This content emphasizes the critical importance of lighting the environment of a shot, rather than solely focusing on the subject, to create more visually compelling and realistic scenes. It outlines four practical approaches to achieving this: using practicals, lighting from outside, creating "slashes" of light, and ambient lighting.
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[music]
One aspect of lighting that I often
overlook and still to this day I have to
remind myself about is how am I lighting
a space?
This is a mistake a lot of us make. We
think about lighting our subject first
and not about the actual environment
that the shot is, which arguably is more
important than even just the light
hitting your character cuz it is
actually in fact more of your shot. It's
more of your painting. It's more of what
you're creating. And so today I want to
go over four different aspects of how
you can approach lighting a space and
we'll get into some real practical tips.
[music] And this video is sponsored by Sennheiser.
The first aspect of lighting a space I
want to talk about is practicals. And
this is essentially just bringing lamps
into a space. It's hiding lights or
switching out bulbs. Practicals are just
essentially any light that you could
justify being in that space. And you can
kind of begin to push this and have a
lot of fun with it. Like some of these
lights in the space I've added, but some
of them are just the lamps I have. And a
few quick tips for you as a
cinematographer. Everyone should have a
couple lamps in their car at all times.
And also a set of light bulbs. Whether
it just be some light bulbs that you've
gotten from the hardware store that are
very warm, in some cases cool, but I
tend to really like warm lamps. Or you
can even get something better like the
Aperture B7C lights. Those are light
bulbs that you can screw into any sort
of fixture. and the control with the app
so you have full control of the color
temperature. And I really recommend if
you're going to be going to set, don't
just think about having like a big 150 C
softbox like I have here or a couple
even just tube lights. Bring a few lamps
and bring a few bulbs that you can swap
out. And this is where too is once you
begin to create these pool lights, you
can begin to justify hiding some other
lights. Like I'll I'll actually just
take you through the space here. Right
now in this space, I have this lamp here
on a dimmer. highly recommend having
your lights on a dimmer so you can
change them unless you have one of those
like aperture bulbs because then you can
just do that from the app. Then I also
have a little aperture MC light hanging
back here and then I can control that
and I have that to the warmest
temperature setting I have. And then
this LED light here, this is genuinely
turn down my ISO so you can see it. It's
genuinely one of the warmest light bulbs
I think I own. Claims 1,800. Not quite
sure. Sometimes when you buy it online
they're very cheap. But then what we've
also done here is just added a couple
LED lights on here. This is nothing
special. The key is that we've added
some tape along the edge here so that it
pulls the light down rather than shining
off the side cuz that little LED there
actually the light will come off the
edge here. So we've just put this white
tape on here and it's created the pools
of light. So that way when we come back
to our shot over here can see it's much
softer. It doesn't just shine directly
into the light. It creates that little
pocket. As you can see from the shoot we
did for our course cinnipath pro. We
just put the twinkle lights in the
background and that just again adds a
little more visual interest, a little
more texture to the space. And and you
can even just begin to use candles as
practical lighting. We did this in the
basement over at Evil Empire Studio so
that the space wasn't just one big black
void. We went and we put candles all
along the side there and then turned off
a few of the work lights but left a few
of them on the wall. Again, one of the
easiest ways to make an environment look
interesting is block as much light as
you can. I have a skylight in this room.
And then just begin to add pockets of
different color temperatures or like I
One quick piece of advice, too, when
you're lighting your subject, the closer
you can get your key light to them, like
I have here, I think I only have this.
This [music] is a 150. I think I have
this just down at like maybe 7%. Oh, no.
We're up at 10%. See, I just like bring
my lights in so close. I can't believe
how many people don't do this. They
don't just have their light super close.
So, when you look at the shot here, it's
very, very soft. Which, while I'm here,
spin this back over, talk about today's
sponsor, which is none other than
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This mic years ago, I swapped over onto,
I think, when I was shooting the film
Chase It from the South. I began using
this for my vlogging and I have just not
gone back. Truly, just one of my
favorite parts of it is that it has the
integrated shock mount on the inside,
which essentially [music] means your mic
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it's it's right in here. I don't
recommend holding it by this, but this
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have been a huge part of my documentary
workflow. Whenever we're on set, I make
sure that all of our cameras are
equipped with at least a 600 or the 416.
And this mic just runs off little AAA's.
And also to a very obvious green light
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what's great too with the 600 is it
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sponsor to this channel and helping
The next way to light a space is
actually lighting it from the outside.
This is where you're going to bring a
much larger light and you want to have
it closer to 5600 or even cooler
depending the time of day to recreate
daylight coming through those windows.
Now, if you want to make it more of like
a golden hour, you can warm up the light
or you can change your white balance in
your camera, but I love to light from
outside spaces cuz for me as a
documentary filmmaker or someone trying
to adjust my cameras when I'm doing
interviews is there's more flexibility
when the light's just coming in through
a window because we now no longer have
fixtures in the space. And sometimes you
get lucky where if you're lighting from
the outside in, you can actually use
that light for your shot. Again, coming
back to Evil Empire, you can see the
shot with Elisha. We had been creating
moonlight from the space and in turn
that moonlight that was just supposed to
be a pool of really really cold light in
the background. We actually put her in
that and that could have been in one of
our shots there using that lighting from
the outside of the environment to create
that look coming in. And once you've
established one real window with a light
coming through, you can begin to bring
other lights then into the space to
recreate the repetition. What I mean is
again coming back to the shot with
Elisha here, we had that pool of cold
light down at the far end, but then we
put tube lights at different stages down
the hallway to repeat the idea that
there is a skylight. Going back to a
film I shot many years ago, Beauty and
the Battle, we actually lit that entire
environment by just punching in huge 18K
lights through the ceiling, through the
skylights. Cuz of course you can use
sunlight, available light. Like this
doorway here, that is just sunlight
coming through the windows back there.
