Jay: Flags and nets, next on The Slanted Lens.
You're gonna wanna see this.
Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
I've got with me here, Kseniya Babayeva, and her Instagram is...
Kseniya: Oksygin.
Jay: Oksygin.
So, check out her Instagram at Oksygin.
And today, she's here to help me show you about flags.
Exactly what are flags, and how do you use them, and some practical examples on how you
set them.
Special thanks to Kupo.
They make flags, and nets, and c-stands, and all kinds of grip equipment.
Great stands.
We wanna thank them for sponsoring the lesson here today.
So, let's make sure we understand exactly what flags are.
Flags are the items we use to shape light.
There's a solid, which is a solid object that cuts the light completely.
A net is a single, which just cuts one stop of light, or a double that cuts two stops
of light.
And you also have a rugged edge, which means you can slide them in to, kind of, feather
the light off from a person's face, off from the background.
So, that feathered edge is, kind of, nice and important to understand.
And last of all, we have a silk.
A silk is going to change the quality of the light.
A net does not change the quality of the light.
The silk does.
A silk is going to soften the light and also reduce the amount of light.
A net is just meant to take the exposure down like on the side of the face, but then the
other side can be a little bit brighter.
So, you can kinda bring it in just to cut a little bit of light off.
Doesn't change the quality, but a silk does.
Flags and nets come in all different sizes.
This is an 18 by 24, here's an 18 by 48, and love this guy, this is a 48, 48.
We call it the four by floppy.
The reason it's called the four by floppy is because you can put this on a stand, raise
the stand up, and then you simply drop this down, and now you've got too many things on
my hand.
That's what I've got.
I've got too many things on my hand.
Now, you got a huge flag that's 4 foot by 8 foot.
You can cut a lot of light with that baby.
These are fabulous when you're outside.
You wanna cut the sun off from the camera.
You wanna cut the sun off from your subject and then put a little light on your subject.
These become a major way to cut light and get it off from your subject matter.
So, there's the different types of flags and what they are.
So, now let's talk about what they do.
Now, for some practical examples, flagging light.
First off, I've got a key light on our model here, Kseniya.
It's pretty much in a butterfly position.
And in the background, we've got a rim light on her face.
So, what that means is we've got light, kind of, scattered everywhere.
This key light is all over the set.
So, the background is too dark or too bright, way too bright.
So, we need to kill that background a little bit.
So, I' gonna just bring this flag in.
And that should be right on the edge of her face there.
That should kill my background and give her some separation from that background.
I still got my nice rim light on her hair from the camera, right side, but this just
kills that background completely.
Now, if I wanna get really crazy and fun, I can set a flag in here and...
So, now I have a very interesting shaft of light on her eyes.
I can play around with that, get to where I like it or don't like it.
Maybe I wanna see it less, maybe i wanna see it up into her hair.
I just have complete control of what I'm going to see, what amount of light's gonna hit her
face.
Okay, so now let's do what I call a Clamp Flag.
Wanna know why I call it a clamp flag, because I do.
So, all right, here we go.
So, I'm gonna move my key light into a strong butterfly right above the camera.
And, if I look at my camera here, we've got light everywhere.
So, now I'm gonna drop one flag underneath the light to take it off from the floor and
just to give us a little bit of a vignette underneath her chin.
Now, I'll move this end as far as I can.
Now, my background is gonna still be lit back there.
I'm gonna fly a flag above.
I don't have to be as close to the light.
And I should be able to get this just where it just touches the top of her head.
It should kill most of the light on that background.
And this, I can clamp these at both the same directions if I wanna put them on that same
angle.
And that should darken my background completely.
It's about controlling the light.
Flags are about being able to control where the light goes and what it does.
And that's what we wanna do.
We wanna control the light.
We wanna shape it, subtract it.
Get it off from what we don't want to see, put it on what we do want to see.
Another important use of flags is to take the light, the spill light, off of the camera.
Now, a lot of times, people wanna put the flag way too close to the camera for my liking.
But the closer you get to the camera, the harder the line it cuts so it makes perfect
sense, but I like to split the difference.
I don't want it way back on the light because when you put the flag right at the light,
it's too hard to get it off of the camera without changing the quality of light that
goes on to the person or the amount of light.
