Hi, I'm Shane Hurlbut, and I'm an ASC cinematographer.
And I absolutely love what I do.
And I've been doing it for over 25 years,
shooting music videos, commercials and feature films.
And I also have a huge passion for mentoring and educating filmmakers all over the world.
And today, we're going to start with five tips on how to light a room.
[music]
Tip number one: always start by lighting the background in your room,
and that can be done many different ways.
You can use little out-of-focus lights like this Ikea bokeh light.
You can use practicals in the background and create this beautiful kind of scallop pattern.
You can put some tchockes on the top of this cabinet
that will create out-of-focus stuff.
Highlights and everything when you go in for a close-up.
The other thing is the classic old slash of light
that mixing the tungsten with the daylight.
And you can do this with a simple flag.
And again everything is about creating light and shadow.
That creates the depth and dimension within your background,
and it sets up the ability to, when you're going for the close-up,
and you're keying from maybe this side,
and this side you're going dark,
you can then use the highlight in the background to separate the dark side of his face.
And it always is classic, but it's absolutely beautiful lighting.
[music]
Aright, tip number two is lighting the mid ground,
and I'm lighting areas that maybe our actors are going to be moving in and out of, doorways.
So, I'm putting little accent lights that can kind of highlight things in the background,
so I light the mid ground.
Tip number three is room tone.
With room tone, I always love to try to bounce something into the ceiling
or bounce it off cards.
That's going to fill and infuse a fill level into the shadows,
and I love it to be a medium blue green color, like cyan.
I started doing this on Terminator Salvation,
and from that time on I've done it on every feature film.
Now, what I do is, I'm popping this with this color.
Or, I'm able to just take a sky panel and throw that color into it,
and you can see how it infuses this blue-green nature into your shadows.
And I kind of will do this all over the room sporadically, wherever I need.
[music]
Tip number four, with the actors and where they're moving,
you want to light an area. You do not want to light marks
because I feel that, in this day and age, it's much more free form.
You want the actors to be able to move wherever they want,
and it creates a much more emotional impact
because the lighting doesn't feel lit.
It feels more natural.
And then tip number five,
when you come in for the close-up...
You can see, in my wide shots I'm probably using egg crates
to be able to control the light, so it doesn't fly all over the room.
And then, when I come in for the close-up, I'm ripping this egg crate off
so I am able to see all of the light.
So, if you come over here, you can see that, if I'm looking like this my face
is only seeing like two-thirds of the light.
Where, if this egg crate was off, I'm seeing the whole source.
It's very creamy, very beautiful.
And that's your five tips for lighting a room.
[music]