- Hey guy, welcome to Travel Feels.
Today we're gonna talk about lighting.
We're gonna talk about how to use one light
in five different ways.
Let's do it.
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So in filmmaking, lighting is super important.
I don't think people really realize
how important lighting is
when they're first getting into filmmaking.
Most of the time, it actually matters way more
what kind of lighting you're using and how good your
lighting is versus what camera or lenses you're using.
You can have the most expensive camera out there,
an Arri Alexa, or something like that,
but if your lighting sucks then your footage is
really not gonna look good at all.
And it goes the other way too.
Let's say you just have a Canon 80D,
but you have really good lighting,
you can still get some really good footage
out of it with good lighting.
But lighting is also one of the hardest things
in filmmaking, I think.
It's just really hard when you're starting out
because you can't see light in the way
that you should be able to see it to really work with it.
You just don't understand light right away.
But with practice, and some different techniques,
and help from other people,
you can definitely get some really good lighting
for your videos.
For example, right now I'm using three different lights
like I showed you guys in the beginning.
We have our key light, and that's our main light.
That's gonna be the main light that lights me up right now.
And then, we have some other little lights,
one that's on the background over there,
and then another one that's just filling me in a little bit
so it's not quite as harsh with the contrast.
But many of you aren't gonna have
three really good lights to use like I do right now.
So what can you do with just one light.
I wanted to show you guys five different lighting techniques
that you can do with just one light.
That's all you need is just one light.
(fast music)
I ended up going to my friend's, Jay Perry, studio.
He has this amazing space, and this guy's just awesome.
He's a photographer, he does some video stuff,
he runs a nonprofit organization...
Super creative, one of the most creative people that I know.
Some of the stuff he comes up with,
I just don't understand where he comes up with this stuff.
And he's just really talented.
He also just started a YouTube channel.
You can check it out down below.
He does photography, tutorials,
and just talks about his journey as a photographer,
and about life, and all sorts of stuff.
I guarantee you his channel is going to blow up,
so if you wanna be part of the beginning,
the birth of his channel,
go and subscribe to him and send him some love.
He really deserves it.
For this demo, I was using the Aputure 120d light,
and this is my favorite light right now.
I use it all the time.
For example, right now, it is my key light.
Look at that light; it just looks really good
and it's really easy to use.
It's LED, so it doesn't consume a lot of power.
It's really high-quality light.
The color of it is really good.
It's a powerful light,
and it's not too expensive for what it is.
So if you need a light and you can only buy one light,
this is your light.
You should definitely get the 120d from Aputure.
So first step before we get in to it,
you need to be using diffusers.
So the 120d, right off the bat, is a pretty harsh source.
It's not soft, and it's not super flattering.
but this is done on purpose so that
then you can shape the light.
So in this video,
I'm gonna be using the light dome accessory.
It's just a softbox that fits right onto the LED light.
It's super handy, really easy to use.
I love this setup.
So now once you have the softbox on there,
instead of the light being this small source,
it's this huge source that almost looks like a window.
It just looks like really natural soft light.
I'll be talking about diffusers in the next lighting video,
cheap, DIY, really easy to use diffusers for your lights,
no matter what light you're using.
All right, so let's get into the different lighting setups.
Number one, we just have a straight-on Flat Light,
and this is what a lot of people do,
and its the worse kind of lighting in my opinion.
It's just super boring, super flat,
nothing really is going on;
it's not interesting in any way.
There's no shape to it.
There's no contrast.
There's no shadows on the face.
It's just boring, flat lighting.
And this honestly is the biggest mistake
a lot of people make with lighting,
is that they just put it straight at their face,
and it ends up being really boring.
It just doesn't look natural, doesn't look good.
So I would say, avoid setup number one,
straight-on flat lighting.
It's boring; don't use it.
All right, so how can we make it more interesting?
OK, we're just gonna take that light that was straight-on
and we're just gonna move it to the side a little bit,
kind of a 45 degree angle to your face,
and this is what's called Rembrandt Lighting;
so that's number two.
Rembrandt Lighting is just putting the light to the side
where you get this triangle on the far side cheek.
So that's what I'm doing in this video,
and all my YouTube videos.
I have the light kind of 45 degrees
and it's just lighting this side of my face really nicely,
and then just making this nice little triangle here,
and then I have some shadow on the other side.
So there's just a lot going on.
It makes the face look much more interesting.
And when you're using a big soft source like this,
you still get really nice flattering light.
So it's not too moody or not too contrasty.
It's really flattering at the same time.
