Behind the Scenes: Lighting a Commercial Video Shoot

let's get we'll do one more uh stand by any adjustment 501 take two [Music] open the tilt down more uh it's about a quarter minus three final step please oh we're gonna change the world We're Gonna Change the World with the shot [Music] hey everyone I'm Robert from Machado visuals and today we're breaking down a healthcare commercial I shot a few months back in terms of style it's your typical run-of-the-mill Healthcare commercial where we focus in on Talent as they deliver their line for mood and tone we wanted to keep everything pretty high key so that it felt warm and inviting in a way that feels natural and organic the whole ad campaign is about taking on a more healthy lifestyle so all these scenes are little slices of your everyday family developing better habits the idea is that each commercial would show three to four different scenes and our main challenge was that it was all just one location so we needed to recycle as many different looks as possible by making each scene look like a different environment let's take a look all right so we'll try this uh what we'll do is we'll start maybe we'll have you kind of like your time you're like you're you know tying your yeah tighten your boot right and then exactly and then on action you'll just walk forward the Steadicam is going to kind of come around you um you'll say a few words to it and then just pass it yeah for our first setup we have this really simple shot of a family as they walk around the neighborhood this was our original idea during the scalp and it was actually this shot that really made me push for hiring a Steadicam given the blocking and large Crown we had to cover I initially got a little pushback from the producer given the budget but I really felt it added to the dynamic family lifestyle we were trying to convey not only here but across all the scenes and it felt like the right tool during our Scout I figured out when and where the sun would be in an optimal position for our shoot time and since this was the first shot of the day we were just catching the tail end of golden hour with a great directional key and beautiful Long Shadows this was important since we didn't really have the budget to like with bigger units like hmis so figuring out how to best use the sun was crucial for the Scout on the day we ended up switching the blocking around a little bit mainly for lighting and also so that we didn't see all the crew Vehicles parked along the sidewalk we threw up a 12 by half soft Frost to take the edge off the morning sun and to also maximize our output since the frame was so far away we needed the frame to be farther away for a couple reasons one we needed to cover a fairly large area and two since Talent was walking towards the frame we needed to take advantage of the inverse Square law to help minimize the change in intensity as they got closer to the source so if you don't know the inverse Square law basically means that there will be less changes in intensity the farther you are from a light so for instance there's a pretty big drop in intensity from here to here but not nearly as much from here to here so in a practical sense even though our talent is walking right towards the frame there aren't huge increases in exposure until they're basically right on top of it that's good we'll do one more any adjustment on that especially I feel warm inside this right here it's warm so the second shot pushes in on this family getting ready for their day as Mom delivers her line to camera there's a lot of discussion and pre-production on how to block the scene but I knew I had to light pretty globally since we're capturing nearly the entire kitchen we started by throwing up a 1200d through a frame of 250 just outside the window to fill the room and gave us a great starting point for most of our level I wanted to start introducing some hard light throughout the set so we set up a 600x off in the corner with the spotlight Mount aiming towards the center Island and adjusted the blades to keep that harder Source off of any faces this helped it feel more like that early morning sun pouring in through that same window the left side of our frame looked like it needed a little bit of love so we also used a 60x to skip off the floor and help bring the space to life I always love seeing the sun balance off of floors in real life so this is probably one of my favorite ways to actually use the 6dx lastly We snuck in some MC's underneath the cabinets as accent lights to liven up the dark countertops in the back really quick if you're enjoying this video I have an entire 11 part behind the scenes series from this commercial over on my patreon where you get to see my entire creative process as I work with my crew and even get to watch the camera feed as we're lighting there's also a bunch of other content from my professional work as a DP such as lighting breakdowns and a Discord server where you can reach out and ask the community anything I'm trending I'm not trending am I am I trending why not what dude I'm not going viral our next setup featured a couple right against a huge window so we had a few options we could either empty the window itself or bring our indoor levels way up to match the exterior daylight we opted for matching the outside levels because we were going to use the windows in a few other scenes and it would have cost way too many resources just for that one shot we needed a ton of output so I started with a 1200d and a regular light Dome as our key we were getting a big reflection since we were facing right into the window so we added the egg crate and the reflection still was technically visible but the big tree in the background helped mask the pattern and kind of camouflaged itself on the camera side we also threw in some Pola to knock down the sky and help with exposure if we take a look at the ungraded log image you can see that everything is perfectly well within the dynamic range of the camera we also added another 1200d bouncing into the ceiling in that back room to bring up some of the room tone otherwise the whole room would have felt super dark and Moody that's another thing you have to consider if you're going to expose for Windows not only do you have to think about your subjects but you also have to consider what the room looks like around your subject so if you're going to light against windows make sure you have enough Punchy fixtures to go around to start bringing up those levels for fill we did a six by Ultra Balance with one of my Gaffers 300 watt godox lights there was a slight color shift between Brands but it wasn't anything a trusty color meter couldn't fix so we threw on a quarter CTP and minus green and we were good to go this next setup was kind of a more intimate scene with three people meditating together we plan to have a much warmer overall tone so I set the camera to 8 500 Kelvin to help push our lights much warmer as well as offsetting that shaded blue window in the back we keyed with the 600x and a lantern rig to a menace arm for a sort of pool of centralized soft light our talent sitting in front was primarily backlit from the lantern so we also added another 300X to key her at around 3 800 Kelvin to maintain that warmer look my gaffer had a couple two foot Pavo tubes that We snuck in the background to give the wall a really subtle glow as well as an MC in the standing Bell that we set to a fire effect even though you'd never actually put a fire in there as the camera pushed towards Talent he also flew in a bounce card to help beautify that close-up our last setup was sort of a ma consultation where we just used spare room in the house and did a little set deck to make it feel more like an office environment this was our last shot of the day so I knew this would end up playing as a night for day so we started by dripping some magic cloth outside over the windows and using a 1200d for our ambient level on the far window we set an Ultra Balance at an angle and lit that with the 300D to keep our talent We snuck in in teletech 2x2 mat in the corner and just added a little passive fill and that was pretty much our entire setup scouting was crucial for this project so that we were able to come up with a solid plan of attack for each of the setups going in already having an idea of The Blocking and simply knowing the sun's path makes everything so much smoother on the day and using something like CAD rage on my iPhone was super helpful in visualizing our lighting approach also big thanks to Evan for helping out the camera department and shooting BTS for this project if it weren't for him I wouldn't have been able to make this video so from handshakes in the chat as always if you have any questions on this video feel free to leave them in the comments below thanks for watching and I'll see in the next one [Music]

Channel: Robert Machado

Views: 21,203

Keywords: commercial lighting, cinematography breakdown, commercial cinematographer, lighting tutorial, aputure 600d, tokina vista primes, skypanel, aputure spotlight, lewis potts, aputure 300d, director of photography, aputure, aputure 300x, 600d pro, vista primes, aputure 1200d, aputure 600d pro, tokina vista, aputure lantern 90, modifers, wandering dp, red komodo, aputure lantern, arri alexa, mini lf, alexa mini lf, alexa 35, full frame, large format, cinematic lighting

Id: sWTzQEW5USM

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023