A Simple Guide to Cinematic Lighting

What you're about to learn is applicable in the vast majority of your lighting setups and scenes. It's called farsight key. Obviously I didn't invent it and I'm not even a professional cinematographer that claims to know a whole lot about lighting. However this technique has improved the look of my videos so I thought it might help you make yours look good as well. So the technique itself is pretty easy to understand and we see it in a lot of the movies and that's why we perceive it as cinematic. And usually in movies we capture people and their faces and typically there's a side that's closer to the camera and the side that's farther away. So the point here is that we light them from the farther side that's why it's called farsight key. It can be used for both people and objects so if you're shooting product videos or larger objects like cars and buildings and houses you can apply the same technique there as well. And if you're only using natural light then just position the object in a way so that the camera captures it from the darker side. This will instantly give it a more cinematic look. Memorize this principle and boom you got yourself an ASC badge. Now let's see how it applies in practice. So you won't need a lot of gear and frankly you can always shoot this technique with just the sun or any natural light but when you're shooting a lot of scenes in a day and especially when you have the budget and the crew it's really nice to create this controlled environment where you can repeat the shots from one take to another. For these examples I'll be using the only COB lights I have which is a pair of Zhiyun MOLUS G200. I have two of them here and if you want to check them out the links are in the description. I will need some balance mount modifiers to use with the lights. I have a light dome with a honeycomb that keeps the light soft and directed and I also have a china ball that emits a soft uniform glow in all directions. Additionally I'll need some basic light stands and a five-in-one foldable reflector. So to demonstrate how filming from the shadow side works I will set up a simple scene where I'm sitting on my couch to read a book. First let's take a look at the ambient light. Now if I place my key light with the china ball on the far side and turn it on this is the result. As you can see it creates a nice three-dimensionality to my face. And if we position the light slightly off to the side while still being on the dark side we achieve what is called Rembrandt lighting and this creates a nice triangle of light on one of my cheeks. Let's check with the false color and make sure it's not too hot and I usually prefer exposing to the right which means exposing as bright as you can but not overexposing. So that way you can bring it down in post and have a clean image because if you do the opposite and bring it up in post most digital footage will just fall apart. Now I think we can do better because right now the lights just look fake. It looks fake because we don't know where this is coming from in the scene and we haven't been told if there's a window or anything else. So let's add a small table lamp and see if it makes it better because this in theory will provide a clear source for the light making it more understandable for the audience. Yep, definitely better. So let's keep it there. Now I think we can turn on this floor lamp that's doing nothing right now. This will make the background less dull. Now to make this even better we can add some rim light to separate me from the background because this lamp in the background is just not bright enough to give me that effect. This is where having a second light fixture comes in really handy. This is something called sandwich lighting where you have a light source on one side and another one on the other side with your subject placed right in the middle, hence the name. And the camera is still on the shadow side and I keep forgetting that I have a kitchen behind that frost glass door. Let's turn on the lights there and see if it looks better. So I think I will remove the floor lamp and let this glass door motivate the rim light for me. You can do the same thing with a window behind you. Just make sure it's either covered with window shades, diffusion or sometimes just make sure that they're dirty and dusty. Otherwise you will see the source of the light and it will look too spotty. This right now is looking good to me. Here is the before and after. So now that we have put together our master shot we can easily work our way into the tighter shots without messing too much with where the lights are. This is my mid shot. Just for the sake of these tests I have moved a few things around and put the lamp back because I think it looks better there. But we have violated continuity so when you're shooting your scene you have to make these critical decisions. But sometimes it's not about continuity and you can make each individual shot as beautiful as you can even if it doesn't match with the master. So here is my close-up shot. An important thing to always keep in mind is whenever you're using extra light ensure that they're motivated. Each light you choose to use must have a clear source and a point of reference for the audience. If we see a window in a shot then we know that the light is coming from the window for example. While there are exceptions like in stylized music videos or dream sequences where the lighting can be crazy and all over the place, for the most part when aiming for a realistic look this is every cinematographer's go-to method. I've been using these lights extensively for the past two months and six episodes and even in some paid gigs so I have become intimately familiar with them and that's why I feel confident talking about them in this video. And these are the first Zhiyun lights I am having experience with. They are 200 watt bi-color lights ranging from 2700 kelvin to 6500 kelvin and I can press and hold these two buttons and it will activate the max mode and it will output 300 watts. I really like how these lights are bright and lightweight and they can be easily attached to a cheap stand just like the ones I have here. I don't even have to use sandbags because I never have enough of those lying around my studio and the build quality is really really good. I don't really know what to compare it to but I have dropped one of them and sadly I don't have a footage of it falling down with the light stand but nothing happened to it whatsoever. The light quality itself is really great too, it's CRI 95 plus and color grading it is no problem at all. It's regular bounce mount light which is really great because you can use all kinds of modifiers and control the softness and the character of your light and there is also a proprietary app that you can use to control all the settings from anywhere on set and you can group the different lights from Zhiyun. So this video is not sponsored by Zhiyun but they have provided me with an affiliate link and if you are interested in purchasing these fixtures using the link will provide me with a small reward. This helps support my channel and enables me to create more videos like this for you. So if next time you're on set and you really don't know what to do just shoot from the shadow side. Simple. As always like, subscribe, comment and check out the links in the description. I'll see you in the next video.