But every once in a while, you're going
to see a truck go by and it'll change
and that's interesting. But if I didn't
have to shoot this in just 20 minutes
here, if I was [snorts] shooting this
interview over a few hours, this would
become a problem because that light
wouldn't be consistent. So I could
actually set up another light in that
space. But then also too, you don't want
to just shine one big block through a
window. You want to think about breaking
it up. So you see me do it all the time
on many shoots from the Chris Williamson
interview to some of our stuff in
cinematic IR course. And this breaks it
up so that it's not just one big white
square on the background. Now one other
really cool approach to lighting outside
of an environment into a room is you
should go watch the video I did with
Stephano Ferrari. He's one of the best
documentary DPS on the face of the
planet. Most Netflix series right now
have been shot by him. him and I spoke
about his approach and he will actually
create a white cove using a tent and
fire lights reflected into the space and
this is how he'll actually light big
chunks of his interview. He'll use that
light coming off onto his subject's face
and then you'll add a couple other
lights inside the house.
>> There's been instances where I put
branches of trees and stuff to give you
the the sense that there there is stuff
behind in in in that window and it's not
The third way to approach lighting a
room is what I'm calling slashes. This
is where you bring in slashes of light
from with inside the space. One of the
easiest ways to do this, and I have a
whole video on it, is using something
called an e-lect. This is just like a
flat disco ball because this gives you
lots of specular highlights, lots of
little reflections all across big blank
surfaces. I love using the e-lect when I
have a big white wall as it does break
it up. And having those speckles across
there just makes it way more interesting
to look at. And it's really fun too if
you have the shallow depth of field as
it's kind of like a double bouquet.
Another way to do slashes is getting
like a gobo like this. And you can add
in you can actually just like Can we see
through this? There we go. Let's just
leave a little slash light. Oh, there's
my lips. Hi. Hi. Oh, this is like that
uh craft dinner commercial. [music]
And that would come through. If I set
this up with the other Juan light, you
would see it would just be like a little
hack of light. The flashes of light's
cool. The issue I have with it is
sometimes it just looks like that.
Slashes of light. You can tell I really
love realism in my shots. Probably being
a doc filmmaker, I like things looking
at least semi-natural. But the slashes
begin to feel, like I said, just like
you set up a light and out of this hack.
But you can get creative with the goos.
Or you can make it feel like just like
this, like you have a little bit of
light coming in through a window. One of
my favorite shots from Killer Be Killed
was when Joel was sitting on that bed
and we just serendipitously had hard
sunlight coming through. You'll see some
directors doing this sometimes where
they'll just have a slash light across
their character's face or across their
mouth highlighting different things.
Just think about contrast. That's one of
your best friends in post-prouction [snorts]
[snorts]
as well as color temperature
differences. Just a whole video about
having color temperatures in your shots.
One other bonus piece of advice is I
really love that Nick Plucky does this
on set is when we get there he'll have
an iPad with a bunch of references. This
does two things. one, we're able to both
be discussing about the same idea
because if he's describing something and
I am and I can't picture what he's
saying, we might be actually achieving
something completely different. And then
also two, it kind of sparks my
creativity. I might just be looking at a
space saying, "Yeah, this is good
enough." But if I've seen what another
cinematographer has done and how much
they've pushed and crafted and
meticulously manipulated the space that
they've been shooting in, that might
Now, the last way to light a space is my
least favorite. It's something I used to
just always do because it was the only
thing I knew how to do. And I call this
just ambience. This is just where you
punch a light into the ceiling to add
some more overall light into the space.
Typically, lighting things just from
above is one of the least interesting
ways to approach lighting because we
don't get to see the shadows. Now, one
way to do this effectively, and I did
this on the shoot for a VR company, is
we pointed the light into the far
corner. Now, what this does is it
reflects back onto your subjects and it
begins to act as a big backlight, and
that's how we're actually able to
achieve this silhouetty, edge lighty
look on all the characters running
Thanks for watching this. Thank you,
Synheiser, for sponsoring this. I don't
know if we'll be putting out another
video before Christmas. I am going on a
65day honeymoon. It's about time that I
go away for a while and I just got
married in September. So, me and my wife
are looking forward to spending some
time overseas. We'll be Australia, New
Zealand, China, Japan. It's going to be
a wild trip. And uh I will film a little
bit of it. I mean, we should. We're
going to be seeing some insane stuff,
but for the most part, we're going to be
trying to unplug, just be a human for a
little while. So, the YouTube channel
might get a little bit thin on videos
there for a bit.
>> I didn't make an I'm quitting YouTube video.
video.
>> Don't worry, I'm not doing one of those
YouTube things of I quit and oh, I'm
feeling burnt out. That's not me. But I
do look forward to getting some time to
recharge. Awesome. I'll see you guys on
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