lighting over dining room table

- hey what's up guys kristruini here for kriscoart. welcome to the first episodeof our lighting workshop that we did in collaboration with aputure. a lot to cover todayand we're talking about how to light a night scene,with just using one light. (light dance music) - [kris] we're startingwith a night type of setup. so we're gonna have somemoonlight coming in. i guess to start off, we'regonna try to get a beam going.

so that it can kind of hit this chair. if there is anyone that is willing to be a subject for our first setup. hey, kris good to meet you. okay, so we're alreadygetting somewhere with this. and again if you areactually on a real location and you have some moonlight coming in, you would be getting alittle bit of ambience, which is nice.

but right now we're gettinga pretty dramatic look. you know, silhouetted. - you wanna add a topper,clean that top up a bit. - yeah.- yeah. - two by three. - if you're dealing with one light, that's one of the challenges too. you wanna make sure that you're directing it where it needs to be,

and not actually just shootingout all over your scene. and because that's gonna,kinda take away from dimension. but that's looking alright, but lets say that we wanna read a littlebit more in his face. we wanna see who this personis, who this character is. so this is where bouncing light comes in, and this is one of myfavorites thing to do. because again when you're limited with just having one light,

or if you're just dealing with sunlight, having a bounce something like this. here we go. this is super handy. whenever i travel, this is my go to thing. this is like an essentiali think to your tool set. i think, what is this, this is from nure. if you guys are curious. and the reason why i love this so much is

because this actually has a zipper. and this is one surfacethat doubles up as.. i don't know if you guys can see. we got a little gold surface over here. then we have a white, almost a little translucentwhite softer side, yeah. and then we have asilvery side on this side. now the reason why it's niceto have these options is because it's gonna giveyou some difference.

some subtle difference, but it's definitely, onceyou pair it with a light, it's important to know howthe light is gonna behave depending on which side you're using. so we're gonna start offwith the silver side. let me zip this back up. so we have our 300d coming in, and you can see that we'regetting some light here, and we can see that thedirection of the light

is kinda coming at this angle. so if i wanted to catch this.. that's picking up alittle bit of that light, and it's bouncing it back into his face. and to me this is huge because sometimes evenif you don't have a light and you just have sunlight, this is a great way of shaping things. and i'm a big fan of this because instead

of having just a directlight shining at his face and creating all kinds of shadows, we're bouncing light that's already refracting all over this space. and we're getting a bigger surface to give him a more even illumination. with this silvery side, this is actually, kind of the harshest side of all of these. so this is gonna give you a little bit

more detail in the highlights. it's gonna create a sharper,more contrasty image. by the way it's sosatisfying when it pops out. i'm just a fan of that. sometimes, i know it's alittle bit embarrassing to say, but i'll fold it and then pop it up again and then fold it again, pop it out. i like that. but now we have this white surface.

maybe just for this purpose as an example we can dim that up a little bit. - [kevin] yeah. - [kris] oh nice, comingin with the remote. that's probably good right about there. not a lot of detail. we're still getting somebounce, a little bit from here. so we're still reading alittle something in his face. - [gavin ash] and bringingup the level on him,

stops him from falling to complete black. which is completely unrecoverable in post. so it kind of gives youa bit more flexibility. if you give a little bitmore detail in there, then it's not totally lostand you're not screwed in case, later someone comes along. and they're like, "i needthis to be brighter." the client or whatever. - [kris] especially whenyou're not using a red.

you know if you're using like a dslr, or a crop sensor or something like that. you want to have a little bitof room to play with in post. - [gavin ash] and if youlook to the histogram in the bottom left cornerof the red screen there, you will see, it's called agoal post on the left side. and it's got, see that red? that red is saying thatthere's clipping information, losing detail in the blacks.

so when you start seeing that, you start knowing thatyou're losing information. you won't be able to pull back later. - [kris] sometimes if you'redoing moonlit scenarios, and you're pumping inlight through windows, a lot of times these willread as a little overexposed. they'll be like a little bit too white. i don't know if you're noticing the curtains are a little bit bright.

that other side, it's lookingreally, really bright. so that's when having those gray curtains, will really help you with that. if you swap these out with something gray, it might still read as white on camera. but you're cutting down some of that light being captured by this, and it won't look asclipped or overexposed compared to your otherambience level in your room.

we don't want to be distracted visually by having our eyes alwaysdrifting towards the curtains. because that's gonna be a bright spot and your eyes tend to gravitate towards those areas on screen. - [gavin ash] yeah and just as the left side clips with the blacks, if you're starting to loseinformation, same with the wide. so that's too hot, that's too bright,

then you're gonna startlosing that information, won't be able to pull it back later. and that will be indicated bygoal post on the other side. - [kris] and that'ssomething really important to keep in mind, don'trely on what you're seeing on camera or on your monitor. definitely make use of other tools that can really check what you're doing and make sure that that's right.

