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button! Hi. This is J.P. Morgan, and today we're shooting at the YouTube space
for the first time. I am so excited to be here. You know, I've been looking forward
to shooting here for some time. And today is finally the day. So, let's get started
and see what we can do.
♪ [jazz music] ♪
Hi. This is J. P. Morgan. Today on the
Slanted Lens we're going to take a look at Grids. You know, if I could only have
one light modifier, what would it be? It wouldn't be a Grid. But, if I had two
light modifiers, the second one would definitely be a Grid. I'd have an Octodome
and a Grid. 'Cause Grids are very focused, they give you a wonderful pool of light.
It's an easy way to control light. So, we're gonna show you a little neo-Noir
photograph here. Guns and smoke and cars. So, let's get started and see what we can
do.
We're going to shoot a film Noir shot using Grids on strobe heads and we're
going to mix that with a similar light that gives a very similar look in the film
industry called a Source 4 light. I want to show how Grids work and how you can
light with them, at the same time mixing them with tungsten light.
Grids are a honeycomb metal insert that goes into the front of a reflector.
Usually it's gonna be a 7" reflector. They restrict the area of coverage for the
strobe. I love them because they really give you a lot more control when you're
working with light. Let's look at the area of coverage for different Grid spots. At
six feet from the wall with a 10 degree Grid you get about a 3 foot area of
coverage. The light does not spill or fill the area outside of that area of coverage.
This image was shot 1/60 of a second at F6.3. That's gonna be important to our
comparison. As we get a larger Grid we get more exposure, 'cause it's allowing more
to pass through the Grid. So, at six feet from the wall with a 20 degree Grid we get
about a five foot area of coverage. Let's move to the 30 degree Grid. Again we
gained about two thirds of a stop. We're opening the Grid up allowing more light to
pass through, it's gonna give us more exposure. Our area of coverage is about
six feet now. Our last Grid is the 40 degree Grid. It's
very wide and gains about two thirds of a stop again. It covers about eight feet and
is bleeding into a shadow areas more than the other Grids did. Grid light is
directional and not soft. The spill in the shadow areas of the image increases as you
go to larger Grids. A 10 degree Grid does not bleed into the shadows almost at all,
but by the time you get to a 40 degree Grid it's bouncing some light into the
shadow areas. The reasons is that the Grid openings become large enough that they
allow the light to bounce off the sides of the reflector and bleed into the shadow
areas. Grids are perfect for a film Noir shot with a hard light and deeper
shadow. Let's now take a look at our shots and see how we used our Grids. Our set is
very simple. It's a black curtain in the background and black plastic on the
floor. We're gonna put some water on the floor so it just looks like it just
rained. It got puddles everywhere. We're going to need a streetlight. Actually we
need three of them. We're going to build these ourselves. So, here's a little DIY
streetlight project for you. We took a four inch ABS pipe and stepped it down to
a two inch ABS pipe using an ABS step down collar. This will give our lights some
shape and not having to be with just one straight line. To hold it in place we
bolted an ABS end cap to a piece of three quarter inch plywood. Then we just shove
our streetlight onto that cap, and it stays right in place. The carriage lights
come with screws that simply tighten to the top of the pole. And there you go. For
$60 each we got three DIY streetlights. A couple of sandbags and it's great to go.
We're going to use the Rosco Hazer to fill the room with haze and create the mood. We
set the hazer up and set the output to about six or seven,
and then gave about 30 second bursts
every few minutes. But once you get it balanced it'll give you constant haze all
day long on a gallon of fluid. We're going to add some smoke at times in the
background with a vapor machine just to give the image a little bit of depth.
That's gonna look really cool, especially when it catches that blue light.
I absolutely love this machine.
Now for our light. I wanted a car in the shot, but at the last second
it canceled on me. So now, I'm going to have to create a car on the image with
just a couple of lights. We took two Area-650 lights, put them on a crossbar
and used this as our car lights. The bar and the stand were both wrapped
with the black fabric to hide them from view. For our streetlights we're going to
use a Source 4 light on a stand aimed straight down towards the floor. Source 4
lights are a very pinpoint light source. We're going to shape the light pattern
coming off of our streetlight. And as it reflects into the smoke it's going to look
like that light is coming right off from our streetlight. Here's an image with just
our Tungsten light song. You know, this isn't bad just on its own. We're gonna set
our white bounce on Tungsten, and then we're gonna put Full CTO, that's orange,
on all of our strobes. Here's our first image with only the Tungsten light on.
We're now going to add a PhotoFlex FlexFlash in the background. I am not
going to put any orange on this light. I want this to go blue and add some depth to
that background. Our next light is a FlexFlash on camera right with a 20 degree
Grid spot. It's on a short stand shooting on a dead guy. It's suppose to imitate the
light coming off from a car. Now we will add our key light on her face. This is a
FlexFlash 400 Watt second light with a 10 degree Grid. I'm gonna have my assistant
handhold this light and keep it pointed right at her nose. This is the downside of
using Grids. When you get down to a 10 degree Grid the area of coverage is very
small, so someone has got to babysit that light. They gotta make sure that it's
always on your subject. Because if they move very much, you'll lose 'em, and
your light's not doing any good. So, I usually have an assistant handhold this
light and just work side to side with the person. We're now going to add a fill
light from the front. We added a Dynalite strobe head with ND
to get it dark enough and shoot it through a folded fusion. It shoots a simple fill
light, but you can see that it opens his face up just a little bit and certainly
opens up her shoulder. Our last light is a rim light from camera left. It has a 20
degree Grid and it will rim her hair and cover his face. We can pan this right or
left to increase or decrease the light on his face. The nice thing about Grids is
they are very soft on the outside edges of the area of coverage. So, when you pan it
over a little bit it can become a little harsh around her back, but a little softer
on his face. So, this one light, one Grid, kinda becomes two different lights with
two different light qualities. It's a really nice look. So, there's our lighting
set. Here some of the images before any retouching. Let's look some of these and
see what we got. There's some fun stuff here.
♪ [jazz music] ♪
Here are four retouched images from our shoot.
♪ [jazz music] ♪
Now the real test of a good film Noir image is,
how does it look in black and white? So, I took the four final images into
SilverEffects in Nick software and converted them into black and white.
Here's what we got. The secret to good black and white is contrast. You want to
put dark areas against light areas. We really worked to do that with a smoke and
the back light. And I think we've got some great images. As much as I love the look
of these in black and white, I still have a desire for a little bit of color. So, I
went back to our color images and took them into Nick Software into their Color
Effects 4. I did a Bleach Bypass look at those. So, it just took some color out of
them, added a little bit of tonal contrast. It's just kind of the sense of
old and new, kind of vintage but a little bit of color. I really love the look. This
was a lot of fun. Great look, great images. Very simple set but a lot of work.
I hope this lesson has been very beneficial to you and you've learned some
things about Grids. They really are very applicable on set. You can go from very
narrow area coverage to a larger area of coverage. The thing that I learned the
most about this, and the thing that I enjoy the most about Grids, is that soft
edge of a Grid has a very soft transition. I actually like it. Hard in the middle,
soft on the edges. Something that you can apply in your next shoot. So, keep those
cameras rolling, keep on clicking.
♪ [jazz music] ♪
This is my favorite smoke machine of all
time made by Rosco. It's a V-Hazer. We're giving away one in January. So, go to
TheSlantedLens.com. Absolutely do not miss out on this. Go to TheSlantedLens.com. A
V-Hazer, man!
♪ jazz music ♪