CINEMATIC LIGHTING (Without Lights!): Why I Often Don't Use Lights

What is going on guys? Today I wanna talk about lighting without lights and more specifically, lighting the human face cause the human face is probably the most important thing and the most frequent thing you'll ever light lest you're like doing a film about horses but horses still have faces. So faces are important. You need to know how to light them. So I wanna talk about lighting on the cheap, lighting without lights. And if you're wondering where I am right now, this is my beautiful office. I'm excited. I just moved in here. Just did a video about that. I'm halfway through Reno's. You know, I gotta put up this sound baffling. It makes everything so quiet. I need to hang this up soon so the videos are better. But anyways, we're not talking about sound today. We are talking about lighting. So let's get into it. And I should preface things that I'm not saying it's bad to use lights. That's not at all what I'm saying. I use lights all the time on all my commercial sets. We have these ginormous lights like the Arri M18 which is like having a sun on set. And you know, you have a ton of crew doing that. But that's just the thing is it takes a lot of crew, it takes time, it takes money to use bigger lights. And sometimes you don't have that at your disposal. You might be doing a smaller documentary where you just don't have the crew or the time or the money to use lights. So how do you get around this? Very simply, you use a window. And I'm amazed about how many people are scared to use windows as their main source of lighting. I've been on film sets where we've had like a half a million dollar budget and I'll still just use a window for the lighting because a window is a giant light source. And that's usually what you're doing on set when you have all the expensive lights, you're just creating big soft light sources. And well, that's exactly what a window is, is a giant soft light source. But there's a few tips I can give you on how to best use a window as your lighting source and how to work that. And I just love windows. I use them for so many of my interviews on the Nikon film, we were flying around the world. And in the end, a lot of the places we just used was hotel rooms with this beautiful soft light coming through the windows. So use windows and let's talk about that. And just to prove a point, every piece of B-roll you're gonna see in this video from my commercials and my documentaries was shot exclusively with window lighting. Now, there was one or two cases where we added a bit of backlight, but you'll see all of the main key source that's on the people is from windows. Just wanted to show you how good window lighting actually can be. Talking about lighting, it's not so much about the light you're adding to a scene as it is about the light that you're subtracting. And why that's important is the more light you subtract, the more shadows you're gonna get. And the more shadows you're gonna get, the more depth you're gonna get. And that's what you're trying to do as a cinematographer is create depth as well as create a story. And we'll talk about that later. But depth is important. Depth is interesting. That's why the more light you add to the scene, the more flat the image will get and the less interesting it will be. So my number one tip, if you're gonna be using windows in a house or in an office building as your lighting source is turn off the lights. Turn off the house lights. Turn off the lights that are part of the room. For one, the way we light our houses and our offices is hideous. We do top-down lighting. It's yellow. It's ugly. It's bright. It's everywhere. It's not beautiful. It's not cinematic. So turn off the house lights and begin to see the way the light comes off the window. The number two thing you wanna do is you wanna shoot towards the light. This is the biggest mistake I see as cinematographers. Even experienced cinematographers will do this. They'll light their person from one side and then they'll put the camera on that same side. And why you don't wanna do this is when you put the camera on the same side as where the light is, you're gonna be shooting a very flat image because you're not gonna be capturing any of the shadows. So typically when I do an interview, I like placing my camera on the opposite side of where the light is coming from because then you're gonna get that shadow. You're gonna be getting the shadow cast by their nose and on their cheekbone and you're gonna begin to see the dimensions and the texture of their face, who they are. It's gonna look a lot more complimentary than just flat, bright lighting. Let's get real practical with this. Right now, I have the camera on the same side as where the lighting's coming from. You can see the lighting is very flat on my face, but if we simply move the camera over here, shooting towards the lighting, you're gonna get a lot more shadows on my face. You're getting a bit of rim lighting. It's a lot more dynamic and interesting for an interview than if we went over to old flat face right here, which the irony is all the videos I see on lighting for tutorials for videos and YouTubers, they tell you to do this, this flat lighting, which I guess is kind of complimentary and is cool if you're doing a makeup tutorial, but if you're shooting a documentary, there is so many more interesting ways that you could light a human face than just flat lighting. You're trying to do something cinematic, you want wrap. You want that light to fall off their face and you wanna get a bit of shadow. So I like placing my person usually at about a 45 degree angle towards the light and then I'll put my camera on the opposite side, almost the same angle as the light would be hitting their face just on the opposite side. And there's many different places that you can place your camera. Here is the camera 90 degrees straight onto the person. You'll see there's a lot of shadow fall off on the one side of their face. This is very dramatic, not the best for interviews, but it is, like I said, it is dramatic. So it can be used in your short films if you wanna show someone who might be in conflict or just have a really dramatic lighting. 