From the course: 1 Person Crew Video Productions: 2 The Cinematic Look

Cinematic lighting on a budget

From the course: 1 Person Crew Video Productions: 2 The Cinematic Look

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Cinematic lighting on a budget

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- Cinematic lighting can be achieved using a few essential tools. And to prove my point, I'm going to break apart of this set, and go over the tools I'm using and my reasons to do so. What do you see? Nothing, of course, 'cause there is no light. Now, what do you see? A flashlight. That doesn't make any sense. Of course, we could use a flashlight to light a scene or a subject, but it's not the ideal tool for the job. Let me increase the brightness on my laptop. And now you get a better sense of the scene. What's going on? There is a subject sitting at a desk, probably typing on a laptop and we can use the laptop as a practical light. But we're going to be using light to shape our stories, to create depth and to guide the viewers attention. Let me use three lights to demonstrate that. The first light is going to be this background light, which all it's doing is creating depth, is hitting the background and giving shape to this prop that I'm using. The second light is going to be on your left, my right. And this is a warmer light, that is going to be hitting my face, and creating more difference, a bigger difference between the foreground, and the background, and the middle ground which in this case, it's me. So far so good, but this part of the scene is very dark. The foreground of the scene, this laptop is very dark, so we're going to add a third light, with a little bit of color, so something interesting starts to happen. Now you can really see the laptop, and you can really see in the background what is happening between the cool part of the frame, and the warm part of the frame. So this would be useful, this would be interesting, as a lighting setup for like a sci-fi, or a very dramatic piece. But not for an educational content like this, not an educational piece like this. So I'm going to create one more light, I'm going to add one more light, a key light, which is the main light, from my left, your right, and I'm going to diffuse that light. Boom! Completely different story. Same setup, same scene, three Lights for light, you're don't need four lights. But I wanted to show you, how using very small LED Lights, to shape the space and to create depth, can actually enhance your story.

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