If I only had to do one type of lighting setup,
this would be it.
This is the lighting setup that I go with 90% of the time.
It just works really well,
and you can also adust it a little bit,
depending on how moody you want things,
you can kind of move the light closer to the front
or farther to the side,
and that's gonna change how much shadow there is
on the far side of the face, how small this triangle gets.
So if you want it to be more moody,
you can move it more over to the side,
and you're gonna get less light,
a little bit smaller triangle on this side.
Whereas if you want a less moody look
or little bit more of a light-hearted fell,
you're just gonna move the light over
so it's a little bit more straight-on.
But still keep some of that shadow
because it just makes the face look a lot more interesting.
It's super easy to do.
I highly recommend this lighting setup
for any talking head stuff; this is a really good one.
Number three is Split Lighting,
and this is where we put the light
completely to one side or the other,
and that means you're only gonna get light
on one side of the face,
and then the other side of the face is gonna be
completely in the shadow, completely in the dark.
And now this is a really moody look,
so it's not gonna work for everything.
For example, I wouldn't light my YouTube videos like that,
but it works really well for, say,
music videos or narrative stuff where you're tryna create
this mood, this really dark look.
This kind of light versus dark, good versus evil.
It just makes it really interesting,
and it kind of makes the face look
a little bit menacing in a way.
So this is another great way that you can use just one light
to get really, cool, interesting lighting in your videos.
Number four is Top-Down Lighting.
So we're gonna stick the light right above the character
and this light is just gonna come straight down,
and I really like this look.
It's a really interesting, really cool look.
Again, it's pretty moody, so it's not gonna work
for everything, but I really like this look.
It is a little bit harder to get this kind of lighting
because you need a big boom arm
or something to put the light on top,
but with some creativity or just the right stand,
you can definitely make this happen; it's really easy.
So this could be a really cool way of lighting, for example,
if you need to move in all directions
and you don't want to see a light stand.
You could hang the light off the roof, and that way,
you could move in any direction
and you're never gonna see the light, but you're gonna get
this really nice looking light on your subject.
So again, this works really well
for things like music videos and narrative stuff,
not so good again for YouTube, filmmaking,
because it's a little bit moody, I think,
but it's a really cool look, one of my favorites, by far.
And then number five, we have Butterfly Lighting,
and all this is, is taking that top-down light and moving it
a little bit forwards or away from the subject.
And what this does is, it makes it a little bit less moody
and creates this nice little shadow underneath the nose,
and that's actually where the name comes from.
It kind of makes this butterfly-looking shape with your nose
and in the shadow that your nose creates.
So this is a beauty light.
It's really flattering.
It's used to just make someone look really good,
whether it's a model, or an actor,
actress, something like that.
It's really flattering and makes the talent look
really good, but there's not too much mood going on.
And I tend to like moody lighting.
I just think it's a lot more interesting, so I don't
actually use butterfly lighting very often at all.
But you might have totally different needs.
So if you have a lot of fashion shoots,
or you're tryna do makeup stuff,
maybe this is the way to go,
get some really nice beauty light for yourself.
So there we go, five different ways
to light with just one light.
We have the Flat Lighting, straight-on.
We have Rembrandt.
We have Split Lighting.
We have Top-Down, and we have Butterfly.
They're all really great looks except for number one;
flat lighting, do not use that one so much.
But all the rest of them are really cool looks
that work for different situations.
So think about what kind of mood you're tryna portray,
what kind of feelings do you want the audience to have,
and then use the lighting technique
that kind of brings those emotions out.
So if I want really dark, moody lighting,
I'm gonna either do Split Lighting from the side
or Top-Down Lighting, make it really moody.
Or if I just want really nice, flattering light,
I'm probably gonna do a nice Rembrandt-style Lighting,
like I am right now.
It just works really well.
All right guys, that's it for this one.
I wanna do a lot more lighting tutorials because I think
there's just so much going on and so much to learn
and it's really hard to find resources on lighting, I find.
You might not have all the lights to kind of play around
with and use trial and error to figure out what's going on.
So it really helps to have somebody else tell you some
techniques and show you some different ways of lighting.
All right guys, if you haven't seen, the back to school sale
is still going on, the LUTs, the Presets,
they're all on sale.
All the courses are on sale.
That's only gonna be going on for the next week or so.
So if you've been checking any of those out,
make sure to grab them before the sale ends.
Hit that like button, subscribe to the channel.
I hope you guys are all having a good time back at school.
Guys, enjoy the filmmaking process
and go get some of those travel feels.
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