Cinematography Breakdown - Lighting & Camera Techniques for CINEMATIC VIDEO

C5E take five. In this video I'm going to break down some of my favorite scenes and share some powerful principles you can apply in your own films. Frame. Action. We'll focus a lot on lighting but I'll also share a few practical cinematography tips. For the gear heads I used a Sony Barano with a set of DZO Vespa primes. This camera is an absolute dream to shoot with and I'm in love with how the sensor captures color and the internal raw files are magic to work with in post. If you haven't seen the full film yet I would highly recommend you go watch it first. Before I jump into the breakdown I want to give a special thanks to my mate Raylan Joey for flying out to South Africa and working his magic on this project. Raylan not only directed the film but he's also responsible for the edit with the color grading done by yours truly. From a lighting perspective our biggest challenge was time. With only two shoot days it was quite a stretch to get through all the scenes so we needed to use gear that would accommodate this style of shooting. The location didn't have any power but even if it did we simply didn't have the time to lay cables for every scene because we moved around so much it would have taken us twice as long. I needed something lightweight that's easy to operate on V-mount batteries but still performs well as a soft light. Meet Parvo Slim, Nanlite's newest release of flat panel lights. I used both the 120C and 60C in practically every scene. There's so much I love about these lights but they were perfect for the shoot especially because of their weight. Both are super compact and light so we could easily mount them on a boom overhead or throw them around on a stand and even used it hand out for some of the quicker scenes. A strong theme throughout the film is the use of color contrast with warm lighting coming in from the windows and a cool light coming from the flashlight as a practical. As straightforward as it sounds I feel like I want to take a moment and talk about how we achieved this look in a variety of scenes. In the opening we have this wide establishing shot of the location and this really sets the tone for the overall lighting. Without artificial light it's actually pretty dark inside so I knew that we needed a strong light from outside to create a pocket of focused light. The challenge however is that the windows are thick and super diffused which means even a 1200 wouldn't be enough. I recently purchased the Evoque 2400B and this was the first shoot I had the opportunity to use it on. This light quite literally blew us away. At 100% it had enough power to shine through from the roof above and create a powerful key light. The B stands for bi-color which means you can go from 2700K all the way up to 6500K but it doesn't stop there. It also has a green and magenta shift which worked pretty great in this scene because the bounce coming from the walls created quite a bit of extra magenta in this scene. Going down to minus 25 on the green side quickly fixed this without any tweaking in camera. Since we shot so many scenes in this main area this light never moved position and we powered it with a generator from the bottom. I decided to complement the warmer walls by going warmer on the Evoque at 2700K. This emulates the idea of warmish sunlight coming in and the cooler natural daylight behind just created some separation on the actor. The flashlight was a practical and realistic way to create contrast with a cooler color throughout the scenes. From the moment it switched on it immediately makes the scenes feel dynamic. Now here's the catch. If you want to create decent color contrast in camera your two light sources need to be at least 3000 to 4000K apart. The only way to hit the sweet spot is to set your camera's white balance to somewhere in the middle. I opted for 4000K because the environment already bounced extra warmth back into the scene. The challenge now is the white balance is off on the subject's skin tone and the only way to combat this is to bring in a soft fill at a different temperature to the key light. I set up a Pavoslim 120C at the same temperature as my camera for a subtle fill from the bright side which cools down the skin a bit more to a natural tone. Adding the grid creates a focused light so we don't lose the warm edge light or the warmth in the background. This setup was copied and pasted in a lot of scenes throughout the film. The Pavoslims are incredible to work with because it's so easy to move around and adjust and they also work seamlessly on the new version 2.0 Nanlink app. The updated app opens up new opportunities with the ability to plot out your scenes graphically so the gaffer can easily make adjustments when instructed without guessing which light is where. The Pavoslims served as fill lights, rim lights, overhead lights and even effect lights. I have the C versions which means you can utilize the full color spectrum in HSI mode. In this case we used a Pavoslim 120C on a warm orange to simulate the gunshots whenever the actor got shot. There are also a few scenes where we didn't have the time or opportunity to put a key light on the outside like this hallway over here and in the bathroom. The natural light that came through these windows was just enough to use as is but now we had a color temperature problem. Instead of shining a warm light through the window I increased the kelvin on the camera all the way to 6500. This gave me a warmth similar to the previous scenes but now the flashlight would not be cool enough so we cut out a double layer of CTB gels and put it inside the flashlight to retain the contrast between warm and cool. For the darker scenes I didn't even bother with the fill light because the flashlight was bouncing off the wall creating motivated fill light on the face. The hallway scene with the protagonist steps on the glass was lit with just two lights. The backlight here is 100% natural but this strong light coming through on the left is a forza 500 mk2 bi-color which creates these nice shadows on the floor. This light could easily be motivated with a fill from the same side as he stepped into frame so we just used the Pavoslim 60C handout. The Pavoslims are not just handy because they're small and light but one of the main selling points is how quick they are to set up. The softbox is permanently attached to the light and just pops out by releasing the straps on the side. If you want more power you can take off the diffusion cloth and adding the echorate snaps on in a jiffy. Now let's face it, the location itself was epic to start with but there are a few specific reasons we chose it. All throughout the film you'll see pretty much everything is backlit. This is the first thing I look for in a location. Does the background automatically enable me to shoot from the shadow side? In majority of the scenes the brightest source of light is always from behind or from the side with the camera on the dark side. The second thing I look for is contrast. Do pockets of light already exist naturally and will I be able to create it or enhance it with minimal effort? Take this scene for example. You have this patch of bright light coming through the door, some shadows around it and then another patch of bright light at the back. The light coming through the door is a pavoslim 60c. The light in the back is natural and the flashlight on the steps creates a realistic edge light because it has a reason to be there. The third thing I look for in a location is texture. This could be anything from textured walls, reflections, shadows or dust and this location had no shortage of it. Shooting low to the floor into the light gave us these nice reflections and lighting from the right angle created a lot of shadows. A quick update on my colour grading course. Yes it's 100% still happening, it's just taking much longer than I anticipated. I left a full explainer in the description below for those who are interested. On the morning of day 2 we had the final scene of the protagonist on the roof and I was so happy that we didn't shoot it on day 1 because at the end of day 1 it started raining and we got treated to natural reflections of water, something that is often done intentionally on bigger shoots. Although I don't have any footage of the rain, the Evoque was still out on the roof when it started and I'm happy to say that the light is 100% rainproof, rated at IP55 just like the 1200p. On the cinematography side we used a variety of techniques to amplify the feeling in scenes. For example, the second time the actor wakes up in the loop I tilted the camera with a touch angle because the actor is uneasy and hasn't made sense of what's going on yet. We used a lot of hand held shaky movements to keep this theme and suspense going. Closer to the end as the protagonist starts to memorise the experiences he gets more confident and here we used a gimbal shot to communicate this confidence. These decisions were intentional and although some are more subtle than others, it all contributes to the final experience. It's one thing to have good lighting and a great location, but apart from the solid acting, it's also the wardrobe and styling that made this film shine. The character had a sweaty and gritty look, something that was maintained by our stylist throughout the shoot. Add in a real prop gun and great on location sound recording and you have a recipe for success. In some scenes we used a double to show the mysterious character and here Lowlemar stepped up to the plate. The scene just before the escapes was a complete night for day. It was already dark and again only three lights did the trick. We put the two power slims next to the windows at 5600K and a forza 500 mk2 bicolour on the roof shooting through the hole down. There was a lot of dust in the room so we didn't even bother with the projector or fresnel. Simply blasting through the hole did the job. We shot it from both angles and I still can't decide which one I like the most. To make a project like this work requires a special kind of crew. From sound to sharps, styling and BTS. The energy on set was simply amazing and I'm super grateful for the opportunity to partner with such a variety of talents. Special thanks to Laudu and Movie Vision South Africa for their amazing assistance on the lighting side. Movie Vision is the official supplier of Nanlite in South Africa and on that note a massive thanks to Nanlite Global for sponsoring this video. See you in the next one.