The reason I don't wanna put this right up front by the camera here is because it boxes
the camera in.
When I'm standing back here, pretty soon, I got all these flags.
I can't see my talent.
I can't see the work.
So, I like to get it somewhere in between.
I come back in here and I'm not gonna get in the shot.
It's really easy for me to flag it off from the camera.
It still gives me an open view of my subject, easy for me to work.
This is something interesting where we don't cut all of the light off completely, but we
take a significant amount of the light away.
I'm gonna do this to, kind of, vignette her down below her chin.
I don't want this to be completely dark.
I want to have a little bit of light there.
So, first off, I'm gonna flag the background.
So, I've got my light off from the background.
Now, I'm gonna bring a net in here.
And this is a double net.
It's not gonna change my quality of light.
Gonna try to get it as close as I can.
I'm gonna try to get it almost where it's in the frame.
Julie's gonna point when it's in the frame.
We're gonna back it out just a little bit there, and I'm gonna come up and just give
me a little vignette so it darkens her shoulders, darkens her chest and the front, and that
looks good.
So, this is subtracting light but not changing the quality.
That's what you use a net for.
Sometimes, I'll think, "You know what?
It'd just be interesting if I just flew this in from the side."
And I'm just gonna kinda kill a little bit of the light there, just a little bit on the
side of her head.
Or maybe I come in from overhead, and we kill just a little bit on her face there.
And it starts to be just as something interesting, a little bit of shadow, something interesting
to play with.
So, nets are fun to play with.
It's really good if you got a hot spot on someone, like somebody who's bald.
We'll fly a net in from over the top and kill some of the light that's hitting them on the
top of the head.
Nets are really easy to kinda like surgically take light away, and just subtract a little
bit of light, dim the light, not kill the light.
This is a perfect situation for a net.
I'm closer to the light, she's further away.
So, I'm gonna be brighter, she's gonna be a little darker.
So, I just take my single net and I just take it...light off from me and now, it balances
us out.
Okay.
So, I'm gonna take the rim light off from our subject here, from Kseniya, onto the background,
straight onto the background, but now, I'm gonna set a flag to create a little bit of
shafter light back there.
So, I'm taking the flags, I'm making just a little bit of a pattern on the back wall.
My favorite thing to do with this is to make it look like it's a doorway or a window.
So, you can put a flag up, a flag down.
You can box it in so you have flags on all four sides, then you just take a piece of
gaffer tape and make a cross in it, and now you've got a little bit of a window on the
background.
I've done that a lot.
So, those flags now are really important on that light in the background because it allows
us to take light away from the background, make it more interesting, give us a pattern,
a shaft, a window.
There are different things that are gonna make that background just be really interesting
to look at.
So, there are two flags set on the same light.
This flag is very close to the background, gives us a hard, hard shadow.
That flag is way away from the background, very close to the light, gives us a very soft
shadow on the background.
Neither of them are right, it's just a matter of how you decide to use them.
If you need to cut something very cleanly and you wanna put it right on an edge, or
you want it to be on someone's face, or you want to just have a really sharp, sharp line,
get the flag as close to the subject matter as possible.
If you want a more soft, fall off, just, kind of, make a transition on the wall so that
you kinda kill some of the light that's spilling on the wall.
Get it closer to the light and let it kinda bleed and blend into the next light source
and it will help it look very natural.
Far, hard.
Close, soft, far, hard.
In a boat with a goat.
In a goat with a boat.
You get the picture.
So, now let's wrap this up.
We've learned several things.
Flags are meant to cut light, take it away, subtract light.
They are not adding light, they're subtracting light.
They are used to get rid of the spill, to shape the light, to create mood, and depth,
and interest.
They do all those kinds of things.
It's really hard to work on set if you don't have flags because flags become the tool that
takes your light and turns it into really something special and interesting.
Just about every set I've ever worked on were using flags with strobes and hot lights, both
the same.
You use the flags.
It's harder to see with strobes because when you put that flag in, you don't get to see.
You've got to shoot an image and look at that image to see exactly what it's doing.
But I use them with strobes all the time.
So, there's a look at flags and nets.
So, keep those cameras rolling, and keep on clicking.
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