monitors change. it's almost like different headphones will give you a differentkind of sound quality. different monitors will also give you a different quality of image. so sometimes monitors will lie to you and they'll be a little bitdeceiving in that sort of sense. and you think you'regetting something great, you think you're getting some information

but maybe the brightnessvalue or something is pumped up on that monitor. and then later on once youget on a proper monitor and you're actually editing this, you realize that you didn'thave as much information as you thought you had. - [kevin] it's much better looks great. - [kris] yeah, so, okay. so there you can see alittle bit of the difference.

we're seeing a lot more detail now from these, kind of, theseiron slats in the window that are reading now on the curtains. - [gavin ash] and it's stillreading as white on the camera so no one will really knowthat you've changed them from white curtains to gray curtains. - [kris] that reads as a lot more natural. it's subtle, but it's things like that that can really elevate your scene

and again, make it feel morerealistic and more dimensional. cool so now that we have this set up. i'm pretty happy with howthe background is looking. what we've put in the window there, it's reading nicely so that it's not cutting down too much light. we're getting a nice detailon those succulent plants. alright so going back to the bounce. now that we have this light coming in,

we can see how now we can read a little bit more information on his face. all of this can change depending on how you angle the light,how you angle this source. - [gavin ash] it'll definitely be a lot more natural looking too. if you bring it up horizontally. cause then it can kinda imitatean actual wall in the room. so it'd be a bit more natural

cause it'd actually bemotivation to it coming in. if we come up underneath,it might be a little obvious that it's a second source comingin or something like that. - [kris] although for certain subjects, if you're getting likea really nasty shadow, like underneath their brow, you can, even if it's like a close up.. i've had situations where i can have them hold a piece of paper, or asmaller bounce, or even that.

and that'll fill in some ofthose nastier shadows nicely. and it just kind of evens outthe face a little bit more. and make it a little bit more flattering. this is, if i'm not mistaken, you can find these at home depot. those things are not too expensive, but again, there's a lot of diy solutions. where you can still use both sides and it'll give you, it's the same idea.

- [gavin ash] you also have to factor in the catch light in the eye. so if we're bringing in a square source, if you're doing a closeup,you're gonna see that in his eye. - [kris] yeah that's very important. circular is a little bit more.. - natural looking.- organic. (kris laughing) by the way he warned me,

don't use words: cinematic and organic. he has like a little pet peeve with that. so it looks a little bit more organic. in a circle or..- hi welcome to kriscoart. (kris laughing)this is cinematic. - [kris] so here you go, youcan kinda see that difference. that's pretty intense. it's even casting likea whole other shadow on the other side of the wall.

and i mean, i guess, depending on what is livingon this side of the world, in your story, this can make sense. if it's another window, or you can again flip it. oops sorry if i'm blinding people. there we go. you can flip it and now it's a much softer and more subtle source.

nice, there we go. this way you don't have to worry about it. you can just set it up there. and also you don't have to.. - [gavin ash] it's alittle more refined too, so you can angle it theexact way and it's not like.. - [kris] and it's not moving around cause windows don't usually do that. we're getting a nice subtle key.

i'm kind of starting tobuy this as a nighttime. and this is not bad considering that we're only using one light. and of course you can keep playing and adding different sources of bounce. so if we want to edge him alittle bit more and shape him. if you had a harder source of light, bouncing from there, bounce it form here. you can really get crazy with this

and really shape lightin whatever way you want. and really add dimension to your scene. we could even shine alight on this surface and we can still create an indirect type of lighting that way. again the same principal kind of applies. instead of just blastinglight to the subject which could create some harsh shadows. of course you can diffuse it

but there's nothingquite like aiming a light at a bigger softer source and having that light kind ofbounce back on our subject. so there we go. - and the further away it is the more natural it'll probably look too. - [kris] yeah? (audience member asking question) yeah that's great question.

so at the moment.. let's see we have a 300dso that's daylight balance. the color temperature isdefinitely gonna effect the overall look from the camera. so if we want to get a more cooler look. you know we're warming things up, in terms of color temperature. and then if you want to have it read as white or read properly,

then you would balance to around 5600 which is what.. - [gavin ash] yeah so we can demonstrate that real quick too. 5600s gonna start looking very warm. over around here. and that's not the look we're going for for this particular moonlight setup. - [kris] if you wannakeep that white balance,

if you have practicals or other lights that you want it to read in a certain way, you can definitely do that. you can add some gels, maybesome ctb in front of that. keep in mind that wheneveryou're doing that, whenever you're addinganything in front of lights, it's always gonna cut down some light. but that's why if we'restarting off with one light and we're trying to getthe most out of that

and out of what we're seeing with camera, that's why you would play around with a little bit of the white balance. (light piano music) - [kris] alright guys ihope you enjoyed this video and if you did give it a like. and if this is your firsttime on the channel, consider subscribing for future videos about filmmaking, lighting and editing.

if you wanna know moreabout what's coming up, follow me on instagram becausei'll post it there first. and if you wanna let me know what you're mostinterested in seeing next, definitely let me know inthe comments section below. and we can make that happen. i would like to thank, again, my friends, gavinash and kevin terro for helping me with this workshop

and sharing theirinformation and knowledge. alright guys, thank youso much for watching. my name is kris truini for kriscoart and i will see you next time.

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