It’s Jordy here for cinecom.net and welcome to Creative Tuesday!
You guys asked for it, because we put out a poll yesterday...
...which kind of video that you wanna see...
...and you guys chose for...
...a cinematic look with household lights.
And that is what we're going to do today. We got Justine, our studio model.
She's going to be the stand-in, while we're going to play with some lightbulbs...
...and we got some other household lights in the back... ground.
So, let's do it! Roll the intro!
[Cinecom Intro music]
So, here we have a couple of household lights.
We have a desk light, another desk light from IKEA,
we've got an LED strip,
we've got this lightbox right here, which is also pretty cool.
You can put letters in here if you want to.
And also here I actually took of a lightbulb...
...from our technical space and hang a cord to it...
...so that we can plug this in into the wall...
...and that way we have a lightbulb hanging.
These are all household lights...
...and we're going to use these lights to create a more cinematic look.
There are two ways of lighting a scene.
The first one is to illuminate your subject...
...and the second one is to actually light the scene.
And there's a very big difference between the two.
The first one, illuminating a scene, is where you just wanna...
...put up a light on your subject so that it is lit.
And that way your subject is not dark.
But it is not cinematic at all, it's usually considered to be flat.
And the other way is to actually light your scene.
And the purpose of lighting your scene is to create more depth in your shots.
And then we are talking about a more cinematic look.
Now, it doesn't matter if you are using professional lights, like over there,
or if you are going to use household lights like we have seen previously.
What is important though is how you are going to use those lights.
And you can divide them into three categories:
you have the key lights, you have the back lights and then the practical lighting.
The first light is going to be the key light...
...and I'm going to use the flashlight of my phone right here to demonstrate...
...on Justine, the studio model.
So, the key light sits off the screen...
...but it will shine on your subject on the front side.
Now, having it to really shine on the front, like I'm doing right now,
...will just make it flat.
Now we are illuminating the subject, which is exactly not what we want to do.
So we're going to place the key light on the side of the subject.
And as we're doing this you can see that it kind of creates a shadow...
...over the right side here of Justine.
We can also place it on the right side and then we have the shadow on the other side.
Now, which side should we choose?
Well, that depends on the viewing direction of your subject.
If Justine would look to the left side in her shot...
...we're also going to place the light on the left side,
or the right side, depending on how you look at it.
By doing this we are shooting first against the shadow side of Justine...
...and then we've got the highlight side.
If that would have been the opposite, like here,
we are first filming against the highlight side and then the shadow side.
And this is again considered to be flat.
You always want to have your shadow side first...
...and then the highlight side, like we are seeing right here.
So, normally I would say it doesn't matter which light you pick...
...as a specific type lighting.
But for the key light it is a little bit more important..
...because we are going to illuminate skin tones...
...and we definitely don't want skin tones to look bad.
Now, usually these decorative lights like LED strips or LED desk lights...
...have a pretty bad lighting quality in the term that I mean...
...LED lighting, or cheap LED lighting can cast a green color hue.
And that is why I would always recommend to go for tungsten.
Right here we have a normal tungsten bulb,
it doesn't cost anything and usually you can just...
...take them off the ceiling anywhere in your house,
and they always have a superb color quality in their lights.
So, we're going to use tungsten lighting as the key light.
Let's hang up a light bulb.
So, I'm using a c-stand for this, guys, because it's just easier and convenient.
We have these laying around in the studio.
But be creative, find any way to hang up your light bulb,
it doesn't matter how you do it,
just as long as your light bulb is hanging somewhere.
Now, usually you wanna optimize your lighting for the skin tones,
and that usually means optimizing your key light.
and you've already done that by working with tungsten lighting,
which is a much better quality for skin tones than cheap LED lighting,
which could give that green cast.
Now, what we do see with tungsten lighting is that it is a very yellowish color,
as you can see.
So, that's why you need to set your in-camera's white balance to tungsten...
...or to something around 3200 Kelvin, if you want to set it manually.
Now, what you are probably seeing right now...
...is a very bluish light cast coming through the studio.
And that is because we have all the day light coming in in here.
And that is something that you want to avoid at all time,
mixing two lighting colors, definitely if they cast...
...on the front or on the skin tones of the subject.
You can have different colors in the back, but that is for later in this video.
So what we're going to do right now is close the ceiling right there.
So this is great now, we only have tungsten lighting coming from the front,
which is illuminating the skin tones.
So, that means we can set the white balance in the camera to tungsten lighting.
But what if you do have a big window in your scene?
Well, we're going to take a look at that later in this video,
how you can deal with that, with mixed lighting.
The next lighting are the practical lights.
And practical lights can be visible on your shots,
or their light casts can be also visible in the background of your shots.
And these are considered to be more creative lights.
So, you can start playing with colors, for example use an LED strip,
or you can also have like a desk light in the background there.
But, important though, is that the lights in the background...
...are not going to draw too much attention.
