Sound Blanket as Key Light?! Featuring Aputure Spotlight Max

In this episode, we're going to come back to lighting; we haven't done any lighting for a while. I am truly of the opinion that people... most people that are getting excited about doing video work obsess more about the camera than their lighting, and they probably should be obsessing more about their lighting. Let's talk about one thing that I think a lot of us run into, and that is the reality that we often end up having to work in relatively small spaces. So I did a fair bit of corporate video, and a lot of times I have to work in an office. It's really quite small, or it's an awkwardly shaped room. There are conference rooms that are kind of long and skinny. Whatever the case may be, if you're maybe working at home, maybe you're just making YouTube videos and you're operating in a bedroom and you don't have a lot of space; that's tricky for lighting because I've often thought to myself, one of the biggest things I need for lighting and creating my lighting designs is I need more space, more places to put the lights and the modifiers so that I can get the look I want exactly. So if you don't have a lot of space, there is another option that we have never talked about here before, but others have used, of course, and certainly in stage lighting, even in kind of higher-end commercial and, obviously, working in big films as well. But that is using an ellipsoidal, or a spotlight mount. So here in this case, my key light is actually, believe it or not, it is a- this is a sound blanket right here. The light is coming from this sound blanket because I'm bouncing a light from 11 feet over that way from an Aputure 600C, so one of the COB lights, with the Spotlight Max on it, which is an ellipsoidal lens. And what this lens does is it's a 36-degree- it takes the light and it concentrates it down into a 36-degree beam angle or beam and it's hitting this white, the white side of the sound blanket right here and bouncing onto my face. So it creates this very, very soft light. And the nice thing about that is now I don't have to have the light right here in a soft box next to me. I can put it farther away. That gets the fan farther away as well. And using the spotlight allows it to throw much farther. So if, for example, if I took that spotlight off and just put the reflector on, it would just be a massive wash of light and it'd be really diffused. And it wouldn't- it would be, actually- the key light would be coming from this side instead of this side. And it wouldn't be nearly as soft. It would be hard, especially from that distance. So that's the magic of using a spotlight, when you bounce it, for a key. Now, I can also wear my glasses here because I have this off at enough- good enough of an angle. You can see I can- it starts to reflect here when I look at it. But if I'm looking at the camera here, it's coming from enough of an oblique angle that you're not getting a lot of glare on the glasses as well. So another plus there. So this can be really, really helpful. Again, if you're working in these awkwardly sized rooms, shaped rooms, I had conference rooms that I worked at in the past when doing corporate video where I could have used a spotlight and shot it through the glass wall. So I could have placed it farther away, even in a separate room through a glass wall, bounced it off of something. And if you're wondering, "Hey, well, I don't have a sound blanket that big. How am I going to make that soft source?" Well, you can hang a sound blanket or something like it on a C-stand, for example. So it's not impossible. And the nice thing is that this is putting a big, big circle here. So that makes it an incredibly soft light, which can be a really nice thing. It just looks less... what is it? It looks like less, maybe less intentionally lit and more natural looking, maybe, if that's how you want to think of it. But those are some things to keep in mind. So again, with a spotlight like this, I can throw much farther and bounce off of something to get a key. Now, normally I don't think of a spotlight as a soft light at all. It's not. It's a hard light. It's a very concentrated beam with very hard edges. So if I were to film or just aim that directly at my face, this side of my face, because the light's over here, would be completely just blown out. And then this would be an utter shadow and there'd be a very distinct transition. So this kind of softens it up when you bounce it off of something else. Now, this whole design, I'm using the 600C on the Spotlight Max for my key, bouncing it off of this sound blanket. Behind me, I'm using actually another ellipsoidal back here. The purple side of the wall is actually an Amaran Spotlight SE with a gobo in it. There's a little bit of pattern there, as you can see. See how it's kind of splotchy? That's not so much the wall as the light itself. And then I actually have a 1 x 1 LitePanels Gemini down on the floor up here, just putting this blue on the other side of me. And then for the rim here- this is the light you see back here kind of wrapping around the side of my face- creating a little bit more separation between me and the background. That is just a Dracast LED panel. So that's how we achieved this particular look. I could never achieve key light on this side of my face in the past because there's a bunch of stuff here. There's no room for a light. This is another way to be able to put the key on the other side as well. Again, I've got the space for a light over there, but I wanted the key on this side. So I bounced it off of here- boom- and it puts the key on this side. So the wonderful thing about lighting is that there's no end of possibilities as far as creativity is concerned. And I was very excited to realize that this is one way I could use the spotlight to really kind of open up some opportunities for me. Hope that was helpful; just kind of rambling here! Get out there, make some great lighting designs, and we'll talk to you again soon.