How to Light the Cinematic Film Look

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We've all asked the question "how do I make my footage look more cinematic?" While there are plenty of in-camera techniques you can do like shoot at 24 frames per second or shoot with a shall depth of field, what's even more important is your lighting.

In today's episode of Ask Aputure, Ted from the A-Team will walk us through eight creative lighting techniques you can use to make your footage look more cinematic.

These cinematic techniques are used both in large budget feature films and by independent filmmakers as well. Try utilizing some of these techniques to take your cinematography to the next level, and finally get that cinematic look!

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Summary:
Ted Sim teaches us about filmic and cinematic lighting techniques used by filmmakers and cinematographers in the world of Hollywood, independent films, and commercials. Aputure's YouTube channel provides free high quality cinematography, lighting, and filmmaking educational content to help you take your film projects to the next level.

#cinematography #filmiclook #hollywoodlook

[aputurelighting]

What's your favorite way to get the cinematic look?

[andrewdenatale]

One of my favorite techniques is to hide a subject’s face is in heavy shadow but then add an eye light. Gives the effect where you only can see the twinkle in the eye, not the eye itself, it’s a very menacing and unnatural look. This gets used in the Dark Knight to make Batman even more mysterious and threatening

[jeremymolinari]

Best Tip... was pretty much everything in this video. HOWEVER, one thing I can add, CONTRAST RATIO.

Contrast Ratio is the ratio between the highlights and shadows of your scene. For me this is most useful for dark scenes, as by raising the overall light level of the room but maintaining a high contrast ratio you can lower your ISO and still have a dark looking scene.

Hope this helps! This was a huge, huge help for me once I started keeping this in mind.

[ExpressiveImagery]

Here is my transcript, plus a few extra points:

1) Highlight using key to make the subject the brightest part of the frame. The key light indicates visual importance.
- Use a soft key light that isolates the most important part of the frame, thereby calling attention to what matters.
- The lighting guides the audience's eyes in a clear and concise way, telling them where to look.

2) Go for a low key.
- Lowering your fill light or maybe completely removing it. This will give your subject more contrast and mood.

3) Shoot into the shadows.
- Design the lighting setup for nice fall-off. Position the camera to be opposite from where the key light is coming from.
- Shooting into the lit side will produce more even lighting across your subject, while shooting on the opposite side will capture fall-off and shadowy textures of your subject.

4) Use that edge light.
- Separate the subject from the background. The resulting effect is something like a halo or wrap-around light, which shapes/outlines the frame highlight.

5) Lighting for depth.
- Create a sense of space which will immerse the viewer.
- Layer elements throughout space by separating your highlights and shadows. Feature different luminance values for the various "planes of distance" that exist.
- Get the highlights and shadows of each plane to contrast each other, which will create depth.

6) Add colour contrast.
- Certain colours contrast best, especially complementary colours.

7) Texture lighting
- Can be done using Practicals like desk lamps, car head lights, Christmas lights, fluro tubes etc
- Use atmosphere to create shafts or beams.
8) Texture shadows
- Create visually interesting shadows using elements like back-lighted set design, such as blinds, window frames, tree branches.
- Try using "cuculoris" to other interesting moving shadows.

9) Use Atmospheric Perspective
- The farther the subject is away from the viewer the lighter it is, due to there being more atmosphere between the viewer and the subject.
- The closer the subject is to the viewer, the more detail will be seen.
- The above statements can be summarised by saying that objects in the background will have less contrast than objects in the foreground.
The saturation values of colours will also be much less the farther the object is away from the viewer.
- Atmospheric perspective can be observed naturally within epic landscapes etc or can be created artificially by way of Volumetric Lighting:
a) lighting the scene while considering the above points.
b) ensuring that the floor reflects light from the scene. This can be achieved from water on the ground, just after it's rained.
c) filling the air between the camera and the subject with some atmosphere like fog or haze. Haze works best due to its subtlety and hangs in the air longer.
You can also use dirt, dust and smoke. Basically anything that hangs in the air catching the light and lowers the contrast of objects in the background.

Cheers, Tony

[cleverandy]

I love practicals! Lamps, street lights, Christmas lights, a flickering bathroom light. They’re just such a great way to add more character to a scene!

[RendelRules]

I love the edge lighting tip, I believe nothing looks more cinematic than having a actor on screen with a supernatural "Halo" around them, the attention that effect grabs from an audience is parallel to none .

[DrewFrink]

Remember that the lighting makes sense for the scene. LIGHTS HAVE TO HAVE SOURCES!!! If you have a character who’s in a windowless room holding only a candle it makes no everloving sense to have their faces perfectly lit with blue light. If you’re having trouble with just the light from the candle you could try underexposing the camera and using a 150 to light them. It would increase the immersion if you had something moving in front of the fill to simulate the flicking of the candle.

[rendyraksatama]

I love when low key, color contrast and depth are combine into one lighting set up

[Macsnapsmedia]

light your scene, not your subject. To create a realistic cinematic look, you want to light a scene that will allow your character to "fall" into beautiful light.

[JavierGonzalez-vfrr]

My favorite is adding a really strong edge light on hair or fabric. The loose filaments really make it pop and add that look you usually see during the golden hour.

[photojournalists]

Any wet surface from streets to windows to floors add so much texture and feel to a scene once the light hits it. This is most illustrative in The Third Man where they splashed the streets several blocks and gave the movie it's added intensity.

[ratt]

I'm trying to learn everything I can about making my lighting look cinematic. This is a great video, but it's kind of rushed and would have been more helpful if I could have seen where the actual lights were placed for each example.

[jonathanchowthi]

My favorite lighting tip is utilizing low key light. When I think of cinematic, I generally think of films like Fight Club and The Dark Knight that often utilize this technique versus films that utilize high key lighting like comedies and such.

[jordancraig]

Thanks for putting this together. Being brave enough to use shadows and silhouettes is a very important concept and can make or break the look of a project.

[BoyBlessing]

Man I've learned so much just from reading the comments under this video. Thank you everyone that commented. Crazy how much information this generation has at it's hands. I'm very graetful for the internet.

[MortenMalerstuen]

Focusing the light and not having it spill everywhere to guide the audience's eye, create contrast and depth is what I consider as most important. Using grids, flags, barn doors and so on. Lighting is more about what not to light.

[MrJeremybelanger]

My favorite is to make sure the backlight is the same side on the talent as the key. It motivates the light more and looks less like an interview setup.

[tonygarcia]

My tip is to not be afraid. (Of anything lighting related) always talk to your director and know what the threshold is of pushing the image visually. It’s this talk and communication that can introduce many ideas and risks. Like when Spielberg first started using Janusz Kaminski. Black and White, blown out highlights, color choices that one had never seen a Spielberg movie. Anyways, this will allow for DP to suggest (if story allows) things like under or over exposure, Storaro colors, shooting with all practicals and the sky is the limit!

[druidavey]

My favourite way is to always look at what's round the edges of a scene and let the centre action take care of itself. 'Production Value' seems to come from car in the background and edges.Great pieces thanks very much for this!

[alexponsa]

My favorite way to get the cinematic look is by using some camera movement, practical lights and contrast with colors. I also think that it's important to create a sens od geography on the scene to make it more realistic, you can do that with some well positioned lights and shadows.