The Key to Creating Realistic Lighting in Film

in this series we'll be looking at the techniques and tools you can use to develop your own creative voice within the medium of cinematography by improving the way you light both realistically and stylistically this is lighting for Cinema A to Z what's the difference between these two images what about these there's a clear distinction in the way we've handled the shadows and that's because we've either added two or taken from the ambient light at the location ambient light generally refers to any uncontrolled light that already exists within a scene for example if we step out into daylight and shoot with no control over this daylight we could refer to all of the natural light exposing our scene and subject as ambient light if we shoot on a street at night we don't have control over any Street or window lights so this would also be ambient light if we shoot in a kitchen during daytime ambient flights will be filling the room but although this might feel like a naturally lit image filled with ambient light it's actually night time and we have control over every aspect of the lighting even the Sun we set up our lighting before it got dark outside first we placed a nan light Forza 500 B2 outside the window and attached a compatible fl-20g for now lens to replicate the Sun but since we shot this after dark we barely have any ambient light in the room there's no Skylight coming through the windows in our location so there's not much light in our shadows we do have some Bounce from the walls produced by our artificial sunlight but we want it to feel like a relatively bright daytime shot and this feels a bit unrealistic we need to raise the ambient but if ambient light is uncontrollable light how do we do this after all adding our own lights in would mean that the light is controlled what we're aiming to do when raising Ambience with our own lights is to recreate the feeling of uncontrolled light with daylight that generally means large soft fill light when shooting with existing ambient light that could simply mean bouncing a light into the ceiling to boost what's already there but if we're lighting from scratch we need to build that light up for it to be realistic so a good place to start here is the sky we put together a 4x4 frame clamped it to two stands and raised it above the window below this we placed a Forza 720b attached its 55 degree reflector dish and fired it up into the white side of our frame this recreates sky from directly above the window bringing some soft light down into the kitchen but also filling in some of our shadows in reality during the day we don't just have the sky above the window it extends a bit further opposite and most other objects outside also reflect light back into the house to cover this we set up a bigger 6x6 frame of bleached muslin material opposite the window and fired a nanlux 1200 B 60 degree reflector dish attached into the bounce the effect seems minimal but we're still building up the ambient the bounce light isn't just coming directionally through the window it's coming through other windows in the location bouncing from the walls and ceilings and subtly filling in the shadows in our space similar to how natural ambient light would function in this location there are also other ways we can bring up the ambient by thinking about how real daylight might be affecting the location a small Forza 60c 45 degree reflector attached and bounce from the ceiling could represent another aspect of the sunlight after all real sunlight can Bounce from Windows cars or even reflective items around the house so raising the ambient with a little bounce on the ceiling is a viable representation of this daytime scenario foreign is really starting to come together we could even add one final touch we already have some bounce on the wall here from the 6x6 bounce but we could boost this a little with another Forza 60c and we could even cool down the color temperature in comparison to our other lights [Music] the very subtle cooler lip in the shadows creates some more realism to our ambient as in reality we may have some more influence from the cooler Sky entering the room from another window to top it off we composite it in a section of window from a setup we shot earlier on when we still had daytime Sky outside you can see how building up the light around the scene in a realistic way allows us to create the feeling of uncontrolled ambient light and because we are in control of it we can remove certain elements to give us any mood we might want to create and to really understand the importance of this ambient will turn off just our sunlight and we can see how this base of ambient daylight fills in the shadows in the way natural daylight would if you'd like to learn more about recreating daylight check out my course over on shopmoment.com which teaches you about the way daylight Works naturally in terms of both quality and color demonstrating how Simply Having the knowledge of these qualities will allow you to translate them into an image lit with intention in part two we'll be looking at how to control and reduce ambient light to both shape the image and create mood in your scene [Music]

Channel: Rob Ellis

Views: 56,749

Keywords: cinema, cinematography, filmmaking, lighting, ambient, lighting for cinema a - z, rob ellis, nanlite, nanlux, 60c, 500b ii, 720b, 1200b, evoke, forza, how to, tutorial, lighting tutorial, guide, cinematic, photography, recreate daylight

Id: RPQvE_CuKSw

Length: 7min 6sec (426 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2023