8 Steps to Cinematic Lighting | Tomorrow's Filmmakers

Hey guys, let's do justice to Tomorrows

filmmakers

.com, the world's largest online film academy and today we are talking about film

lighting

. Now this video is the second part of our film trilogy. Cinematographic composition. Cinematic

lighting

and

cinematic

movement. Now lighting is not just what is most overlooked. aspect of filmmaking, but it's also the number one thing that will change everything in your projects. If you can learn lighting, you'll increase production value like you've never seen before, and like I said, it's also the most overlooked aspect of filmmaking. I've seen

filmmakers

buy unlit red cameras and their images look worse than someone with a t5i with great lighting.

When people ask me to critique their work or ask me why their shot doesn't look as good as the competition's, I can usually tell right away. either they didn't have lights or their lighting is very bad for that reason, within our complete course we have a complete 40 episode in depth lighting course taught by josh osley josh not only teaches everything about lighting but we follow him as Illuminates all types of different scenarios with expensive and cheap lighting. We have been selling our film course successfully for years at a price of 800 and have had over 4,000 students, but now we are doing something we have never done before.

We are running an amazing sale on just 97 of our full lifetime membership to our award winning 800 film course for just 97 dollars and I'm not kidding, if you want to take advantage of this amazing deal you can visit our website at the link. below and head over to morningsfilmmakers.com for more information, but in today's lesson I want to give you the eight

steps

you need to follow to have

cinematic

lighting. If you follow these eight

steps

, I promise you that your image will be seen a thousand times. times better even if you only have a cell phone and to show you how easy it is to get great lighting I personally have mini aperture lights and I use them for every project and in my opinion aperture lights are some of the best ones that exist. you can buy it, but throughout this entire episode, everything you're watching was filmed with cheap lights that anyone can buy.

I'm using the godox sl150, which is about 240 dollars, and the godox sl 60 watt, which is only about 150 dollars, so I want to take a cheaper light and show you that you don't need very expensive lights to get cinematic lighting, everything What you have to do is follow these eight steps and you will be amazed at the difference starting with step number one and actually it is one. One of the most important and also does not require any light is to shoot next to the shadows. Now there are many different names for this negative fill side shot, short side, dark side whatever you want to call it, but the idea of ​​shooting the shadow side is that.

Whichever side the camera light is placed on, it should be on the other side of the subject. This may seem like a really simple thing, but you wouldn't believe what a difference it makes and you wouldn't believe how many people don't do it. this and I challenge you to pick any movie on your shelf and try to find a shot that isn't on the dark side of the subject. It's really difficult because almost every shot in a movie is on the dark side. Now the reason why they do this. This is because it gives a much more dramatic feel to the scene, adds depth to the person's face, and also adds a more three-dimensional element.

It doesn't have to be like a really strong contrast where you can barely see the person's face. It could even be very subtle like this painting, although there is a lot of light on our subject, the key light is coming from the other side of the person's face. If we take these two images, we can clearly see which one looks more cinematic. It will always be the one where there are more shadows on the subject's face when I started most of my filming was done on the key side and it didn't look cinematic at all all my interviews were done on the key side and everything I shot was done on the same side that the light was on, an important secret that I learned over the years of filming is that if you want that cinematic look in your images and increase the production value of your films, simply move the camera to the other side of the screen. light with an interview put the light on the other side if it's a really simple shot and someone is literally writing on a calendar, move to the other side of the person's face if you don't have lights just put the light source on the other side of the person's face even if it's just the sun you're not going for a silhouette look just a cinematic look such a simple step can make a big difference in your production value step number two is the direction of the lighting, The whole emotion of your project can be changed by simply moving the light slightly in your scene, if you move the light too high above the subject you will get more dark shadows under the eyes and the person looks less confident and more depressed, if you set the light too low , you will invert the shadows on the face and the person will start to look like a villain.

To get the most natural light on a person's face, you want to have the light at a 45 degree angle on their face creating an inverted triangle on the opposite cheek. of the subject. It is known as Rembrandt lighting, named after the famous painter Rembrandt, who used it in almost all of his portraits. This lighting will keep those shadows on the face but also provide enough lighting on the other side to illuminate the eye and slight definition to the cheeks. Create a slight shadow under your chin and it will look natural If you are setting up the lights, remember that the direction of the light is as important as anything else if you place the light at the wrong angle or place it too high or too low.

