How to Light Cinematic Silhouettes

What is going on guys? Ted here with the A-Team, and today we're gonna talk about silhouettes and four different ways you can use them in your next movie. Today we are here with David Weldon. David Weldon is an awesome DP that has worked with artists like Taylor Swift and Joseph Kahn. He's shot commercials for Audi, Nike, Ford. Really, he's done it all. And today we're gonna talk about four different ways you can apply silhouette lighting into your creative filmmaking. So, David, what are the four types of ways that we're gonna go over today? First types are gonna be a sunset, daytime kind of vibe. Then we're gonna jump into a night interior that's more of a cold, bluer kind of feel to it. Then we'll go to something a little warmer in the tungsten kind of realm. And then we'll do something that's kind of a dance. Kind of a music video vibe. Yeah, a little bit of a music video vibe. All right, so David, let's jump right into it. What was that first silhouette that we did? That first silhouette was a day interior silhouette. It was a sunset vibe coming through the window, just trying to feel warm and make you feel like you're at home. First light was our Practical, which is a floor lamp. We just had a single 60 watt bulb in it. Then we just tried to shape that light a little bit by dimming it down with a little hand dimmer that you can plug in in line with the light. And then we put some black wrap on top of it so it wouldn't spill all over. The second light, we're talking about the background light. So with that, we wanted to create some visual separation between our town that was sitting on the couch. So what we did is we took a 120D, kept it daylight, put a mini light dome with a little bit of diffusion on it to spread that light out and kind of just make it feel less sourcey. Put the egg crate inside of it, put it up high, and just kind of raked it across that wall. So our third light ends up being our key light, which is kind of a back key kind of feel to it. It's coming from outside, it's going through the window. We took a 120D with a Fresnel attachment to make it as hard as possible, and then put a little bit of CTS in front of it. I think we were at a half CTS, almost a full CTS, pounding right onto our talent, hitting right onto his face that's closest to the window to kind of shape him. And the last light we did was a little fill light. So we wanted to bring up the ambient, even though we're in a silhouette, you still wanna bring up enough light in the room so that the camera's still reading something. So we put a 120D, bounced it right into a four by bounce that was just out of camera, inside the room, and we left it daylight so there's a little bit of color contrast. You've got all this warm coming in, then we had some cool on the inside. Maybe it's a television, or maybe it's something like that in the room. So right on. So just adding a little bit to bring those shadows up. Now let's check out some of that lighting right now. All righty, so now we're moving on to our second type of silhouette. Now David, what type of silhouette is that? This is a moonlight silhouette. It was a cooler blue silhouette, just a different feel than what you might see. So we've got a 120D, and we actually bounced it this time, kept it daylight into a four by card, and then we made a book light out of it. So we put a four by full grid to kind of knock that light down and spread it out as much as possible so it wasn't as hard. I personally like a softer feel in the moonlight. Fills out the entire space, just makes it feel like it's nighttime, like you're going to bed. The second light we used was a string light in the background. We just had these little string lights to kind of feel like the back porch. Kept them warm so they would separate from the blue that's coming in from that moon as well. And just adding a little visual interest out that way. A little visual interest, yeah. Right on. And then finally for our third light, now we did two types of this third light. Yeah, we did two different ways. Still a fill light, but we did one with a television gag. We used the 120D Mark II so that we could actually have the TV effect so we could pop in and out and change the framing of it so we had our talent kind of look like they were watching a movie. And then we just turned that off and had it look like they were having a conversation with just a straight fill light bouncing into the card, keeping it all daylight as well. So let's get to our third lighting setup. Now our third lighting setup we did in the same scene, right? We did it in the same scene, just a different color temperature we went. In the previous we were 3,400 against daylight, which daylight's normally 5,600. And this way we kind of went the opposite. So we went with a 5,200 Kelvin on the camera and then we went tungsten with pretty much everything, was to try to make it feel different. Right on. So now if that second setup was moonlight and we were getting that super kind of cool moonlight, in this case we were going for a warmer moonlight. Yeah, it's warmer. You're gonna think that I'm talking about the sun, but it almost, more warmer neutral in a sense. Totally different type of silhouette and all we did was just change the white balance on the camera and show the lights a little differently. Easy. All right, let's check that recap. Now for our fourth lighting silhouette, what was our first light that we used? The first light we used was a 120D with a mini light dome. We actually took the egg crate off, double diffused it and let it play onto the back wall and on our town. So it was directly above her, shadowing her, creating that silhouette and creating some separation on the walls. Why did you take the grid off? The grid, I ended up controlling it just so it hit her and it looked pretty. And I started to look at it and go, well, now I gotta light the wall. I've gotta just make it separate somehow. Instead of adding more light, just use the light that's there and peel it off. Now talking about our second light, you made kind of a rig here. What was that? Yeah, we made a little bit of a helicopter rig. So we took one stand, piece of pipe, we actually attached two quasar tubes, two four footers, left them daylight and just taped them to the stand. The idea was to spin both tubes around. We ended up turning one of them off because it would end up being too much light and it allowed it so that we could just put a little light that would pass across her, light up her face, light up her body and as my gaffer would spin it, he'd spin it real fast when it was off her and then slow it down as it came across her just to kind of make it feel pretty and soft. Now the last thing that you did, I saw something on the floor. What was that? Yeah, so we're shooting in an environment that has a gray floor. You know, you think about if you're gonna add some bounce into something, you might put a bounce card, a gray card, something like that. So it's getting a little bit of kick back into her that just wasn't pleasing when we wanted to go silhouette. So we put some four by floppies on the ground just to keep that kick from bouncing back into her. Let's check out that lighting. Alrighty guys, so there you have it. There's your episode on silhouette lighting with David C. Weldon. David, break it down one more time. The first setup is a sunset vibe kind of feel to it coming through the window. Second setup was our moonlight, cool blue moonlight kind of feel to it, still coming through that window. Third setup was a neutral, more, almost leaning warmer moonlight as well. And our fourth setup was a dance music video kind of just creative vibe to it. So three narrative silhouette settings and of course one stylized experimental way to use silhouette lighting. Now if you like this episode, find David C. Weldon on Instagram at davidcweldonjr. Find some of his Instagram work there. If you like Aputure, find us on Facebook, Instagram, The Works. You'll see more tutorials and content that we are working on. And of course, if you would like to win something, post a comment with the next tutorial that you would like to see us cover. We're gonna be giving away one of our Light Dome Mini 2s which just came out and will be released soon. Best comment's going to win. And of course, I'm Ted from The A-Team and we'll catch you guys next time.