Cinematography is all about light, but filmmakers soon learn that all light is not created equal. The human eye is immensely versatile at adapting between different light sources — if you follow someone wearing a white t-shirt from daylight into a house lit with tungsten bulbs, their shirt still...
Unless you bring a van full of lighting equipment, the most important consideration when deciding or how your scene will look is the existing lighting on your video shoots.
When teaching lighting techniques, I explain to my students that, to understand where and why a light is positioned in a given way, we must start at the beginning. Classical art, paintings in particular, hold the majority of the clues we need to begin lighting our characters. The aesthetics...
We see the world in color. It is the way we as humans perceive almost everything that goes on in our lives. Over time, our senses have developed to associate different colors with different emotions and actions. For the modern day videographer this means that color is an incredibly...
Light 'em UpLighting is one of the three basic pillars of good video. Good shooting equipment (camera, tripod, stabilizer, slider, etc.). Good audio. Good lighting. Under each pillar are about 190,000 other variables that factor into making video look and sound decent. While it’s possible to get creative with...
Light is so important to video that there are well paid people who spend their lives doing nothing but figuring out what light to put where in order to create a mood in an image. Doing this can be so complicated that it's all too easy for an independent...
The best way to venture into the dark is with dramatic light because without light there really can be no dark and the first term that comes to mind when one balances dark and light is “film noir,” a classic style of lighting that gained popularity in the 1940s...
The clean, professional look of an infinite white set is much more than just an aesthetic. Whether you are going for stylish and trendy or just looking for clarity, this video lighting setup is the best foundation for a permanent small home studio setup. The simplicity gives the look...
Ansel Adams, Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles. What do these three have in common? Well, besides being famous, they all shot their masterpieces in black and white. Perhaps because of their exceptional work, shooting in black and white has since evolved into a way to transform a film from...
Poorly lit scenes can leave your project looking flat and lifeless. But if you can get the lighting right, it will help establish a tone, and bring the depth and texture to your footage. In this segment, we talk about the basics of 3 and 4-point lighting including key...
