9 EASY Lighting Setups that make EVERYTHING CINEMATIC!

In this video, I'm going to share how to create nine different lighting setups using these bar lights. I'm not just going to show you how you can recreate these setups, but also explain a few techniques to make your lighting more realistic and prove that you can pretty much light anything, anywhere with just these lights. For all these shots, I was using the Aputure InfiniBar PB12, which are four foot LED pixel bar lights. And I'll talk more about them throughout the video, but let's jump right in with the first lighting setup. When viewing a scene, we don't tend to think about the lighting, especially if everything we see makes sense with the context or the environment within the scene. In this shot, you might not think twice about whether or not the character is actually driving the car. However, if we take a look behind the scenes, the car is actually stationary and the illusion of movement is created only by the lights. So let's break down what is happening here. We had one Aputure InfiniBar set up high by the driver's side window, and this one was running a pixel loop at a warmer color temperature, like 3000 Kelvin, to simulate street lights passing by as the car is driving. Next, another Aputure InfiniBar was in front of the car set to 5600 Kelvin. This one was set to a pulsing effect that creates the impression of headlights from oncoming traffic. And this already looks pretty good and sells the effect of a driving car. However, I wanted a bit more level inside the car so we're able to see the character better. So we placed another InfiniBar on the passenger side of the car and bounced this one towards the side of the car interior. Bouncing it from the side just makes it a bit softer and more natural because this is a night time scene. A few more details to keep in mind here. We blocked off any other light from the sides using these black flags and some cinefoil. This was because we were parked right next to a white wall and obviously that would give away that the car wasn't actually driving. I also added a bit of camera shake in post as you would expect from a driving car. And of course, sound design always plays a major role in selling a shot. Lighting small spaces is always a challenge because of the size of standard COB lights, the stands that they are mounted on and the modifiers to shape the light. In this example, it would have been almost impossible to place a regular fixture on a stand to light this scene. Conveniently, the Aputure InfiniBars have a few rigging options. One of my favorites being the magnets on the back. Having this set to a cooler color temperature like 6500 Kelvin provided a nice top lighting like you would expect from fluorescent lighting in a bathroom like this. In the final shot, I set this main light to bad bulb mode just to create a bit more of a creepy atmosphere which I thought would fit this scene very well. And because it's always nice to create some color contrast in a shot, I put another InfiniBar just leaning up against the wall in the bathroom stall. This was set to a warmer color temperature like 2800 Kelvin and just having that small pop of color and light coming from behind the door adds more visual interest and almost enlarges the scene because the viewer becomes more aware of this other space behind the door. In the previous scene, the InfiniBars mainly served as our key light. But because of the way these lights look, they can also very easily be used as a practical. In this bathroom scene, a fluorescent light on the ceiling. Or in this shot, a workshop light in the background. Besides adding more interest to the scene and bringing up the exposure in the room, it also helps separate the character from the background. The magnets on the back of the InfiniBar again made it really easy to rig it onto one of the shelves. Also in this shot, I wanted to create some color contrast. This time, I just put a simple household lamp on the opposite side of the frame. This light was also going to be the motivation for the key light, which was an Aputure InfiniBar set to a warmer color temperature to match that household lamp. To control this key light and not have it spill all over the room, we attached a grid to the InfiniBar. You can see here what a huge difference that makes just in lighting the far side of my face and keeping other areas of the frame untouched. And I have to say, having used similar lights to the InfiniBars, the grid attachment of the InfiniBars is a game changer. They're so incredibly easy to work with. You just have to place them on the light, connect three Velcro ties, and you're done. It literally takes no time. Now whenever I'm making these types of lighting tutorials or when I'm looking for inspiration or creating a shot list for a short film or commercial, the thing that helps me the most is frames from other movies. And I recently started using FilmVibes, who are very kindly sponsoring this video. FilmVibes is basically a platform where you can find over a million different frames from other movies, commercials, or really everything film related. You can search for literally anything either by text prompts or even through images. So for the bathroom scene, I typed in gritty bathroom and found a bunch of frames that helped me inspire my lighting setup. And one thing I really like about FilmVibes is that it doesn't just show you stills, but also clip outtakes from that frame. You can also search by color, sketch a composition, and add filters like time of day, shot size, or even camera movement to help you find exactly what you're looking for. So check out the link in the description and for just $6.49 a month, you can get access to FilmVibes Pro subscription. All right, now we've already used the InfiniBars for a few more cinematic lighting setups, but these lights are also excellent for things like music videos or more abstract lighting scenarios. Especially if you have a few of these, you can set them up as background or stage elements. The InfiniBars have a bunch of different effects that can help create more dynamic shots. For this example, I had four InfiniBars as my stage elements, all running a pulsating effect at high frequency. As you can see here, the shot with just these lights doesn't look too bad, but I am