7 CINEMATIC Lighting Setups with ONE BUDGET Light!

why do you think your favorite Hollywood films always look so stunning of course things like cameras lenses and creative Direction all play a major part but the single most important thing in creating a cinematic shot is the lighting now most of us like you and me don't have million dollar Hollywood budgets but that doesn't mean we can't create beautiful looking shots all you need is one light and a few cheap accessories to turn a shot like this into a shot like this and in this video we'll take a look at how I lit these seven shots using one single budget light and a little bit of experimenting for each setup I was using this godox sl16 Mark II D an affordable daylight cob light you can find a link to This Light down in the video description let's take a look at the first shot the nighttime death scene it's a very simple setup where I had the godox with the reflector attached pointing at an angle to a white wall that wall was serving as a bounce to create a soft light that could resemble the Moonlight but there was a little issue with only bouncing the light off the wall because the room is white I don't want it to bounce everywhere that's why I have this blanket and the bounce board there to create a dark side on my face so that I'm keeping a bit of contrast there the dark blanket and the black bounce are serving as negative fill that means these two dark surfaces are actually removing light from one side of my face as opposed to regular fill which adds light to a subject regular fill or simply fill could be a white wall or any other White surface and I'll show you some examples of that further in the video but first why do you think I wanted to remove light well if we look at the same scene without the negative fill you can tell the lighting is very even and flat this makes for a less interesting looking shot by adding negative fill the light becomes more directional and helps sell the effect that it could be Moonlight shining through a window it also adds contrast to the shot by creating a dark side and a light side to the character another thing that helps convey the nighttime effect is the blue color grade a warmer color grade turns the same shot into more of a morning shot and that brings me to the second shot which is the morning shot but instead of changing the color grade I wanted to create the effect that morning light was shining through the blinds onto the character's face a great way to achieve this is by using a spotlight and a gobo but these tend to be quite expensive an alternative and much more affordable way to pull off this look is by using a mirror first I used some cinefoil to ensure that the godox light was directed straight at the mirror avoiding any The Unwanted spill on the wall this effectively created a spotlight for this setup I was again using some negative fill on one side of my face to create a bit more contrast [Music] in the next setup the character is in the kitchen quite dramatically backlit by The Morning Sun here I place the godox outside pointing at an angle towards the window I made sure that the light was at a height where it could mimic the morning sun and positioned it in a way that the light would sort of peek past the kitchen cupboard in the background since it was quite bright outside I had to set the godox at 100 and that did a pretty good job at resembling the sunlight but there are a few other things that play a big part in making this shot work so let's start from scratch and build this setup step by step this is what the scene looks like with normal daylight and the blinds up there's not much atmosphere in this shot there's too much hard light coming through the windows and the camera side of the character is too dark so let's start by closing the blinds a bit this will reduce the very harsh sunlight however now the whole scene is much darker and the character is almost completely in Shadow I added a white bound wants to reflect the light coming from the window and the godox this helped with filling in or adding light to the shadow side of the character if we now take a look at the addition of the fill combined with the godox blasting through the blinds we get something like this which looks a lot better than what we started off with but there's even more we can do to make this shot extra atmospheric and it's this right here a little bit of haze in a can this works especially well with backlit scenes as it can create these rays of light just have a look at the shot without the haze and then after adding in the haze shot number four is again a very simple one to achieve it's great to create a dramatic look for a dark or scary or mysterious character having a really bright side of the face and a really dark side of the face puts a lot of mystery around the character the important thing here is to put the light at an angle towards your subject because that's what will create that sharp contrast I mounted barn doors on the godox light allowing me to direct the light towards the face and limiting any light spilling onto the walls behind me if we look at the same shot but without the barn doors attached you can tell there's a lot of light spilling on the wall behind me and also on the shadow side of my face this makes the shot a lot less Moody and dark I also used a white bounce again to fill in a bit of the Shadow side of my face so that it's not completely underexposed an important thing to note is that the character is positioned by the window now why do you think that is important your brain automatically connects the light on the character to the light from the window if the window wasn't there it would feel less natural so the light on the character is now motivated that has a reason for being there and I'll talk more about motivated light and how you can use it to create cinematic shots when I show you the final setup similar to the previous shot this next setup is another simple way to create a moody looking shot but with a softer light the technique I'm using here is referred to as reverse key lighting or upstage lighting have a look at the setup and if you don't know already see if you can figure out why this is