45 degree angle, like I said, is typically the most complimentary. It's still slightly dramatic, but not overly dramatic. It's typically where I'll place my subject. And here you can see I'm placing my subject now at like 10 to 20 degrees angle from the window. But if you shoot the person straight on with the window, you're getting flat lighting. And like I said, this is probably the least interesting way to shoot them unless you have a lot of fall off on the background and you're able to bring in what we call as a negative fill, some shadow on the side of the face. Shadows are your friends. Don't be afraid of them. So there's many different ways you can shoot with the window, but typically I like getting the person very close to the window because the closer you are to a light source, the softer it will be. So I get them close to the window. And if I'm doing an interview, I want the interviewer to be right up against the wall so that the person is nice and close to the window and I get the rest of the room in the background and try to get as much deep space behind them so there's enough fall off. Now, the biggest mistake that people do is they'll put their camera right on the side of the window and they'll put their interviewing subject out in the middle of the room because this probably feels more natural, but it's a mistake. Keep your interviewer on the side where the light's coming so that you can put the camera on the opposite side and shoot towards the light. And window lighting is so great because it's this giant source of light. Recreate a giant source of light like that is expensive. You need a film crew who's gonna set up silk screens and pound a big HMI through that light, but a window's already this giant source and it's free. It's great. It's really great to use. I will have a whole truck of lights and sometimes I'll just end up using a window instead because it's already this giant soft source. Also, bonus tip. If you're shooting window lighting, you're working with the sun and there's clouds that will come by and the lighting will change, so get a variable ND filter so that you don't have to be touching your S-stop. You can be making slight adjustments if the light is fluctuating. My number three tip is shape the light. Play with the light. Have some fun with it. Move the screens up and down. Try some different things. You can see this interview that we just did for our Sri Lanka film. I actually just taped a little sliver of the light coming through the window and it was the perfect amount for my subject's face. So play with the light. Try different sides of the blinds. Bring diffusion out. Put it on the window. Hang a shower curtain. You know, the more layers of diffusion you can put, the softer the light will be, so play with the window. Here's another interview that I did in a school and you can see here we had three windows to work with. So I closed the blind down on the far window on the left just to bring a little less light into the room and then the middle window, I only brought it down halfway because it created a big soft box for my subject and then the far back window here on the right, I just closed it down almost all the way so that there was less light on the background so that my subject stood out. So shape the light. Have fun with it. And again, it doesn't have to be expensive. Bring a shower curtain. Get diffusion. Don't feel like you just have to work with the bright light that's coming through the window. You can shape it and turn it however you want. Now, the only thing with window lighting is if you're cutting all the lights out of the room, you do create this black void behind the person. So you might wanna add some backlighting, like a lamp or in this case, I just brought a little one-by-one LED panel. Again, I said it's like 100 bucks online. You just turn that on and just hit a bit of the back of their heads so that they're separate from the background or you can hit it into the ceiling to give the room a little bit of an ambient light, which will help separate them from the background. So just to recap that, if you're shooting with window lighting, number one thing is you want to turn off all the lights in the room. Let the window be your main source of lighting. See what the window is doing, what that light looks like. Number two, shoot towards the light. This is so important. This would probably be the most important tip I can give you in this video is shoot towards the light because you'll get the shadow side of their face and you will create more depth and more texture and it'll be way more interesting than if you shot on the same side where the light is coming from. Number three is shape the light. Move the curtains, add diffusion to the window, control the light so that it looks the way that you want it to. Anyways, I hope you like this video. Make sure to hit subscribe if you want more videos about directing and cinematography. I love sharing my journey as a filmmaker with you guys. If you like this music, I got it from Epidemic Sound. I have a free trial below. Make sure to click that if you want a free 30-day trial. I love their music. It's actually very good. There's a ton of bad stock music out there that I'm sure you've had to sift through for hours. As you know, editing is like 10% editing and 90% searching for music. So Epidemic Sound makes that very easy. But in the meantime, I'm gonna get going. We've been shooting this new documentary about a runner. I'm very excited. I'm actually gonna be using the Aircross 2. The guys at Moza just sent me this. I'm excited to use that for our film. It's a running documentary, so I need some stabilization as we chase our runner around. But until then, I will see you guys on the next video. Have a good one.