So, usually, practical lights are going to be a little bit more dimmed than a backlight,
which we'll see after this one, or also as your key light.
And now we have two types of practical Lightings here in the background.
We have an LED strip, which is shining a blue neon light on the wall,
and then we also have an Ikea desk light here, which is actually visible in the shot.
This is great because now we are creating highlights in the dark background,
which again creates a lot more depth...
...having these spots of highlights in the background.
Now, these practical Lightings right here don't really make sense.
If you are shooting for example an interview in a living room...
...then do make sure that the practical Lightings, which are visible in your shot...
...also act to the story that you are telling.
So, for example, it's not really so great to put an Ikea desk light in there,
it would be just completely random.
Make sure that there sits some kind of a decorative lights in the background,
that also fits within your living room scene.
And finally is the backlight.
And the backlight is actually a little bit optional, you don't need a backlight.
But it is pretty cool as it will create this halo around your subject.
I'm using again an IKEA light for that.
This one here costs around $10, so you can find great lights everywhere...
...for not much money.
And backlights have to be harder in their source.
And because it has this cone here around the light bulb,
it's more directed and that way you have a more harder light source.
I will place this in the back of our scenery, is going to be off-screen,
because if it was on-screen then it will function more as a practical lighting.
It's going to be off-screen and also...
...usually you wanna place your backlight on the opposite side of the key light.
So, in this case we're going to position the backlight on the left side of the subject.
But you can also position it in the middle of your subject.
Just don't put it on the right side.
So, what we have created right now are layers of light intensity.
We start off with the shadow side right here.
Then we have got a highlight side coming from the light bulb,
which is the key light, then we've got a dark background,
and then we've got this rim light here around me, which is coming from the backlight itself.
And then we also have some practicals in the back, which is breaking that shadow again.
So, lots of layers of lighting intensity,
and that is what cinematic lighting is all about,
which creates a lot of, or actually enormous depth in your shot.
So, we're bringing our knowledge to what we've just learned to the office right here.
I didn't bring any lights with me,
I'm just going to use the same principles...
...and use the available light that we have right here.
So, there are some ceiling lights, as you can see,
we've got a big window over there and everything.
And we're just going to use those things.
And those who are wondering why we have Logan Paul against our fridge...
...well, make sure to subscribe and you might find out later.
Buy my merch...
I don't have any merch.
So, I wanna have a key light, a practical light and a backlight.
And I'm just going to use the huge window right here as my key light.
So, let me just grab a chair and sit right there.
What I don't wanna do right now is turn on the office lights,
because then I'm going to mix tungsten lighting with daylight.
So I'm just going to keep them off,
turn my head that way so that we are shooting against the shadow side,
we got the window right there,
and that is already our key light.
Then let's turn on the practical lighting.
I'm actually sitting in front of the kitchen. Let's check it out, guys!
Let's turn on the kitchen light, there we go.
This is our practical lighting.
And then finally I wanna have a backlight.
And for that I'm just going to use one of the ceiling spots right here.
I can just turn on it...
...with one click or one push of a button.
We've got ourselves a backlight and we just have to turn that a little bit.
so, I'm going to use Yannick’s chair and just stand on it...
...like this.
Damn it!
And just aim it to...
...where I'm going to sit.
Something like that.
And now we've got ourselves a backlight!
So, let me just sit right here now, guys,
and let's have a look at the lighting setup.
As you can see it's awesome!
We've got a shadow side right here, we've got the key light right here,
a highlight, then we've got a shadow background,
we've got a rim light coming from the backlight...
...and we've also got a practical light...
...which is braking again that more darker background...
...in the background.
Looking great, guys!
Now, before I'm going to leave you guys, I first like to show you...
...FilmConvert, which is absolutely an amazing plugin...
...for Adobe Premiere Pro.
And its purpose is to emulate the film grain on top of your footage.
Now, because it's a plugin you can just drag and drop it onto your clips...
...and it is not a replacement for Lumetri but it kind of works as an extension to it.
From the input you can actually select your camera model and picture profile...
...from which it will set a default gamma.
Then you can go through the various controls of the color correction tools...
...to really create a look that you like.
And once you've created something...
...you're even able to export everything to a lookup table.
And having a LUT means that you can load it into Lumetri or any other video editor.
You can share it with your friends who might not have FilmConvert...
...or create several LUTs for yourself...
...that you can load in at any time.
When you shot something that had a wrong white balance, try and fix that with Lumetri.
It's very hard to do when you're not shooting RAW video.
I have no idea how this plugin does it,
but their temperature control nails it!
So, definitely make sure to give it a shot, guys.
You can download a trial version from their website or get 10% off...
...by following the first link in the description below.
Thank you all so much for watching,
I hope that you've learned something new from this tutorial.
But most importantly...
...stay creative!
-So, let's replace... Oh shit!
Let's replace Justine with a real person now,
so that you can see it on real skin tone.
You see here, much better.
Very nice skin tones.
This is really good if you're itching.