called reverse key lighting as you can tell the godox is not placed in front of me but instead placed more behind me so it is lighting me slightly from the back and the side in a more Classic Lighting setup the key light would mostly come from in front of the subject however in reverse key lighting the light is placed slightly behind the subject this is another technique that you will see being used in a lot of films and it produces a lot of mood in a shot I'm using a soft box to ensure the light hitting my face is not too hard if you don't have a soft box you can use a white blanket or a tablecloth and put that in front of your light and that will help to soften it up and again I'm using a white bounce to fill in the shadow side and that white bounce is very important to change the mood of this shot you can see as I'm moving the bounce it creates less or more darker Shadows making the shot less or more Moody and dark the importance of using the right fill or bounce material becomes even more obvious when we have a look at the next setup in this shot the character is actually being lit From Below but by a light coming from the top let me explain that the godox is almost pointing straight down onto the table that table is reflecting the light or bouncing the light onto the character's face it creates quite harsh and Dark Shadows around the eyes and this tends to result in a dark and Sinister look you'll see this in movies when they portray bad guys or scary characters now there are two things we can play around with here one is the light source and the other one is the bounce so the first shot here is the godox with the reflector dish mounted pointing at the table and bouncing the light back onto my face and you can tell that it's not the best looking shot especially not for the look that I'm going for one thing is that the light is spilling everywhere so it's not very controlled just pointing at the table so the first thing I did was put on the barn doors so that I can reduce that light spilling and this is what that looks like so with the barn doors attached and the light bouncing off the table now as you can see this is a wooden table so the light bouncing off this table is going to be quite warm if you don't want that and you want a neutral bounce you can put a white material on the table like a white bounce board or a blanket that will make sure that the bounce light is not that warm or orangey if you want to go for an even darker look you can change the white balance material with a dark bounce material like this blanket that is going to reduce the light reflecting and create a much darker shot and we can even go a different route by controlling that top light even more for example by attaching some cinefoil and creating more of a spotlight towards the table this way we will have even less light spilling and this works really well to have kind of a character appear out of the dark and reveal himself slightly into the light depending on either a black or white bounce the shot will become more or less dark and dramatic another great way to create interesting looking shots is by making use of practical lights and you'll see this very often in films because it tends to create a sense of realism in a scene it helps sell the illusion that what we are seeing on screen is not an artificial set with artificial lights a practical light is any light source that is visible in the scene so in this shot the practicals are these two lamps the purpose of these lights is to motivate the light that is in fact lighting the subject because in most cases as you can see here the Practical light itself is not strong enough to actually light the subject the first thing I tried was setting up the godox outer frame behind me and pointing at a gold reflector this is what that looked like not too bad but a few things I was unhappy with one is that the light is slightly too harsh and the second is that it's not warm enough to match the Practical light so I moved the godox to the side where the Practical light is and mounted the softbox even though right now the light was much soft after this light was much too cold and didn't look natural at all after all we wanted to create the effect that the character is being lit by the lamp so I got some orange foil and placed it inside the soft box in front of the light which worked quite well to warm up the light I won't say that this is perfect and ideally you would use a bi-colored light like the godox sl60 Mark II by where you can just dial in the correct light temperature however now the shot is looking pretty good but because there is a white wall on the shadow side of the character it's actually filling in that side too much so I decided to add some negative fill on that side to create more contrast and I think the result looks much better one last thing I want to mention about this setup is the second practical in the background that one helps to separate the subject from the background and also serves as a bit of a fill light for that background without it the shot loses depth and it doesn't feel very complete so you can tell that there are a lot of possibilities when it comes to lighting a scene with a limited set of equipment it's all about experimenting and using what you have to create something interesting now I'm by far not an expert in the field and I am learning as I go so you're welcome to leave your critique or advice in the comment section what are things you guys do to create beautiful light without a big budget anyway that's it for me thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Sightseeing Stan

Views: 70,906

Keywords: sightseeing stan, low-key lighting techniques, cinematic lighting setups, cinematic lighting, cinematic lighting on a budget, cinematic lighting for beginners, cinematic lighting tips, cinematic lighting at home, cinematic lighting with one light, budget cinematic lighting setup, low budget cinematic lighting, how to create cinematic lighting on a budget, movie lighting techniques, movie lighting setup, one light cinematography, cinematic lighting in small spaces on a budget

Id: p05Uja2e8aA

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 04 2023