Jay: One of the simplest sets you can build is simply a window in a seamless.
We'll show you how to do it and how to make it work.
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Now, get back to the lesson.
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Jay: Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
Today, on The Slanted Lens, I've got Allison Yaple here with me.
Are you ready to do this?
Allison: I'm ready.
Jay: She is ready.
We're going to create a castle setting, or the sense of a dungeon room, with just simply
cutting a hole in a seamless, some little tape for bars, put in a nice strong light
through that so you get a shaft of light coming through, and then some smoke in the room,
and it transforms us from my living room to a castle by simply cutting a hole in a seamless.
So let's get started and see what we can do.
So I have loved this kind of solution because it's just so simple when you cut a hole in
a seamless, depending on what the hole looks like, what the size is, what the shape is
like.
Right now, we did an arch.
So I just free-handed this thing.
I drew a line with a Sharpie, and then that circle, then just cut it out with an X-ACTO.
I mean, you can get a lot more exact about this.
You can get a ruler and really make a grid, and then cut it out very exactly so it looks
nice.
You can, as well, if you put like four of these windows or four lights, as they call
them, like one, two, three, four, you cut out of the window, out of the seamless, you
can put a piece of diffusion on them.
It kind of makes it look more like a window.
Or, you could put diffusion on one and not the others so it looks like there's broken
windows, or cut a jagged piece of diffusion so it looks like a piece of glass back there.
There's several different things you can do.
In this case, we're seeing outside, and because we're seeing outside, there's just, there's
a little bit of density or foliage out there, so it just feels like there's more depth to
the shot.
It's hard to do this because it's so close here in this room.
We couldn't get a finer place, so that light's in the next room, shining through the windows
through that, but there's always a way to make it happen.
So there's a lot of options using this, just a seamless, just a charcoal gray seamless.
Use charcoal gray so it will go dark but not necessarily completely black, have a little
bit of density, a little bit of value back there, not completely black.
You've gotta have smoke in the room so you can get a shaft light coming through the window.
That helps to sell it.
We added blue, like a full blue on the light coming through the window to give it just
a little bit of coolness in the room.
The challenge we had when we first set it up is that we moved the light right in here,
so our shaft light was going straight down towards the floor, and straight up.
We realized it just didn't look right.
I wanted to see a shaft going towards her so it would bring the viewer's eye towards
our model.
So, as we moved the light in that direction, it took the shaft light that was going straight
down and slowly moved it in, so you kind of get this shaft going towards her.
So how you place the light behind there will move your shaft light around.
That's just the bonus for now.
Housing, you can get from aperture.
If you put a reflector with black painted inside, it can make it a little more focused
and it doesn't bleed quite as much, because on a reflector, it kind of sends light everywhere.
Then, up here, as kind of our key, is around behind her, and that key light is meant to
imitate the light that's coming through the window, kind of emphasize that, and to tie
into that so it feels comfortable and it feels normal.
We then have a fill light over here, we brought in, but on that fill light, we put a half-CTO,
and that half-CTO is going to just bounce a warm kind of fill light back into her face,
which, when we used the candle, made perfect sense, like there's this warmth coming out
of the candle and just kind of warms and kind of makes the whole scene feel a little more
cinematic.
We added a last room light on the camera, right-side over her left shoulder, to get
a rim on her face and just kind of separate her from the background.
We did add a light right behind the camera with a 10-degree grid on it, and that 10-degree
grid is just to open up her face a little bit and to brighten her a little bit.
Now, the smoke makes and does a lot of different things in this room because the heavier the
smoke is, the more the shadows fill in and the less density in the shadows.
So even the shadowed side of her face becomes more open, more light, but as the smoke starts
to dissipate and settle down, then pretty soon, that side of her face becomes much darker.
So there you have it, how to create a room with a simple window cut in a piece of seamless.
Allison's been great.
Allison: Thank you.
Jay: She's beautiful.
She's fabulous.
So I hope you figured out some things on how you can apply this in what you do.
Go on our Facebook group.
Post some of the images.
There are so many possibilities with this one application.
This is just one simple introductory thought.
There's a billion things you can do with it, so get out there and make something happen.
Keep those cameras rolling.
Keep on clicking.
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Allison: Arrgh!
You'd better subscribe to The Slanted Lens, or I'll hunt you down!
Jay: That's right, and maybe we will poke your eye!