The Secret to Cinematic Exposure (Game Changer!)

hey so this is the video i needed a couple years ago when i was starting out and i guarantee you this is going to change your cinematography game just for clearance this is not a videography exposing tutorial i assume you're already familiar with the exposing triangle and you've been probably adapting it the same way as you would in photography to videography but it's not the same so you probably know this and this the histogram and the exposing meter but i don't recommend any of these because they are pretty inaccurate when it comes to the detailed image okay so how do you get that cinematic exposure what's the secret sauce it's actually not that much of a secret to be honest half of it is already outer observation and what i mean by that is looking at movies in particular stilts so that's exactly what we're going to do right now i'm going to analyze certain still examples and through that i'm going to show you how we can achieve that by using our own not high and cinema camera so let's go when looking at some stilts out of movies and commercials this is what we mean right cinematic one of the questions i was having was how do you expose your image and i was struggling for a long time until i bought my very first external monitor with false colors and this changed everything so the first question i'm going to answer is when do we actually over expose at all it's easy to say that overexposed parts are never pleasingly looking especially in the digital world so first of all you should avoid it in the first place but there are actually moments in cinema with there's stuff blown out for that we have to look at certain exposure levels which are measured in ire from 0 to 100. 0 is black and values from 100 are white so now when do we actually have that 100 ira and when do we have black or zero irony in our shots there are just things that have to be completely bright just in real life and what are those light sources if you see practicals practicals are artificial light sources within a shot the sun explosions flashlights these are always the brightest part right but as you can see it's never the entire lamp it's only the source the bulb have you seen the batman every time there was a bright flashlight or an explosion it was blinding every time you saw the bright light it's because it lived on the 100 mark or slightly below these were rare and compared to the whole other scenes or shots they were all dark like really dark well obviously these light sources are extremely bright so it's really hard to not overexpose them so that is going to be your starting point you are going to expose for the brightest part in your image which in my shot is currently the window normally you will keep everything just below that 100 mark but as i mentioned if there's the sun or a light in the shot you can let this specific part be at 100 because your eye in real life doesn't see anything but white in this spot but and this is important these little spots are always only little spots and that's obviously where a good camera with a good dynamic range comes in handy a realization i had was clouds and especially the ones with the sun covered behind there are these bright edges or spots that can be overexposed and they are in real life they're not literally overexposed but like bright spots that are just surprised for our eyes let's look at some bad examples at least in my opinion overexposed shots in movies or tv shows both show digitally or on film and i say that because film just handles overexposure differently than digital while film brings that to bright areas closer to the human eye film doesn't it doesn't look good or cinematic if you want i mean who am i to judge but come on this can be fixed pretty easily and especially with these two shots and to be honest i see amateurs or videographers do that a lot i mean i get it the lack of time and gear we've all been there but today we want to talk about cinematically pleasing images and this is the part where it gets trickier for us 10 stops of dynamic range 8-bit linear shooters and yes my gh4 doesn't have the v-log upgrade i'm using cineliket you may have heard the rule that bright skin tones should be at 70 ire but that's rather for interviews or high key commercials in cinema however it is more likely to be between 50 and 65 ire or even lower depending on the day time but that's because everything just lives on the low they might expose it on the top and then pull everything down in post to also avoid noise but by any means this doesn't mean that your skin has to be at the exact same ire level every single time it depends it always depends on the day time the location is it interior is it exterior are you shooting at night are you shooting in bright sunlight it also depends on what mood you're going for and what emotions you want your audition to feel to tell your story there's also contrast ratio which also defines the word cinematic there are huge contrast ratios and there are lower contrast ratios all make you feel differently but also don't be afraid to have blacks in your shots trust me they're fine and in fact having blacks in your shots are definitely more cinematic than blown out skies if you look at movies you will barely find that 100 ire mark white at zero diary is almost defined in every shot so you see there are rules but they are meant to be broken the world of cinematography but obviously you have to know them first to be able to break them so let's look at the rule exposing to the brightest part of your image is going to be your first step a good reference for that is use your eye to see how it looks and then translate it to your camera however it's still a creative choice to how you want to expose a certain image it's about finding compromise the sweet spot of your camera's dynamic range some people also call that latitude because compared to the human eye it's less or the eye just handles overexposure different than cameras do and yeah i know it's not really that comparable with stops so here are some tips for you