Welcome to Tutorial #5. My name is Tom Antos.
Today I’m going to show you examples from
a new music video that is going to be released maybe later this year or early next year.
We’re going to work on two different sequences, both of which use HMI Par lighting.
I’ll just let you watch the first sequence.
OK. So, as you can see, the whole sequence takes place outside, and you might think to yourself,
why would I bother with lights, since we’re shooting outside and it is a nice sunny day.
But when you shoot outside, you always need some kind of a fill light.
A lot of times, you can get away with using a reflector.
But for music videos, especially, when you want a glamorous look,
all the things that need to be well exposed are well exposed,
and you also have some kind of a contrast in the shot... to give it the glamor look.
And that’s what HMI lights are really good for...
They output a lot of power. When you’re shooting outside, you have to compete with
the strength of the light that the sun provides.
You really need to make sure you have powerful enough lights.
In this case, we only had 1200W HMI Par.
In this shot, the light might not be very evident,
but what the light is doing, it basically lights the girl’s face.
So, it’s acting as a fill light, whereas the sun, which is exactly behind the girl,
is acting more like a rim light.
One of the reasons I did it like that is because I wanted to have
that very strong rim light. And since the sun is going to be stronger
than the HMI light I’m using, that works well. Also because the locations that we were shooting at
did not work well if I pointed the camera the other way.
Here you can see with the light off, there is a big difference.
She’s way underexposed.
Here we put the light back on and it looks a lot better.
Here for example, in this shot, we also used the HMI light,
but more as a rim light, rim / fill light, just to the left side of the camera.
And in this shot, since the actor was in the car and his face was way, way underexposed,
we had the HMI Par light his face just to the right side of the camera.
Now, we’re going to work on this restaurant sequence. It’s the same music video.
So, this is how I would start working on this sequence.
Like on any shoot, I usually try to scout all the locations a few weeks before
so I can see what kind of shots are possible. Based on that I do my storyboards.
Here you can see me setting up the camera on a dolly.
Just testing it out, making sure that I can achieve the same kind of a camera move
that I storyboarded.
Here is a little rehearsal with the actor.
Just blocking the shot out.
We have one of the PAs standing in for the waitress.
But as you can see right away, it’s basically way, way too dark.
And the reason is that we have these big windows behind there
and it’s a nice sunny day outside. So, there is a lot more light outside than inside.
And so I have to compensate for it.
Now, I can do it in different ways.
I can bring up the exposure in the camera, like you see here.
But then, obviously, the problem is that everything outside is way overexposed.
So, in order to fix the problem, I end up using one of the HMI Par lights,
a 1200W HMI.
And I put it just to the right side of the camera, outside of one of the windows,
just pointed right at the subject.
Here you can see me testing it out with one of the extras
while the actors are getting their make-up done.
Here we do another rehearsal with the lights.
It looks a lot better.
What I ended up actually adding, though, is this big soft box that you see here,
just to the left side of the camera,
just to balance out the other side of the subject’s face.
And then the last thing that I do is...
I add a 1000W light
just to the left side of the actor as he comes out,
just to add a little bit of a rim,
to help separate him from the background.
And that’s pretty much it.
This is how it looks.
And here is another little sequence that we shot where we also used
HMI lights.
It’s all indoors. And the reason that I used it is that I needed a LOT of
big,soft ambient light that bounces all over the walls.
So, I just took one of those HMI lights
and bounced it off the ceiling.
And as you can see, it provided enough soft... equal light to light the whole office.
And that’s really the reason why HMI lights are so good.
They are very powerful, yet they operate at reasonably cool temperatures
and they don’t use that much power.
Especially if you consider how much light they output.
I guess, they are big and heavy
and they can be expensive to rent,
but they really are a lifesaver in many situations when you’re filming.
For those who always ask me what camera I used on this project,
we shot this on a Canon XH-A1
with the RedRock Micro Adapter and 35mm lenses from Nikon
- still SLR lenses.
So, that’s pretty much it. In the next tutorial, I’ll show you
more examples from the same music video.
I’ll show you how using color correction and some very simple lighting tricks,
you can totally change the mood of a scene.
I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.