- Look, lighting is the biggest factor
when it comes to capturing great looking video.
But if you're a beginner, it can feel
downright intimidating.
In this video, I'm going share with you the absolute
easiest lighting technique for getting that dramatic
look, even if you're just starting out.
Well hey there, I'm Brady Shearer from Storytape.com,
a cinematic stock footage site that gives you access
to unlimited video downloads for one low monthly cost.
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I think we can all agree that proper lighting is a
key element to a great video.
But, lighting can also feel incredibly complicated.
When I think about big productions with an entire
team of people dedicated to executing the perfect
lighting setup, I mean, it scares me just thinking about it.
But here's the kicker, lighting doesn't need to be
this intimidating.
And I want to show you a simple dramatic lighting
technique using just a single light to prove this point.
What you're seeing right now,
is a scene we shot using this simple lighting technique.
And to pull the curtain back a bit more to reveal what's
happening here, here's a photo of our full setup and
as you can see, aside from the candle which is only
there for decorative purposes,
we're only operating with a single light in this setup.
A single overhead light.
And that's the simple dramatic lighting setup that
I want to breakdown for you.
A single overhead light.
Nothing more, nothing less.
It gets better, because in this example,
we're not even using a video light,
this is an actual light in our office.
So we didn't even spend money buying a light,
we just used what was already hanging from the
ceiling available to us.
Of course, if you want more flexibility,
you can use a video light.
And in that case, I recommend the Westcott FLEX Light.
The one I'm holding in this picture is the 1X1 Bi-Color
Westcott FLEX LED Light, and while the FLEX Light is my
go-to LED light for pretty much everything,
it's particularly useful in the single overhead light
setup that we're showing you here, because,
as the name suggests, the FLEX Light is
ultra-flexible, literally.
You can bend it, you can shape,
you can stick it into cramped spaces.
Here are another couple of scenes we shot using this
identical overhead lighting setup,
but instead of an existing light in our office,
we used the Westcott FLEX Light in our video studio.
This gave us a bit more control over the look that we
wanted, but at the end of the day,
the lighting setup was identical.
Now, you might be wondering, what makes this single
overhead lighting setup so dramatic?
Simply put, dramatic lighting is purposefully uneven.
If you want even, uniform lighting,
that will give you a more polished look,
you generally will need to use more than one light and
that's where something like three-point lighting
comes into play.
Because with just a single light,
you're going to have great difficulty evenly lighting
your subject.
But in our case, when we're trying to achieve a dramatic
look, that's perfect.
Uneven lighting creates contrast.
And contrast is the key to drama.
In fact, the greater the contrast in your image,
generally, the greater the drama.
Simple as that.
By now, I hope you have a solid understanding of this
outrageously simple, and yet,
highly powerful dramatic lighting technique.
And even if you're a beginniner,
you can begin using this lighting setup right away.
Want to know the best part though?
Well, if you liked the look of the clips we used as
examples in this video, you need to know that these
clips can be downloaded instantly by you along with
more than five-thousand other clips and used
royalty-free in any of your creative projects.
It's all part of a platform we built for you
called Storytape.
Storytape.com, it's a stock footage site that gives you
unlimited access to thousands up thousands
of cinematic video clips,
shot in 4K ProRes, we add more than a thousand
new clips every single month,
and did I mention that there's no download limit?
Other stock footage sites will charge you anywhere
between $200 and $500 just for a single ten-second 4K clip.
Hundreds of dollars for just one clip.
It's insanity.
Storytape.com gives you access to thousands of 4K clips,
shot with our high-end cinema cameras for
an affordable monthly cost.
So go to Storytape.com and check out all that
we have to offer.
Again, that's Storytape.com, where, finally,
you can license unlimited video downloads on a single
subscription, including every single video clip you
saw in this lighting tutorial.
Thanks for watching this video,
and I'll see you in another one.