How to Light & Film Music Videos | Job Shadow

all right here we are guys with another virtual job shot and we're here with some virtual Job Shadow words our full-time filmmaker members look at this we got some ladies today that is right we have females in the group they just don't like coming sometimes but they're here today so we're with Tanner town again I don't know why I keep hanging out with this kid but you know we're shooting a music video for 10 and Tanner got us this cool location we actually shot at this location about four or five years ago well show you some of the footage from it personally I think it looks kind of nasty I wasn't that good and understand lighting very well at the time so hopefully it looks better this time hopefully I've improved and then we'll show you some befores and afters and show you what we're doing to make it look better this time last time all we did was shoot with the natural light and turn on the lights that were here problem is the natural light kind of overpowers the light that's in here and so we actually brought some lights this time and will hopefully set up the lighting in a way that looks a little more cinematic a little more professional so we're gonna walk you through how we set up the lights but first we're gonna set up the piano and decide where we want to put it this is the first thing I do when I show up to a shoot pull my camera out and I look through the viewfinder what's esthetic what looks good to my eye so I come in here we shot with the piano right in the center here the the first time and we shot most of the video from like this angle and kind of around here but I don't think I shot it very well and I think I want to use more of the depth that these windows provide and I shot this way shout back and forth this way but we have some awesome depth going this way I'm just kind of looking I think this way looks better than this way so I'm gonna show you what some of these clips look like in my camera but I'm seeing I really like this framing here so I'm thinking of being able to shoot one shot going this way and then maybe some tighter shots with these windows in the background so I'm thinking I want the piano to open up so the keys are on this side so that I could shoot onto the keys right here with those windows in the background there one thing to keep in mind that we didn't do when I did this shoot last time but a lot of times I'll rearrange the piano depending on what type of shot I'm shooting so for this wide shot I might have ten or more perpendicular to me so that he's like this so I can see his face and the keys and then when I actually come shoot over here I might decide in order to see the windows we have to slightly position the piano a little more this way and so I'll cheat it for some of the close-up shots so sometimes I do that if I need to get a certain framing I like or the lighting might be set up a certain way for the wide shot and then for the tight shots I'll have to rearrange all the lights to get a very specific look on the face or on the hands and that's something they actually do a lot in Hollywood movies so I just always let people know that you can rearrange lighting between different types of shots mediums tights wides without people really being able to tell so let's go ahead and bring this piano over if I can get a couple helping hands here our largest and strongest humans I can I just I want to include everybody so anything okay so kind of scouting out how this looks with the windows back there I'm just thinking in my head the types of shots I'm gonna be doing that would be a good shot of Joseph of his face we got some good depth back there over here I've got some good depth doing some side face shots looks pretty solid and we talked about this a little bit in the course but the 180 degree rule what that says is you typically only want to be on one side if there's 360 degrees you want to stay on 180 degrees the whole time so ideally I would never cross this plane right here so all of my angles all my shots ideally would be within that 180 degrees yeah that's the idea is that you shouldn't be on this side and then all of a sudden cut to a shot on this side if you want to start filming on this side you should show a camera movement coming to this new side and then you can kind of start integrating that side as well here's our before on our wide there's a close up on the face before lighting here's a close up on some keys before lighting now let's bring in some lighting so we're gonna start off with our key lights we have our 300 d aperture just sent me a bunch of these I'm super spoiled they're similar to the 120 DS they're just supposedly twice as bright and what I might do here let's actually throw this on first we got our key light in now I have it at a hundred percent right now we'll see if we want it that bright so this is what my image looks like now with that big old key light brought in I'm gonna bring down okay so I'm trying to match my my background light so the light coming from the windows back there so it actually matches pretty well if the light gets too bright then the background gets too dark you want the background darker than him but not too dark to where you can't see anything back there so I turned the light down I don't want the windows to be blown out but I don't want