to nail the exposure every single time and i'm using them as well the first one would be false colors on your external monitor what i love about false color is that you can exactly tell on what level each area of your frame is the second one would be using display luts same goes with fourth colors these are option to toggle on and off and these help you to see what your footage is going to look like so these work hand in hand by the way you have to monitor with a display lut in rec709 in order to read the correct false color out of your image because if you don't use that on rexon9 but let's say log or linear it's going to be completely flat and it's going to read exposure wrong it's not wrong to use your live viewer or displaying lots but i would always use that in addition to a false color you can also use light meters as you can see i don't have one this is an old light meter for photography but you see i don't use them the last step is kinda optional i use this as far as possible and what is it it's basically exposing to the right ettr and you expose as bright as you can without clipping without hitting that 100 ire mark this gets you a lot of flexibility to correct your image later this was already exposed to how i wanted it to look in the end and you can see no flexibility if i want to tweak it a bit while exposing to the right which is less destructive gave me room to level out certain areas in the image a great example is my last youtube talking head where exposed for the sunny window just right below 100 ire in my face at about 60. plus having a waveform on your external monitor is also really helpful so how to now control your light or fix it first at all the frame rate is fixed your shutter angle as well for that motion blur then the iso as well in most cases because you want to shoot at the most enemy range so that's why you choose your native iso so what are the options you could easily close or open your aperture on your lens but since you probably want a certain depth of field you don't change that either so there are only two more options if it's too bright you use nd filters if it's too dark you add lights and that's obviously what they are all using when making movies everything is perfectly balanced to exactly like they want it to be so don't expect every single shot you're going to take without adding any lights to look like cinema because it won't there are exceptions where just natural light is going to look truly cinematic by itself but there's a reason for how it looks also all of the stuff you're seeing is tweaked color corrected and color created and possibly pulled down so it's not how it got exposed in the first place but jared how do i avoid noise in low light or night scenes in this case you don't typically do ettr because if you don't have to a native iso in your camera it is going to be hard to do ettr without having noise that's why you don't do it so what's the solution to when your camera is bad at low light well light your scene properly using artificial light if you're not able to do that or just don't have the equipment shoot at blue hour if you have to shoot wide scenes outside and then there is day for night you shoot in a daytime or at least when there's still enough light for your native iso basically you shoot a day but you make it look like it was shot at night i did this a couple times and it really helps to avoid noise but your sky has to be overcast no directional sunlight these tips will save you especially when you're shooting on a low end camera so if you still want to get the most possible cinematic image quality you gotta put in time the right timing lighting and camera settings and i tell you if you're really going to put in the time and get to know your camera you're going to be amazed of what you and your camera are capable of and later if you get to upgrade you are going to be a true magician at your craft let's recap we always start by exposing for the brightest part of the image by how our eyes see why light sources or reflections can be clipped but only subtle parts of the image plaques are cool they are natural and adapt to the image we work with these three factors for the right exposure aperture nd filters or by adding lights external monitors with false color displaying luts and scopes are our friends if the image is too contrasty we add fill lights or lights if it's too flat we add nature to fill or remove lights shoot at blue hour to avoid noise in low light or day for night on overcast days and we do a ttr to retain the most of our footage but in the end it's up to you it's a creative choice whether you're going to overexpose the sky to get your subject properly exposed i mean you're not wrong these are the typical videography scenarios in my opinion but anyways if you want to do that feel free i don't really care i just probably won't enjoy it that much in terms of cinematography again we are here to talk about cinematography and how we can make beautiful images that help to tell the story while conveying emotions so remember exposing properly is only the half part but essential to color grading but that's on another video that's basically it now you know how to expose or at least now you know what decisions to make subscribe if you haven't already to not miss any other secret make sure to also give me a thumbs up it really does help to get seen by more people and if you made it until the end i appreciate you and i hope to see you in the next one bye

Channel: Jared Films

Views: 362,355

Keywords: cinematography tips, filmmaking tips, cinematography tutorial, setting exposure, filmmaking 101, film lighting techniques, videography, light a scene, cinematic lighting techniques, ISO, latitude, dynamic range, professional cinema, film school, filmmaking tutorials, cinematic film look, improve my footage, get better footage, more cinematic, hollywood look, exposure, mastering exposure, perfect exposure, natural light, ND filters, filmmaking basics, cinematic 8bit footage

Id: fhjw4_L1EOo

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022