It can result in an amateurish image or even confuse your audience as to what they should be feeling. Just a slight movement can make a big difference. Step number three is depth, creating depth and separating your subject from the background is a necessity when not filming. If you want your subject to blend in with whatever background it is on, you can create separation by shooting at a lower aperture, moving your subject further away from the background, but you can also add separation through lighting and one way is with color, giving you like it or not, orange. and the teal blockbuster look is very popular because of the color contrast if skin tones are very warm and orange what is the opposite of orange on the color wheel? blue blue complements orange this is seen all the time in movies and not just transformer movies but by putting complementary colors in your movies to separate your subject you will not only make your movie look more cinematic but you will add separation between the subject and the background by having two different complementary colors in the same shot and Again, it doesn't have to be blue and teal, it could be any complementary color, so if you have a very warm light on the subject's face, instead of put another warm light in the background, place a complementary color like blue, look for complementary colors to add depth. to your image, another way to separate the subject is to simply have the background darker than the subject, if the background is brighter it will be much harder for the subject to stand out, simply lower the exposure of the background to where the subject is brighter. bright. that what's behind it, it doesn't have to be super dark or super bright, but the formula I use is brighter shirt, darker background, darker shirt, brighter background.

You just want the subject to stand out from the background by being brighter most of the time. than the background, but sometimes even being darker than the background when creating depth number four is motivated lighting, nothing screams amateur more than unmotivated lighting. Now this is a light that doesn't come from anywhere and just appears on the scene. Motivated lighting means that in the scene the lighting is coming from something in the room and the audience knows that if we show a wide shot and there are no windows or anything around and then when I cut to a close up there is a ton of light about our subject, it just doesn't make any sense.

Motivated lighting means that the audience knows that the light source is coming from something natural. If we have a random light on our subject, it just looks unnatural, but if we just turn on a lamp next to them, it looks like that key light is coming from the lamp, even though in reality the lamp doesn't give off much light and couldn't illuminate the subject's face. our subject in this way, but by placing some type of visible light source so that the audience can see. We have created motivated natural light in this scene into something larger than life.

This harsh lighting really makes the tension build in the scene, but why the hell is there a light in the living room pointed at them? So make sure you have motivated lighting in your scene, it doesn't have to be difficult and you don't need to turn off any lights on the actual subject either. It can be as simple as placing a very small lamp in the background. All you have to do is make sure the scene looks good. natural and the audience knows where the lighting is coming from in this scene from the silence when these characters are having a deep conversation there is a lot of side lighting on their faces the only problem is that there is only one giant window in the entire room producing any light and is behind them, so how do we show motivated enlightenment?

We have a wide shot showing the light coming into the room and hitting the side of the wall here once they show the side lighting doesn't look out of place, imagine if they didn't show that wide angle shot it was just a giant window that produced light in the room, then we cut to a close-up and its side lighting would make no sense, so every time you light a scene if there is not one The natural reason for there to be a light on the face creates one below is the background lighting. This is something that many people tend to overlook because it is important to light your subject, but if you forget to light the background, your image will not look natural and you run the risk of it looking like a play by having all the light on it. the subject and a completely dark background and I'm not just talking about interviews, it's important to have some kind of backlight for interviews but also in narrative film.

Most of the time this can be achieved simply with some handy lights. You can add a small lamp to the background if there is not enough light. Maybe add a little more light to illuminate a certain area. If necessary, you can also add some ambient light. in the background, whether it's pointing a light at the ceiling, pointing a light at a wall in a room with a lot of diffusion, just add some kind of life to the background so that it looks natural and doesn't look like the subject was just lit by a stage and they completely forgot about the background, take any movie or TV show and imagine what a certain shot would look like if there was no light in the background, this shot would be completely black behind our subject if it weren't for that little light.

The thing about this shot, if it weren't for those few candles this shot wouldn't look realistic and would look like it was filmed on a stage somewhere, adding some small lights in the background would really make a difference. Next is the time of day and for those of you. Those who don't know, the best time of day to photograph is the golden hour. This would be the first hour of light when the sun rises and the last hour of light when the sun sets if you shoot with the sun directly. Above your head, no matter what you do, you will get an ugly look because the sun casts strong shadows under your eyes and it is the same as putting a light directly on the subject during golden hour, there are no strong shadows and the light its alot. more attractive now these three shots were taken on the same day one at 7 am one at 12 pm and the other at 7 pm if you had to choose which one looks better it would be an easy choice it would be the first one and the last one and everything What I did was shoot at a certain time of day personally during golden hour.

