All language subtitles for 05-LowKeyAndUpstageLighting.mp4

This is where it begins.

This is a hallway,

it's a nondescript hallway.

nothing particularly

cinematic

about it.

It's a relatively narrow hallway.

I mean, I would probably say the
walking space in the middle is between

the tables, is like this.

I mean, I think the hallway itself is
probably

six feet.

It's not big.

And what I did like about it was it had
like, three overhead lights.

That was probably what drew me to.

It's the three overhead kind of
hanging.

Industrial lights like that.

Looks cool.

I bet we can do something with that.

And so if you look at this,

I got the tripod down, I've got my
laptop out so I can look at the frame,

and I've got a big umbrella with
diffusion to the front.

I use the umbrella with diffusion all
the time.

I use it in a lot of my lighting.

And you might think, photographically,

maybe the way we start with an image

is we just took up a light right in the
middle,

you know, light it down, light your
subject.

That's probably a pretty common way for
a lot of people to photograph

a person or a scene.

And so that's where I begin.

And I wanted to start with that.

And so this becomes just generic flat
light.

I thought about this idea of motivating
the scene.

And so if they were overhead lights, it
makes sense to have the umbrella high

at ahead, because it's kind of
duplicating what this light's doing.

That was kind of my thought behind it.

That makes sense.

But because it's a better version of
it, I used a big, soft umbrella, so it was

really flattering on our subject's
face.

And I'm not saying he's wearing a hat,
but it's nice soft light on the face.

And so I bring them in, and I take the
first picture.

And in the first picture, my exposure
is closer to the middle.

When I look at the histogram, it's
closer to what

if I were putting

the auto exposure on, more or less?

Obviously it's with a stro.

But this is what auto exposure would
get me on that background a little bit.

It would sort of put that histogram a
little bit more to the middle.

And it makes the environment a lot
brighter.

But

tip one, make it darker, make it more
low key.

So I

purposefully

made that whole environment darker, and
I brought it down a couple of stops.

Now, obviously, this

messes up the light on the face a
little bit

but then I change that.

I affect it.

The environment is the thing that I
cannot control as easily.

And so I have to figure out what the
environment is going to look like

before I can start changing the light
on my subject.

And this is fundamentally a very
different way than how I light in the

studio.

Usually I start with the key first.

I start with the mainlight on the
subject, because it's the one that

decides the overall look and feel of
the scene.

When I'm doing cinematic lighting and
I'm working in an environment, it's

actually the opposite.

When I don't have full control over
every single light in the frame,

or every single element in the frame.

I have to start with what I cannot
control.

And over the two shoots, we're doing,
one in a theater and we're doing one

outside, there are two main
environmental elements that I cannot

control.

I can't really control the brightness
of the houselights, and I can't really

control the brightness of the sun.

And so once

I have that

in place, and I know what I can make
that look like, then I start modifying

everything else around it.

And so you have to think big picture
about how you're controlling the other

lights and how they work with the
things that you cannot control.

And so the whole way was that for me.

So I needed to make the hallway lights
look how I wanted.

Once I had that in place, then I could
come through and I could start shaping the

main lights.

And so I said, this is just an excel
umbrella.

It's an excell umbrella with diffusion
overhead,

very soft.

I could obviously make it brighter, but
more or less you get the idea,

but it doesn't really look cinematic.

Well, why?

I mean, he's in a trench coat, he's in
a hat.

This is my friend Dave Geffen, and he's
a lovely, lovely

filmmaker and shoots a lot of motion.

You should, definitely.

He was very kind to stand in and be my
model for a day.

So I gave him a trench coat.

And, you know, he had the hat.

And it looks trying to make it look
like a film duir, kind of a gangster

movie, a little bit.

And

that's the moon I'm going for.

And if that's the mood I'm going for,
the lighting needs to reflect the mood.

And so we darken it down.

But with all that light on the face,
it's not really giving me that

narration of light

to the face that I want.

And so what I did was I turned off that
big overhead light, and I changed

directions a little bit.

And what I did,

his hat off, so you could see it a
little bit more clearly.

But what I did was, instead of having
the light to the front, where it's

broad, I used short light, and I moved
the light a little bit, and i'll show

you a picture of it a minute.

But I took the light and I put it more

to the left side and further back.

And instead of it being a large xl
umbrella, it's actually just a small

white umbrella.

And it's the modelling light on the
umbrella.

It's not even a strope.

That's also something that I'm going to
talk about a little bit later, but because

ambient light is oftentimes not very
powerful, and if you cannot control a

lot of the lights, you generally have
to come down to that level.

And so in this particular case, I'm
shooting a tripod to make sure my image

is as sharp as I can make it.

But

Dave is lit by

a small light, that's held out on a
shoreline pole, which is like a

painter's pole, because the room, I
couldn't put a tripod, or I could put a

lightstand over on the left side of it,
because there was no room.

So I just have my assistant holding the
light up.

We also call this upstage lighting, or
it's called reverse key lighting, and

it's the idea of putting that key light
really off axis with a camera and using

lots of short light.

And you can see it puts a lot more of
his face in shadow.

With film nur lighting,

they would regularly use split light.

Split light has that narrative
storytelling.

Idea of it usually means there's two
sides of personality to the character,

there's a good sight and a badside, a
light in the dark.

And so I use split light here.

And then I just took the hat off, so it
was a little bit easier to see what was happening

once I had the send the light in place.

Then I put the hat back on.

And I have to come through and figure
out what I want the shadows overall to

look like