shoot from the shadow side, use color contrast, use negative fill sure these are essential steps
to obtaining more depth in a scene but in this video I'm going to break down one of my Biggest
Secrets The Cinematic lighting and share a few insights around my workflow from a recent short
writer's block the film is about the creative process and delves into the mind of a writer
who finds himself in an abandoned house going from room to room exploring different ideas
represented by a variety of Lights the project was commissioned by nanlux to Showcase their
brand new evoke 1200b a super powerful bicolor COB light and the only one in its class with
the ability to go from 6500 Kelvin all the way down to 2700 Kelvin I'm a huge fan of bi-color
lights because it opens up more freedom to play with color contrast without the need for gels
the reason I love powerful lights is because it gives you more control over a scene especially
when you're competing with existing light in this case we filmed in an abandoned house with
lots of natural light coming in everywhere now what exactly is the secret I mentioned I call
it pockets of light but it's also known as the checkerboard this is one of the best ways to make
a scene more Dynamic and usually look something like this we have dark bright dark bright dark
let's refer to them as pockets of light now these Pockets were no accident and was intentionally set
up to add more depth to the scene and it starts with having a powerful light a focused strong
light enables you to bring your exposure down in the bright parts in order to make certain parts of
the scene darker like in this case we have two strong sources coming through these open doors
with darker patches on the side and this one in the Middle where we have our pulsing yellow light
for this we use the new Forza 150b because it's small enough to easily fit into tight
spaces but strong enough to show up in a darker patch so let's start here with all of the light
Switched Off you can see how much I brought down the exposure it's 10 o'clock in the morning and
the Sun is around here switching on the evoke I only focused it on the first Gap where our talent
enters the scene notice how his face is not lit and that's because I blocked it off with a Forza
6db on a small softbox not only serving as a flag but also a soft fill on his face having hard light
and soft light in your subject as a way of making a scene feel more realistic next we put a Forza
720p shooting through this Gap to create another Hot Patch of light helping with the contrast
between these lines here so basically two strong hard light sources with the soft fill light on the
face moving on to the next doorway scene we've got a similar setup first we flagged all the windows
on the left and the door in the back to have more control over the light switch on the EVO from the
side and you immediately have this pocket of light but now the background feels too dark so we put
a Forza 60b to create contrast between light and dark again you have the checkerboard dark bright
dark bright in the close-up we had this bright yellow light appearing behind our actor and this
was done with the forza 720b slowly Turning Away luring our actor to the next scene first I had to
soften the light on his face with a motivating full light on a softbox in this case the forza
150b again the checkerboard is clearly visible It won't always look exactly like a checkerboard but
having pockets of dark and bright creates more interest in a seemingly boring and empty scene
jumping to the bathroom there was this tricky wall between the window and where we would place our
lights so we had to raise them up and shoot over it using the projector attachment on a 720b I was
able to shape a streak of light using the blades but in order to compete with the strong hard light
we had to bring in some full to even out the sea and that's where they evoke did the job leaving
a gap for the streak of hard light we softened the rest of the window with a full stop white silk and
aimed to evoke through here which creates a nice balance without blowing out the hard light on the
Talent's face this form of dappled lighting is a great way to create pockets of light in
this case the framing also makes the shot a bit more Dynamic with a wider lens shooting right up
against the wall as a leading line and some subtle Reflections adding more depth Studio sequence was
filmed at a different location and here we used some of the common lighting techniques mentioned
in my other videos for the typing shots we relied on the backlight created by the screen shooting
from the shadow side but the added Reflections was the Magic Touch for the wide shot it wasn't
100% possible to shoot Shadow side because of the screen so we utilized color contrast with
a warm practical in the back motivated by a Forza 150b matched at the same temperature we have our
white light on the face coming naturally from the screen and cool Moonlight in the back amplifying
the color contrast yet you still have this dark patch over his body maintaining depth the rain and
lightning flashes were faked with a garden hose and a Forza 60b on the lighting FX setting a major
selling point of the 1200p is the fact that the light fixture and power supply ballast are both
ip54 rated able to withstand inclement weather and extreme conditions for the final scene we used the
evoke on 2700 Kelvin to emulate a warm Sunrise hitting our subject directly from behind but
now the screen green didn't have enough punch to throw light on his face so we motivated the screen
with a Forza 60b to fill in his face and also on his hands the title of the film was created
using a template from the M-title cinematic pack by motion VFX for the past few months I've been
using a ton of different templates from motion vfx including all the animations you see in my
tutorials and the best part is they also cater for DaVinci Resolve if this is something you're
interested in you can support my channel by checking out the link below now I want to
take this moment and give a special thanks to the entire team involved in this make sure you check
out the full credits in the description if you have any questions let me know in the comments
and I'll do my best to answer thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one