How to Light for Darkness | 5 Cinematography Techniques

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How do you light a scene that isn’t supposed to have too much light in general? That’s the question that we’re tackling in this episode as we take an office scene at night and make it look like something from Arrival, Nightcrawler, and The Social Network. If you want to light for drama and make sure you’re exposing everything correctly, we’ll cover the fundamentals of cinematic nighttime lighting in this episode.

In this scene, we create suspense by using emphasizing ambient light and create pools of light and shadow where they matter most, along with dramatic camera moves and lighting effects. Valentina walks us through step-by-step of the production design and lighting in this office location. We’ll also talk about how to shoot the light coming from computer monitors to avoid flicker and other camera issues.

Production design matters, especially when it comes to lighting. Blank white walls never look good, and they bounce light everywhere around the room. The only way to mitigate them is to use set dressing and art, which can also lead to better lighting opportunities. In this case, we use the lamps that we introduce into the set as our main source of lighting. We also added a hint of moonlight when the lights turn off, which becomes consistent throughout our entire scene. When we switch to the reverse, we use smaller LED lights to extend the effect of moonlight and hide the lighting source as well as the reflections they create. In general, we’re watching our exposure the entire time to make sure that the shadows aren’t too dark.

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Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
1:14 - Production Design/Location
2:50 - Practical Lighting
3:30 - Moonlight
4:30 - Camera
5:49 - Setup #1 Breakdown
6:12 - Overhead Lighting
7:36 - Ambient Light
8:27 - Setup #2 Breakdown
8:44 - Wide Shot
9:12 - Computer Light
9:59 - Continuous Lighting
10:56 - Setup #3 Breakdown
11:16 - Bokeh
12:16 - Exposure Values
12:49 - Setup #4 Breakdown
13:46 - Outro

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Видео How to Light for Darkness | 5 Cinematography Techniques канала Aputure