5 Reasons You Need A POWERFUL Light for Filmmaking

In this video, we're going to take a look at why you would need a very powerful light for filmmaking. More specifically, I'll be using the brand new Aputure 1200X to show you five different use cases for a high output fixture like this. So let's get into it. So for this first shot, we are using the window here as our main key light, but because the natural daylight coming in through the window, as you'll see in a second, is not strong enough to actually light me or to light up this room. We have the 1200X outside bouncing into a scrim and that is enhancing the light coming in through the window. And then the second thing that you'll see is this streak of light here, this hard light that is the 600X with a spotlight mount attached, blasting in between these curtains here and then just throwing this nice slash of light here. That way we get a nice daylight, maybe even, I wouldn't say sunset, but maybe close towards sunset, a nice vibe here in this room and in this shot. So you can see right now with just the natural daylight coming in that it's a lot less bright and it's not like bringing in that atmosphere as much as we had before. And it's definitely not brightening up me enough as we need to to get a correct exposure. So we're going to turn on the 1200X and that's going to make a huge difference. OK, so now the 1200X is on and you can tell that's bringing in a lot of brightness through that window and bringing up just overall the exposure in this room, bringing up the exposure on me as well. And now we have the 600X on, bringing in that nice slash of light here and just adding a little bit of extra mood and atmosphere in this shot, enhancing that sunlight vibe coming in through the window. And this is something you wouldn't really be able to do very well with the output delivered by smaller lights, because bouncing your light off of something like a scrim and then having the light go through the window requires quite a lot of power. If you would do this with something like an Aputure 600, you would lose too much level before the light would reach the person. But with the 1200X, we can actually use the window as our key light and it will even fill in the room a bit as well. OK, so here we have it, the new Aputure 1200X. And as you can see, it's not like it's a big light. Of course, it's a 1200 watt light, but it's not as huge as you would as you would expect, especially if we just compare the the cases. Here's a 600X, the 1200X in comparison to like HMI equivalents or, you know, other 1200 watt lights. This is really not that big. You can handle this just as a one man band, as like a solo filmmaker. You can easily handle this. You don't need a second person to set up this light or to move it around. And one thing that you'll notice is the new locking mechanism. So this is a locking Bowens mount, kind of like a PL mount. So you just kind of twist it to lock and unlock your your modifier. And that makes it just a whole lot easier to put on big modifiers because you're not having to like look for that final click to get it in there, especially if you have it at a weird angle or something. It can be really difficult. And this just makes it a lot easier. You can see that the cob here is a little bit different. It's a little more like crystallized. The Aputure 1200X uses a new Blair light engine. So instead of warm and cool LEDs, there are actually blue, lime, amber, indigo and red LEDs in there. This gives you a CCT range from 2500 Kelvin up to 10,000 Kelvin and also makes the 1200X the first and only 1200 watt light with a very high quality 4 plus and minus green magenta shift. So for this shot, we are using the 1200X to emulate the sun so you can actually see the light in the shot, but it's kind of hidden in its overexposure. And again, the light stand is hidden behind the curtain here. And to fill in the shadows, we have a bounce right there. But because the room is white, it's reflecting the light kind of everywhere. So that's kind of just filling up the ambience anyway. We have the light set at a warmer color temperature like 3200 Kelvin to emulate that setting sun vibe. And I believe it's set at 100% right now. So it's blasting full on through the window. Now, ideally for a shot like this, you would use a Fresnel to really get a focused beam like the sun would. But the F10 Fresnel, like the one maybe some of you have for your Aputure 600 or your 1200D, doesn't fit on this 1200X because of that new locking mount. Now, Aputure is releasing a new Fresnel, I believe still somewhere this year. For now, we can't use a Fresnel, so we just have the reflector dish on there. So for the close up shot, we turned down the 1200X just a little bit before we had it at 100%. And now it's at 80% just to reduce this crazy hard light here so that it's not completely blown out. And we still have a bounce here, just filling up the shadows here. And then Alex is holding a silver reflector to hopefully get a bit of a catch light in the eyes as well. And that's this close up shot. So another thing that's new on the 1200X is the power cable to the light. So instead of the clicking system from before, this now has like a twist and lock system, which is also pretty easy once you get a hang of it. So you kind of line up the two lines, the white lines, you twist it, click it and it's done. So for this shot, we want to actually turn this day scene into a night scene. As you can tell right now, it's very bright outside, even though it's an overcast day. So the idea is to darken down the camera using an ND filter and then we're going to figure out what we need for lights. So let's put on that ND and then see what that looks like. OK, so now we have the ND on there. You