How to Light Clean Vs. Grunge in 2 Minutes

What's up guys? Welcome to Formative Film School. I'm Ted with The A-Team. Today I'm here with Justin Jones. Justin Jones is a hip-hop DP that shot music videos for Wiz Khalifa, Zayn, Anderson .Paak, Hopsin. Today we're here to talk about the difference between lighting clean and lighting grungy for hip-hop music videos. So Justin, what are the keys to lighting clean? First thing you kind of want to do is get an even light on your psych wall. So lighting a psych wall, you want to use soft light because it's going to hide kind of corners and bends and inconsistencies in the paint. So first we actually lit the psych wall. We took three light gear blankets, arrays of LED lights, and turned those on and dimmed them down to brightness. So after we lit our white psych, we brought in our talent and we took four of the LS1S's, kind of built an array, shined those through a waterfalled shower curtain kind of half soft frost, turned those on, dialed those to brightness, and then we brought in the 300D with a softbox and used that as our fill. So that's a lot of light. Why did we need that much light? So we were pushing in and out with the Ronin and we didn't have an AC, so we were able to stop down and kind of extend that depth of field so we could get our shots. Gotcha, cool. So cranking down that aperture, making that hole real small, need that brightness to adjust. So there's how to light a commercial clean look, but now if we're going for music videos in a more grungy fashion, what are we doing then? First thing you kind of want to do is like establish your main source of light. Where we were, we had these crazy sodium vapor orange tones. So I just wanted to kind of extend that. So we used four of the LS1S's in the same array as the White Cyc. This time we just gelled it with a sodium vapor kind of tungsten-y vibe. I wanted a kind of moonlight backlight, so we put the 300D way up high on top of this storage container inside this crate. We just put the softbox on that, hung over that soft frost again to spread our light a little bit without taking out too much of the intensity. And then we did some cool music video stuff with single Kino tubes, those were daylight, and then we put a few of those mini 20s in the trash can to kind of flare out the lens. So one thing to keep in mind here is that we're extending the effect of the available light that's already there. So Justin saw sort of the sodium vapor lights and he wanted to push that sodium vapor light more. He's having his lights all motivated in that sense. So beyond just lighting, you did a little bit more with like prep design too. I wanted to hide the smoke machine, so we got a long pole with kind of a twist at the end and made that smoke kind of part of the scene as if it's coming out of a pipe. Cool, so there are some creative things you can do beyond just lighting to add to that grungy feel. But again, add to the available light, then do the stylistic tweaks. So there's the episode of 4 Minute Film School with Justin Jones, I'm Ted from The A-Team. Make sure you leave a comment below with a music video that utilizes one of these techniques and how. We'll be picking the best comment and giving out a Try 8. So make sure to find us on social media, add us to your photo, find Justin Jones at justinjonesdp, and we'll catch you guys next time.