everything else to be too dark we're gonna try see what it looks like with these lights on only problem is the color balance is different because right now it matches the blue light from the windows but it doesn't match any get the other light you know this is our other option is turn off all the lights like Tanner was saying let's just turn off all those back lights unless just bring in our own back lights so we're that now see if that looks better so I brought quite a few I have four total which means we could have like a backlight back here to be behind his so I'm always you guys know I like like light flares right so I'd be shooting one shot from here so I want to put one back there so I get a nice flare there I might do one over here for a straight-on shot and then maybe one over here for this type of shot so so now we're gonna get rid of all the 3200 Kelvin lights and just have natural light and then the lights we set up that will all be fifty six hundred to match the outdoor light so we'll see if that looks better and that that to me just looks more professional so we're gonna set up these lights to I want him to stand out from the background so that he's brighter but I don't want it I don't want the background to be black so that a hundred percent I'm gonna bring it down to eighty percent now I'll show you that that's looking better yeah I think I like that so I want to create depth you want him to be bright it in the background usually you don't want the background brighter else is gonna be blown out so we're making sure those windows are in check which for the most part they are now we're checking our flares here or different angles we'll be shooting at kind of want to hide those poles if possible so we have a little black spot in that doorway if we put it back there it should be able to hide the black light stand only thing I don't love his that light I wanted to match with that light to be in the same kind of spots for like a white shot it's not very motivated so I'm motivated light meaning what a big flash of light be coming from there naturally no there's a window there right so you have to kind of decide do I want lights that are motivated and look like they belong there I mean a lot of music videos they're obviously sets you know it's not like they have like 20 lights all around them and they're just making it look pretty okay let's look at gear now I'd only took us an hour and a half so based on the music I will make creative decisions on how much movement if any movement I want to have incorporated I'm gonna probably having listened to the song I'm probably gonna do everything on the slider today so we got the Rhino the times when I like to use a slider is when I want very controlled movements if I use glidecam or a 3 axis gimbal you can't get a slow of movements that look house clean you're gonna see a little you know so when you're moving really slow I like to use the slider and we're probably I honestly haven't even fully decided yet we're probably going to get b-roll after this to math what he's saying and stuff that we'll put over top all right let's talk about lens choice here I'm gonna go with my 85 this is a hard lens to use because it's pretty tight I'm using that instead of a 24 to 70 because one its prime lenses are going to be sharper and they can stop down farther I want to get that 1.4 aperture background we also have to decide at this point are we going to do a letterbox are we gonna make the aspect ratio even wider and we usually do kinda likes the white aspect ratio so I have to keep that in mind cannons don't have an overlay some cameras do like the red has an overlay that I'll show you where that will be once you do it in post but I kind of know I'm just like okay if we do put letterbox we're not gonna see that foreground right there so if I want to see that foreground and that's usually what you have to do is just back up a little bit take numero uno and that's our music all the times that you feel so long and when you don't know where to turn or to go we got to text from that angle so I'm gonna call that good we're gonna get a tighter shot here try that to come back a little bit right there on these tie shots you want to be careful not to cut off their chin the mouth is the subject that's what you're watching you're watching him talk mouth in the eyes so if you cut off the chin you're starting to cut off the subjects whenever I do these tight shots I'd rather cut off his hair and his more of his head rather than the chin so if you're gonna miss framing I'd miss framing down a little bit rather than too far up then he started to cut off them you know seeing him talk the last music video we did here I did it all on the 16 to 35 millimeter lens ace issued everything just wide as I've gotten better I've learned different focal lengths that worked better for what scenarios you'll notice that on these close-up shots we're using an 85 millimeter with the crop it comes out to over 100 millimeters so it's really tight on his face it gives a really good compressed background to make it you know really blurred out shallow depth of field there so anytime I'm doing close-ups I like to be in this range of 70 to 100 millimeter you guys have heard me say that a lot but that's something I didn't know the first couple of years I was filming and so I would