It's that time of the year again where everyone dresses up like the Clown from IT
or a cute little princess.
Either way, we're all looking to scare the hell out of our friends.
And if you're planning to do that by making a horror film,
well, then we've got you covered with these five very simple lighting setups.
What up guys, Jordy here for cinecom.net and it is Copy Cat Friday.
The series where we break down the effect from a popular film or music video.
And today it's not just about one particular film,
we actually took five ideas from five different, iconic, horror films.
The music that you'll hear throughout the video is provided by Premiumbeat.
A high quality, royalty-free music stock library.
They're sponsoring today's episode.
And they have put together a playlist, specially for Halloween or just scary film genres in general.
You can visit the first link in the description below to go to that playlist
and we also have a link further in that description where you can find...
...30 chilling sound effects that you can download for free.
First up on the list is of course Stranger Things.
Season 2 will actually air today on Netflix, really looking forward to it.
Of course there're many lighting situations in the films that we cover,
and for Stranger Things we'll be recreating the forest scene.
Like the title says, you'll only need one light for this.
We're going to use the Aputure 120 D LED light.
They have a pretty good output and can be run from a battery,
which is kinda useful when you're filming outside.
The idea is to place the light high up. Ideally in a tree or something.
Aim it in an angle to the floor, so that it functions as a backlight.
Don't soften this, keep it as a hard source.
And that's all it takes to recreate a mysterious forest at night.
Because the light comes from the back, we see many shadows and silhouettes
which are pretty typical for its genre.
Now, ideally you also want to have some fog as well.
You could wait for a day that has natural mist or use a big haze machine.
Speaking of smoke, this brings us to the film Exorcist.
Silhouettes where here created very often, like in the poster image or in the bedroom.
For a more dramatic look and to visualize the lighting beams, they’ve added smoke.
Looking at the bedroom scene, the light is straight behind the talent, giving a nice halo.
Now after we’ve filled up the room with some smoke, we did the exact same thing.
Make sure to expose dark, so that your subject is completely dark and thus be a silhouette.
Now, horror films are not always about backlight.
The next example comes from IT, where you have the clown Pennywise sitting in the sewer drain.
For this lighting trick you wanna try to push your lighting through a cone.
And you can easily wrap a toilet roll or something like that around your light.
Be careful though that it not gets too hot.
For this example, I needed Yannick to be a clown
so we had some help from Ellen, who actually has a channel by the name of Luna Black
and she does all kinds of cosplay tutorials.
Definitely make sure to check it out, I’ll leave a link to it in the description below as well.
We are in a dark environment,
now simply point your light from a little angle to the mouth of your subject.
Try to only illuminate his mouth
and keep the rest of his face in the shadow and the background in the dark.
This is also possible with a flashlight, as you don't need that much output.
Next up we're taking a look at Annabelle, The Creation.
Annabelle is a doll so she sits still,
at least for the first part of the film.
Very iconic is this stripe of light over the doll.
This is to show that she's sitting still in a closet.
Here's how it's done:
Take a piece of carton and cut out a stroke from it in the middle.
We'll use this as a sjabloon through which we'll cast the light.
And that's how simple it is again to create that peeking through a door effect,
without a door.
And the scary thing about this lighting effect is that
you have hard shadows and only one part illuminated.
Even though Annabelle is a doll,
we do get the feeling that she's secretly watching us like a living being.
Which also becomes the case.
We're going to continue with the front lighting for the last lighting trick.
You can use a real flashlight for this,
but I'm going to attach the fresnel mount to my Aputure 120 D.
It's a lens that can focus the light into a smaller beam.
Using the Aputure light, I'm getting a good output which might be easier for the camera to handle.
In the film Insidious you often see a point-of-view shot
where someone holds a flashlight to look for something in the basement.
The camera goes pretty steady, so we're walking slowly forward.
But the flashlight shakes very much,
looking quickly around, which makes it tensius.
What works best is that you have a lot of stuff laying around,
so that the audience doesn't have enough time to scan the environment,
leaving them wondered if they saw something or not.
And to make the beam from the flashlight a bit more visual
you can add some smoke to the scene.
Even with a very simple smoke machine, we where able to get a good effect.
So that where five scary lighting setups with a single light.
If you have any other ideas, let us know in the comments below.
Thank you all so much for watching...
...and stay creative!
-We have a filming clown!