still too dark. So I used another InfiniBar with a grid attached as a key light, and that grid keeps the key light from spilling onto the white background. Then I had one more InfiniBar as a rim light on the left of the frame set to the same green color as the stage lights. One major thing that sets these InfiniBars apart from other similar linear lights is that the InfiniBars are rectangular instead of circular. So they're not tubes, but they're bars. And that means that they have an illuminated area that goes from edge to edge. And the idea behind that is that you can link these bars together and then have the illuminated area run through however many bars you have connected. That of course gives you a ton of different options when it comes to creating different shapes and again, using these lights as stage lights, for example. Now as you can tell, you can definitely still see where the InfiniBars connect, but you probably won't be using them so close to the camera like this. And you'll see in just a second that once they are more in the background, that they do create that infinite light effect. So in this first example, I'm creating two squares using four forefoot InfiniBars. And by screwing in these connector plates, you can really easily join the InfiniBars together. A few notes on these connectors, they allow you to share power between the InfiniBars. However, it depends on what power transformer you have and it doesn't share the power from the internal battery. I then used some extra strong fishing wire to hang these two InfiniBar frames from a truss. And in Aputure's Sidus Link app, there is a magic infinity effects option where you can select the shape that you just created and set up different effects throughout that shape. This setup in the app works quite well, but at least at the moment, it's somewhat limited what sort of effects you can do. However, these pixel run effects look really cool on different shapes and I can definitely see this being very functional for music video production, fashion shoots, or things like that. You can of course also connect these into a straight line and then basically create one or two very long InfiniBars. And I thought this looked really cool and it's a pretty easy way to add depth to a shot and get a pretty unique look. Alright, now back to a few more cinematic or film lighting setups with the InfiniBars. And this one is really, really simple, but very effective. So let's have a look. Now, I don't know about you, but I would say that it is pretty much impossible to tell that this was in fact not filmed by a real fire. And similarly to the driving car setup I showed you, here we are creating the illusion of fire with mostly the lighting. The fire effect on the InfiniBar already does a very good job with creating this illusion. But by adding in a bit of smoke using this small haze machine, cutting in shots of actual fire and some spark overlays, again, everything we see makes sense within the context of the scene. So the viewer wouldn't think twice on whether or not the fire is real. We've already seen a few examples on how to use the InfiniBars in tight spaces. And we can even utilize these to create a very large soft source. This can be useful in a situation like this, where the subject is being lit by evening light from the window. However, as you can see with our lights turned off, the light from the window isn't bright enough to actually light our subject. So we set up two InfiniBars behind a large piece of diffusion. Two of these four foot bars are covering enough of the diffusion to create a nice soft source of light. So instead of having a standard lighting fixture pointed at the sheet of diffusion, which would have to be much further away to cover enough of the diffusion, we're able to save a lot of space by just using the InfiniBars. You could also just use one or two InfiniBars and achieve a similar effect. However, you can see that this is a much smaller source of light. Whereas with the diffusion in front, our source becomes much larger, similar to the size of a window and even a bit softer. The InfiniBars have another key feature that offers you a lot of flexibility as far as where you're able to use these lights. And that is the internal batteries. A great example would be if you're filming someone walking at nighttime or late in the evening and you would need to have a key light in order to expose their face. You can simply have a second person holding an InfiniBar and walking with the camera operator to light the character. Or in a slightly less ideal situation, like the one we were in here, the camera operator is holding the light while filming the character. Now honestly, I wouldn't recommend these four foot InfiniBars for this. One of the smaller ones like the one foot or two foot would definitely be more suited for something like this. Lastly, to prove that you can easily create beautiful cinematic lighting with only these InfiniBars, let me show you how we lit this final shot with just two InfiniBars. This is what we started with. The street lamp serves as a practical, but it also already gives a pretty nice rim light as well. We can, however, enhance that light coming from the street lamp and fill in the shadows on the face a bit more by adding an InfiniBar and setting it to a warm color temperature to match the street lamp. Next, let's add in a key light on the far side of the camera. That will make sure that we have a correct exposure on the character. Now one important note here when using a bar light like this as your key. In this example, I have the bar light set horizontally. This wraps the light around the face a lot more and creates a soft horizontal roll off. However, when we turn the bar light in a vertical position, you can see that the light doesn't wrap around the face as much, with a harder shadow transition and creating a slightly more dramatic look. This is yet another way these types of lights can offer you a lot of versatility when lighting your scenes. Alright, if you want to get inspired with a few more lighting setups, definitely check out this video next. And if you're interested in checking out the InfiniBars, I will have a link for you down in the video description. Thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you all in the next one. Bye!