can see it's already a little bit darker, but the sky is still very bright. So we're going to close down the ND to really bring down that sky as if we're having a nighttime sky outside. As you can see right now, it's very dark in here. You probably can't see me, but the sky is looking pretty good. So the first thing we're going to do is turn on this lamp here. This is going to be our practical. And this is going to motivate our lighting, because as you can see, there's not a lot of light coming towards my face here. It's it's kind of lighting the table, but it's definitely not lighting me enough. So that is where the 1200 X is going to come in. So we're going to turn that one on right now. So right now we have the 1200 X at 100 percent and we have it at 2500 Kelvin to kind of match the warmth of this lamp here because we want to get indoor vibes, indoor lighting in here. And then we have nice blue light outside as it would be for a nighttime sky. And the camera is set to 4500 Kelvin. So that's also helping with creating this color contrast here. So right now you can see I'm lit very well. You can see my face. It's motivated off of this lamp and the sky outside looks like it would be nighttime. Two more details we have in this shot here to kind of control the light a little bit better. One thing is there is a bit of negative fill on this side here because there is a white wall. Well, there's white walls everywhere and obviously they are bouncing light everywhere. So we put some negative fill here to block the light on this side of my face. So you'll see if I put this away that now I'm getting a lot more fill here and we don't get that much contrast in the face. That's why we have that negative fill here to kind of keep more of a contrast the dark side and obviously towards the camera side as well. The second thing we have to control the light here is a DIY flag. It's actually just a blanket that we put up here. And this is blocking the light coming from our Bounce 1200 X because it's bouncing all around here and it's also hitting the wall. So you'll see that when we just remove this flag, the blanket, then you'll see what a difference that makes. So that flag is gone now and you can see that there is a lot of light hitting on the wall here and it just looks a little weird. It wouldn't make sense that there's light hitting that wall coming from this lamp here. Before we move on to two outdoor scenes, just have a look at how bright it was in this room with the 1200 X at 100%. Having such a powerful light was vital for stopping down our ND and achieving this evening look. OK, for the next shot, we have the 1200 X pretty high up, as you can see on the high riser here. We're again emulating sunlight, but this time, as you can see, we are outside. And that's the cool thing about having such a powerful light that you can even use it outside. You know, ambient light is a little bit lower, but still we can emulate the sun and sunset with the 1200 X right now. I don't know if you can see this, but we have it positioned here just behind these trees and the bushes. So from where we're shooting, we can actually have the light in the shot without seeing the high riser, without seeing the light stand. So let's go have a look down there and see what it looks like. So we've come down from where the light is up there. And you can see what's happening because of the fact that it's behind those trees and the bushes there. We're getting this like nice spotted light. So we've got like light, shadow, light, shadow, light, shadow. So it's like breaking up the light, which helps in selling that effect that this might be the sun over there. And also as the light, the overall light, like the natural daylight, is getting dimmer, we're getting a little bit more contrast in the scene as well, which helps in selling this effect and helps in like getting these kind of almost rays of light coming through the trees there. OK, so now we're shooting a nighttime scene and we have the 1200 X all the way back there and very high up because we are shooting in the dark. We'll be shooting when it gets even darker, actually. Obviously, there's literally no light around there. So we need to bring up some exposure in the forest here. And we're doing that with the 1200 X at full power. But to make things look as natural as possible, because we are emulating moonlight with the 1200 X, we need to have it as far away as possible and then as high up as possible, because, you know, naturally the moon is very high up and very far away. But you can already see we're getting pretty cool light in the background here, like hard light as the moon is actually. And then by putting it up so high, it's blasting through some trees and that's kind of shattering the light a bit as well. So we don't have like just a big light source, but it's kind of like going through the trees and everything. And we get a little bit like shattered light, I guess you could say. All right, so we're at the light and you can tell we've got the high riser pretty much at max. So I think it's like at four meters now. And we are also a little bit elevated in comparison to where we were down there. And if you just have a look here, come, come, don't be afraid. We have it at 100 percent, so full power. And then we set it at 7000 Kelvin. I know normally moonlight is not that cold, but we want to get that creative, artistic moonlight look, that blue look of moonlight. So, yeah, it's looking pretty good. Those are just a few ways you would be able to use a powerful 1200 watt bicolor light. But honestly, there's so much more you can do with a light like this. So you'll definitely see me using this one a lot more in future videos. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye.