The Cinematic Lighting Trick Hollywood Uses

How can we take an interior  night scene from this to this? We can do so with a pretty simple trick which  many Hollywood cinematographers use - which I   like to call ‘overhead ambience’. I’ll  shoot a couple of different setups to   show how you can use this technique. For  these tests I’ve rented a Red Komodo with   the Laowa Nanomorphs and all the lights  I’ll be using are sponsored by Nanlite. So, what exactly is ambience and why does it  help to make images feel a bit more cinematic? If we start with an ordinary room during the  day without any film lights we can see that   the main source of light is coming from the  sun and passing through the door and windows. However, light doesn’t only travel in perfect  straight lines. Whenever a light source comes   into contact with a surface it bounces off  it. If it’s a light surface like a ceiling   or a white polyboard quite a lot of light will  get reflected back and if it’s a dark surface   like a grey wall or the black side of a polyboard  a much smaller amount of light will be bounced. To keep a nice level of information  outside and avoid blowing out our   background to white I’ve lowered exposure  on the camera using an ND filter. However,   this now leaves our interior looking very  dark and a bit too underexposed - which   means the natural ambience from the sunlight  bouncing off the ceiling isn’t strong enough. We can fix this by filling in the room with  overhead ambience from an artificial film light. Ambience helps make footage look a bit more filmic  and less video-y because it allows us to preserve   information in the bright parts of the highlights  as well as lifting the detail in the dark areas. There are two main ways to add an overhead ambient   light source - the easy way  and the more tricky way. The easiest way to do this is by taking your light  source, putting it on stand and angling it towards   the ceiling. Here I’ve set up a 500B as well  as Nanlite’s new PavoSlim 240C. The stronger   the source outside is, the more ambient light  you need to add inside to raise and balance   the exposure level of the interior. So here  I need quite a lot of artificial ambience. The colour of the ambient source should be  the same as the natural ambience. In this   case we have sunlight which is about 5,600K, so  I’ve set our light sources to the same value. Bouncing light does three things:  it decreases its intensity,   it softens the light and it lifts  the overall exposure in the room. Without overhead ambience the shadows will be  deeper and more crushed. With the artificial   ambience there will be more detail in the shadows  and the subject will have more of a fill light. If you want to change the direction that the light  bounces in you can do so by rigging a reflective   surface - this could be a reflector plate,  a polyboard, or even a piece of white card. For example you could use a top bounced source  to create more of a shadowy low key look with   an edge light. To do this I rigged a silver  polyboard on a c-stand with a polyholder,   angled downwards, and placed it behind and  above her so that it’s more of a backlight.   I’ve then bounced a 500B into it. This  both lifts the levels of ambient light   indoors and gives a harder edge light to  the hair, shoulders and side of the face. The one disadvantage of this bouncing method is   that we don’t have much control over  the spill. In other words the light   won’t be concentrated into a single beam  of light and will spread around the room. This brings us to method number two -  rigging an overhead source to the ceiling. This technique of rigging top lights to ceilings  was famously used by Conrad Hall in movies like   The Godfather. Rigging a diffused toplight with  skirting makes the light source fall directly   downward onto a specific area, limiting  it from spilling across the entire room. This keeps the walls and background dark,   while the character under the source  is brighter in a pool of light. This setup is a bit more tricky than just  bouncing the light as it requires either   rigging the fixture to a polecat,  or using a stand with a boom pole. Here I’ve rigged a polecat by extending it  across the room then locking it. To this   I’ve added a super clamp to secure a Nanlite  Pavoslim 240C and its ballast onto the pole.   I’ve added the softbox to the front of  it with a diffusion layer to soften it. Then to control the spill and  prevent the light from hitting   the back wall too much I’ve created a  bit of a DIY makeshift skirting using   black material - which channels the  light into falling directly downward. One reason that many DPs choose to use this  technique is because it allows them to point   the camera anywhere around the set, other than the  ceiling, without seeing the source of the light. This way, cinematographers can fully light the  entire space in a set, rather than composing   a specific shot, getting an actor on a  certain mark and lighting only that spot. Actors therefore have more scope to  change their blocking during a scene,   and directors have leeway to easily change  or add shots once they have started shooting. If you look at behind the scenes photos of  Hollywood studio sets inside soundstages   you’ll almost always see these diffused toplights  rigged over the set to create artificial ambience. Rigging lights high up in a sound stage also  creates more distance between the light sources   and the set - which means the light falls  off in intensity, making it a bit softer. Not only does ambient top lighting feel a bit  more real, but, for large long form productions,   it also means these fixtures can  be pre-rigged and then left there,   out of sight, for the remainder of the