I like to put the sun behind the subject and shoot towards the sun. This will not only give you a very cinematic look but will also give you beautiful lens flares. And if you plan accordingly you can sometimes capture lots of detail in the sky as the sun begins to set, shooting at any other time will result in a dropped sky, but choosing to film during golden hour will immediately increase the cinematic quality of your movies. Next is a pickup light or an eye light and this is the reflection of the light source in the subject's eyes.

Now most people don't really think about this, but a pick-up light or an eyelight gives life to the subject, gives it soul. it makes them feel alive, they even put white dots in an animated character's eyes to make them feel alive, but those older animations that don't have that white dot feel dead and lifeless and like a shark, some filmmakers have used this forcommunicate. life and communicate death in king kong when kong dies on top of the empire state building that light fades now this wouldn't happen in real life but like I said, the light in the eyes is what makes people feel alive, so that every time they take it away You as the audience know that he is dead in gray when Liam Neeson finds himself surrounded by wolves, there is no light in his eyes because he is accepting his fate, but when he decides to fight to the death, that light comes back to life in the fight for Survival has been returned and communicated to the audience by having a reflection in their eyes.

All that being said, just make sure that when you shine your subject you can see the light from that eye and if you can't, try moving the Light a little bit to get that slight reflection and finally step number eight is the texture now, whether you like it or no, fog.and haze completely change the lighting, one shot may look good, but adding just a little bit of haze and a bit of mist, it looks like you just bought thousands of dollars worth of lights and maybe even upgraded your camera, and that's what I love. about fog, it's something very simple but it can completely change your image and at the same time no one uses it, it doesn't make sense now.

A little trick that I learned with fog that is surprising is that if you want it to be foggy outside, it's really difficult and very expensive, but no, if you use a bug fogger on Amazon, you can buy these foggers that are meant to repel insects. What you're supposed to do is put bug spray on it and then spray a giant fog over everything to kill. lots of bugs, well instead if you use mineral oil or fog juice it turns a bug repellent into an amazing outdoor fog machine. Now I would never use this indoors because it's too powerful, but outdoor scenes now look amazing with a simple bug spray and Of course, I'll have all the links to these in the description below, so now that we know the eight steps, Let's take all these steps and put them together to make a beautiful cinematic shot.

Now here is our scene where we have the subject sitting. a chair playing the cello and if we add light to our subject it looks good, I mean it's okay, it's walkable and this is where a lot of filmmakers would stop, but let's follow these steps and I'll show you the difference. Our first step is to film. shadow side now the light is now on the key side of our subject's face, so we need to move the light to the other side of his face, which puts us on the shadow side, number two is the direction of lighting, as you can see even though we're on the shadow side, there's still quite a bit of front lighting, so let's move the light to a 45 degree angle to get that Rembrandt lighting on our subject's face. and add more shadows.

Three, four and five are motivated lighting, backlighting and depth, and I placed all of these together. Because each is necessary for the other, we first need to motivate our key light, so let's simply take a lamp and place it on the same side of our subject and on the same side of our key light. Now the key light is motivated by the lamp in the back also illuminates our background a little and separates our subject. Next is the background and although the lamp helps a little, I want something on the other side, so let's turn on the fireplace here and although it doesn't really give off much light, it adds some interesting element to the background and it's not just one element interesting but also adds some depth by creating color contrast, but let's add Even more color contrast, although by bringing in some light from the fire we're going to add an orange light to the right side of our subject to make it look like it's coming from the fire and again, this light is not only motivated by fire but also gives We have great contrast with the LED light on our subject's face and continuing on to the background.

I really don't like this random door here and I don't like the dark window either, so let's add another light outside. the inward glowing window illuminates the background, separates our subject and also adds a cool texture from the blinds to the left side of the frame and finally let's add some haze and it not only softens the overall look of the entire image but also Lo What it does to the window is surprising, the first image we made doesn't look horrible because our subject is well lit and many filmmakers would probably be happy with this, but by following these eight steps you can turn an acceptable image into a cinematic image. using cheap lights and a 30 fog machine from Amazon so thanks again for watching.

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