh you could pop that down and take a seat for now doing you bad new battery all right, let's swap out batters. This is like turning into a horror movie light now way change out batteries are there any questions? A question from el mullins can you can you hear me okay, how would you know which white balance when to use when using multiple types of light sources set off key light things like that s so you're gonna want to usually set off the key on then so if you're shooting with tungsten lights you wantto be on tungsten, which is thirty two hundred calvin if you're shooting with daylight, you're gonna be on that if you're outside, you're going to want, you know, daylight balance and, you know, setting in camera the basic settings that they have their either doing the tongues and setting of the daylight setting is fine you could also dial it in if you want to do somewhere in between the two, but basically usually I am balancing for skin tone, so I'm looking to get the skin tone right because if you don't get that right and post, you're just goingto have a horrible time trying to balance that out and the skin just looking gross and pale and there was a question about the kino why the kino sideways? Did you did you say why you put it sideways instead of putting it sideways? We're getting more of a spread of light, so we're going to be wrapping around the subject a lot more we could switch over to the television there so I could see that so that's just the different types of back lights you could dio like up top you're gonna have a hair light where you're just you're just kicking some light onto the hair you're going to get it onto the shoulders as well you see that a lot and like interview settings on what have you it's really good for for green screening to kind of mold that that light around the hair especially so you could easily key that out? Then you got a kick like which that one's wrapping around the face more but not so much that it's coming and hitting the knows how gross that looks when it's just hitting the tip of the nose and accentuating the nose is just a very, very odd look, so you want to bring that back around towards not and you just defining the jaw that's a bit overexposed but you're just defining the jaw and getting a nice kick light happening and then you know, of course and just your basic backlight so there are different flavors of backlight happening depending on where you're motivating the light depending on the type of light you want a look of course you can even take the kicker in a lot farther for a lot less further a lot less but you want to be careful of certain shadows like this one right here so we got that shadow on his neck coming from his shoulder that's looking a touch ofthe bringing that up eliminates that and we're structuring or we're getting a lot more structure on his his neck and his shoulder area there so it's all about molding the light shaping life, setting the light to kind of start forming it around your subject being an actor or some kind of object why do you have the cigarettes actually let's let's do some cigarettes fun times fun times not accredited and, uh why he's doing that let's you wanna grab this let's bring that right here let's just focusing on the background you wantto set this down and, uh we just move that seat here I'll take this from you and you just move that c stand out of the way joshua are starting to think that over there let's get this um kino here let's put it right here instead and you know what let's? Go ahead and throw it sideway so it's a you gonna move or you won't get hands on it over there all right and why don't we go ahead and just unhook it from the bowels for now and then you can come around front of camera you go ahead and go back behind you can hand me the bag thank you another thing with lights which I haven't mentioned yet is when you're setting a lite and it's facing your subject you want to put one leg towards the subject so if it's going to fall in any direction it's not towards your actor's face so let's go and put the leg this made this middle height leg let's put it facing directly at him no that's the tallest let's do that one over good so now if it's going to go anywhere it's going to go away from him and lawsuit lawsuit averted on bagging I'm usually going put it on the top leg so it has plenty of room to hang and create wait for the light uh, which I don't know if we talk about sandbags but sam back pretty self explanatory and a definite must for safety on a set so you can really way down your light so they're not going anywhere, especially your outside it's windy it's happening me next thing you know one case falling over in the bulbs bursting and then you're hating life lets you got that on you you're right there let me help you up get quick no worries. All right, cool. We didn't the lights in here down again all right actually let me move this back so you guys can see it let's bring that up. Okay? Let's go ahead angle this what we're doing here instead of a back light on the eat the actor to try teo sort of create you know that that space between him in the background to pull him out of the background so he's not just bending, blending instead of creating black light on that if we want to keep him you know, a little dark a little more contrast we could light the background, make the background the what separates them obviously again we're working with a white background which is really not what you want to dio but in this case all right let's bring that up a bit that's good down a little it's a little much but their stuff all right, now just look forward, rush let's, frame him right and just look a little more that way for me, all right, now let's kick it off you it's gonna just yeah, your right off you go okay, and you could see how, how much he's blending how little interest we have there, right? And just by kicking that light back on, creating nice separation, sort of an interview setting, that's, that's looking pretty sod, we could bring that down a little bit, actually let's dim it down about a quarter from where we're at. Yeah, that's looking a lot nicer. We're creating a lot of separation, and of course, you can come and dial this in a bit more with a flag and sort of shape this a little bit more, maybe creating like a little shaft of light behind him make it a little more interesting sort of guide the I a little more towards his face, but the idea is using, you know, a minimal amount of lights to create something very interesting for your set up. This would be more of an interview set up for me. I have use this on a film sort of dr esque in it's it's, uh, tone a little bit there, but you're going to kick that back off.