How to Light Music Videos | 3 Cinematic Ways to Shoot Contrast

Hey guys, I'm Kevin. Welcome back to set. This is my homie Tway and we are coming at you with some fire today. Tway, what do we got? We are lighting a music video. It's a cinematographer's playground, so it's all about letting your creativity run wild. I always wanted to shoot a music video because there's no rules to it. You can get as stylistic as you want, you can break lighting rules, you can do anything you want. That's why I'm so excited to be here today. So let me introduce to you the idea for this music video, okay? We got this rock guitarist in this abandoned warehouse, and the reason it's an abandoned warehouse is because the decrepitness of the whole scenario outside of the pocket of warmth that he has going on. We have to kind of use it in a creative way. So when I say that, what comes to mind? We've got color contrast, volumetric lighting. There's just so much that we can pack into visual interest, so I'm excited to explore that. You ready to go? I'm just going to be a crafter. I'll let you handle everything. Okay, well, I guess I can handle a couple guitar solos. So I am lucky to be working with the talent today who happens to be one of my best friends. He is the best man at my wedding. We're shooting a music video, playing some guitar. Playing some guitar. You're going to try to play guitar. You're not, you're cutting it. Whenever we get an artist and we want to shoot a performance or even a music video for them, we want to make sure we're on brand with that artist. What is your brand and how are we supporting that in the production? You know, I think my brand or creative approach, like when I'm sitting down to write a song, is in my living room with my guitar, my amp, and I transport and do a different world. Everything kind of is blocked out. No joke, he is a great guitarist, but he has been practicing for the last 10 days. And if you screw it up, you're going to ruin the whole production. It's pre-recorded. I can't. I'm just saying, hey. One of the first things that I look at is what does the production design look like? What's in the set? This is my homie, Rick. He is an art director and he is going to be helping us with my vision today and the director's vision from Tway. What I'm trying to accomplish is a warm, inviting setting. We didn't give you much to work with because this is the opposite of a warm, inviting setting. It's a really cold, abandoned warehouse. Typically, when you're in a warehouse, you think cold spaces, right? So in this particular situation, we want to make it feel intimate, inviting, warm. So when I saw the space, I thought of like a loft, cool furniture, cool shapes. All I did was source out some mid-century modern furniture with some cool warm colors, carpet to contrast. Don't move a chair five times until we get it right in frame. Our department is just one small fraction of it. If it's done right, it could be an important piece of the puzzle. Where are you getting this stuff and how are you working it into the production? If you're crafty, you'll hop on good old Craigslist. If you're artsy, you can flip Curb Alerts or find some stuff in the streets. There's a budget and the time permits, you can actually hit up a prop house. I encourage being resourceful. That's where the true creativity comes out. You're following that passion for a reason. It's okay, that's what art is. It's creating, it's following that. It's a journey, but have fun with it. This set kind of reminds me of my living room and how you guys have created that the emotive, bluesy type feel and I think this supports it perfectly. All right, guys, now we're going to start talking about our plan for lighting. That's what we're here for and that's what Taylor's here for. He's my CLT today. Here's what I want to do. We have a wide frame. I want it to be warm and I want it to just be soft. It helps convey kind of the contrast of the location of a living room, warm inviting, in an abandoned warehouse that's kind of cold and a little grimy. We've got our Nova 600C and we have an Octopan from DOP Choice for that, I believe. So we're going to throw that up there and that can be our toppy key. We can definitely throw some B7s in all of these practicals, give them some nice warm glows. These windows are like asking for me to shoot. If you've ever seen Handmaid's Tale or, you know, some of those movies that have these cool looking light rays coming through the window, I want them to be defined and clear throughout the scene. So maybe something more like the 1200D. We can have a couple of those outside the window. If we want, we could take it a step further and get some cool gel to saturate it a bit. The real moon isn't as bright or intense as what we might be doing here, but it's just nice to emphasize that. And what that's creating in our background is an accent to the scene overall. The light is pretty close, so it's casting a widespread light ray into the room and I want to control that. I want to narrow that down a little bit. The way I'm going to do that is I'm just going to back that light away from the window and that'll narrow down that beam and have it not take as much control over the entire scene as it is right now. So as you can see, the haze is starting to fill up the room and we got some of our lights on back here. But if you walk back with me, you can see these rays just coming through from the 1200D. One thing I like to look at is making sure that the haze isn't overly done. So we're going to get the right level of haze and get things looking good. Haze makes everything cinematic. Again, Cine Bay all over this, man. Cine Bay. Sprinkle it. Now we're setting up the establishing shot a big wide of the entire scene. We're going to keep that warmth of the key lights by staying at 5600 Kelvin in camera. That'll give us more of a difference between the color contrast that we're hoping to get. All right, this is looking awesome. Let's roll this one. Okay, so we're moving in for some close-ups right now. That wide looked really great. But we're going to kind of switch up the lighting a little bit to really favor these close-ups. I'm actually going to bring the key light on the opposite side. As you can see behind me, they're setting up a 4x4. We're putting a P600C in there. If I didn't have the light, we also have practicals that we can motivate from. And maybe we turn the brightness of that practical up or maybe you crank the ISO. Perhaps you're using a camera that has dual native ISO. There's no excuse not to get a great image. It's just using what's available. I want this to be the shadow. We're going to kill that key, creating a Rembrandt lighting on the shadow side of his face. We're breaking those rules. It's not consistent with the wide. But that's what music videos are for, right? Let's break some rules and get this close-up. And that was it, you guys. That's a wrap. Guys, thank you guys so much. That was awesome. I hope you really got something out of it. I hope you thought it was cool. I thought it was awesome. Credit to an amazing crew. We have such an amazing crew that we lean on that makes us look really good. I mean, I feel like the biggest win of today was really understanding Trevor's energy throughout. And it just makes for a better story and obviously a look. We covered all the grounds and that's kind of like music videos. You get to play with all that stuff. And today, I think we did a great job. But before we go, we got some comment questions. So as a reminder, drop your questions in the comments down below. We want to hear about anything related to filmmaking, to being on set. How Tway gets his hair so quaffty and perfect. Let's hit some questions. Let's do it. I got myself not an aperture light dome. But the first question is... How do you get on set in the first place? That's a great question. I hear people joining Facebook groups and joining little communities where, you know, filmmakers are always looking for opportunities to connect. You can even use shooting BTS as a way to get on set. Get in the DMs, ask your friends. There's always a way in. And once you're in, there's no way out, baby. Intro initiative when you're on set. That's how you get on to more and more sets after your first one. That was it. Let's get out of here. I'm tired. Moses is rushing us out of here. Trevor, here's your guitar. Pretend like you know what blocking is. I'm just going to explain it to you for the sake of it. And pretend like you know what I'm talking about. I think I already got it. I picked up on it. Explain to them. Well, don't argue with me. Action.