shoot. So, every time a scene needs to be shot on  that set, the lights can be switched on,   remotely dimmed and set to a preset colour  temperature with a DMX board - without   needing to spend time setting up and  positioning the lights each shoot day. This is a big time saver and provides consistent   illumination which is easily  repeatable and controllable. Now that we know what overhead ambience  is, let’s break down two examples of how   we can use it to make our footage a bit  more cinematic. The lights that I will   be using in this video have been kindly  provided by Nanlite - today’s sponsor. The main fixture I’ll be using as a toplight  is their newly released Pavoslim 240C - a   lightweight RGB 2x2 LED which is a perfect  choice for rigging overhead. With its softbox   it’s a quick to set up, beautiful,  gentle source, with a bright output,   custom lighting effects modes and the ability  to get your light to any colour you want. Whether I’m working by myself or with  a gaffer on a shoot I like to be able   to dim and control my fixtures remotely.  This way you can stand at the camera’s   monitor and balance the levels and  colour of your fixtures by eye. To do this I sync my lights to the Nanlink  app - where you can turn them off and on,   dim them, change colour temperature,  or even add them to a lighting diagram. If you’d like to check out  more of Nanlite’s products   I’ve linked their site in the description. For the first scene I’m going to do  a night interior set up to show how   toplights can be rigged out of sight to add  a gentle ambient fill to a couple of rooms,   creating pockets of light and  shadow in different areas. First I’ll rig two top lights. One in  the middle of each room. I’ve used the   240C for the final larger room and a 120C  for the interleading passage. I’ve rigged   these to a polecat and run the cabling along  the pole and out of sight - but you can also   power them with batteries if you want to  shoot completely 360 degrees cable free. In this first room I’ve used another  60C Pavoslim which I’ve bounced into   the ceiling. I’ve set these lights to  5,600K - while the camera is set to   4,200K. This means our ambience  will be a little bit cool. This night time ambience lifts the level of detail  in the shadows so it doesn’t get too crushed   to complete black and allows us enough light to  expose the scene at 800 ISO at T/2.4 on the lens. To create a bit of warm, cool contrast and to  give some backlight in our final landing position,   I’ve added a practical bulb to the last  room. This is a Nanlite 10C LED which I   can run with a powerbank. I’ve dimmed it  and set it to a warm colour temperature. Now it’s looking a bit better but  the windows feel flat and lack depth,   so I’ve set up a 500B fixture outside  the glass door and windows and warmed   it up with a sodium vapour gel,  creating some warm textured light. So if I do a handheld walkthrough of the shot  it’ll look something like this. Note that we   can move the camera through the entire  space without seeing any film lights. If we start with just the practical it will look  like this. Then this is with the warm window light   added. Notice how the shadows are mostly crushed  to black. Then we add the final ingredient,   our overhead ambience, and there we go. We  can now see some light detail in the shadows,   while still keeping a dark look and  without blowing out any highlights. So, that’s an example of using ambience for  a night scene, now how about a day scene. The first thing I’m going to do here is only  look at the brightest part of the frame and   set my exposure so that it retains some  colour and information without blowing out. If you want a super high contrast look  something like this might already start   to look quite good. We’ve got a nice natural  key coming through the window on the far side.   However, since I want this shot to  have a brighter, high key look I’m   going to add some ambience to fill in our  character so it’s less of a silhouette. To do this I’ve taken a 500B and bounced it into  the ceiling, positioning and angling the source so   that it fills in the side of the face with shadow  which is closer to the camera. As we’ve mentioned   it also lifts the exposure of the darkest parts  of the frame, unveiling a bit more detail. Then I’m going to rig the 240C as a  backlight behind the character from   above by rigging it to the polecat.  This will create a subtle rim or edge   light and provides just a little more  separation to the shot. Here you can   see how it creates a highlight on the edge  of the hair, side of the face and shoulder. So there we go. This is where we started  without any lights. Then we can turn on   our ambient bounce which lifts the space  with a soft light that gets rid of the   dark shadows on the face. And then we add the  backlight to create a slight edge on the hair. Hope you enjoyed this video. Special  thank you to all the Patrons who get   these videos early and free of ads as well  as all the loyal subscribers. Otherwise,   until next time, thanks for watching and goodbye.

Channel: In Depth Cine

Views: 19,039

Keywords: In Depth Cine, Cinematography, Cinematographer, Film, Cinema, Movie, DOP, Director Of Photography, Analysis, Video Essay, Breakdown, How To Shoot, Reaction, Trailer, Film Essay, Technical, Gear, 35mm, Director, DP, Camera, Lens, Arri, Panavision, Film School, Hollywood, Crew, Film Gear, Grips, Lighting, Light, Red, Sony, Explainer, Trick, Tip, Cinematic Lighting, Ambience, Ambient, Bounce, Diffusion, Top Light, Overhead, Rigging, Polecat, Rig, Skirting, Nanlite, Red Komodo, Laowa Nanomorph, 50mm, Anamorphic Lens, 1.5x, LED

Id: Ju0fBDNQDGM

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2024