just do everything with the 1635 I get really close and really far away and it was just a lot less control than a lot less purposeful with why I was doing certain things with this medium shot I want to have both the hands the piano and his face in the shop but I want them up against the windows to be able to see that depth so I'm gonna lower the whole thing and then we're gonna back the whole thing up alright so here's where I'm gonna cheat a little bit it's actually come this way a little more so I can get more depth see more of those windows keeping in mind our our crop that we're gonna do if we're gonna crop it you might lose some of that so we want to back up even a little more or I could pop on a different lens so if we're running out of room here but I kind of like this compressed 85 look yeah so that's where I'm gonna cheat it a little bit and move the whole piano this way a little more so we can see more of his hands playing here's what it looks like now yeah we're gonna move the lights now he's a little bit too shaded cuz we let's move this over a little bit this way there's like 10 moving parts to get your frame right oh I like what do you think we try out a little light back there yeah so just put that light a little higher try and scoot that behind the curtain like mine so that it's not lighting up the wall and action that's you are never on your own if you could see the way he sees your soul so we are probably gonna shoot the intro right here a close-up of his hand so put your hands in there tan where's your starting spot right there I want to do like a little reveal off of this piano here so let's good the whole thing that way a little bit [Music] all right Jake let's see oh that looks I like the see inside the Chandler it looks nice [Music] so I'm getting just a lot of options I end up when I go in the editing room figuring out that one of these takes I like a lot better than the rest and I so I try and use as much of that one as I can and some of these takes I use hardly anything maybe just one or two shots just to mix it up we're gonna do one more shot on the hands and then one shot inside here is like a cutaway so that in case we have a part where there's no good piano or no good singing takes so we can just cut to something in here so we always have a safety shot in case that happens because it usually does alright so last shot we're gonna do a why go and screw this back Jake we're gonna do a push in some move yours to the back see how that looks alright so we got our key light in the frame so we're gonna have to scoot that probably higher and back a little bit okay here we go go ahead if you start to hear the still small voice maybe you should learn to love your self [Music] all right that is a wrap good work tanner grandson I've had a lot of you guys asking me how would you light a music video and it completely depends on the type of music video I shoot a lot of instrumental performance music videos and as you could see here when we came there was plenty of lights available but we kind of lit it our own way the way we liked obviously we had a lot of lights to use but yeah so that's kind of the basics biggest thing is to shoot a lot of angles give myself a lot of takes to probably do 12 to 15 takes that way I have a lot to cut from like again a lot easier with a slider as far as the actual takes I can just sit back and watch it but as far as setting it up it takes a lot longer so there's kind of pros and cons I can get more text if I'm doing a glidecam or handheld because I can just get it as I go get the types of shots I want but then I'm working really hard for two or three hours so pros and cons to that yeah thanks for coming out appreciate it guys if you have any further questions please let me know okay and one last thing I wanted to mention I get a lot of you guys asking me my editing workflow and actually teach my entire editing workflow in the full-time filmmaker course both in Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro X so you can check that out in the link below but on this music video specifically that you just watched I also did a behind-the-scenes of me editing this entire music video so you can see behind the scenes look at all the cutting decisions I make which clips to use how to color correct it how to match up all these shots in the first place using PluralEyes so if you'd like to learn more about my editing workflow you guys can check that out at full time filemaker.com or if you have more questions about the program you can check out my free one-hour filmmaking training where I teach my top 10 secrets to achieving cinematic shots so you can check that out by clicking over here also go make sure to check out the full video of the final music video on tanner grands youtube channel make sure to subscribe and if you guys have any further questions please let me know

Channel: Parker Walbeck

Views: 526,767

Keywords: HOW TO SHOOT MUSIC VIDEOS, HOW TO FILM MUSIC VIDEOS, MUSIC VIDEO, music video lighting, music video tutorial, music video tips, behind the scenes, parker walbeck, full time filmmaker, rhino slider, film school, light dome, music videos 2018, music video lighting techniques, canon 1dx mark ii, aputure 120d, 300d, music video lighting tips

Id: whYMhm6mwyE

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 06 2018