Principles of Cognitive Control over Task Focus and Task Switching

Hello and welcome to 4-Minute Film School. My name is Valentina V, and today we are talking about commercial lighting setups. Let's go. I'm here with commercial cinematographer Dave Cortez. He's worked with a lot of cool artists, Trippy Red, Churches, Marshmello, and today we're talking about corporate lighting or commercial lighting. Specifically, these kind of shots you would see in an infomercial, in a corporate video, in an interview, and also I noticed that all of these shots have a big window source in them. What do we have to kind of keep in mind when working with windows? It's a good rule of thumb to use the window as your key or an augment from that and then just wrap the source around talent, but the more windows you have, the more light you have coming in, the more lights you need to bring in to make up for that extra exposure. It's also okay to let your windows blow out if you need to, just to make sure that it's matching the look that you want. All right, so let's go take a look at our first setup. So this first setup is kind of my worst nightmare as a DP because it's a room full of windows. So you're thinking, how do I even control this light? So how did you go about that? So for this setup, we put talent aligned with the corner of the room. So we had the leading lines from the walls, from the floor, and the windows all leading to the talent's face. So even though the windows are going to be a little bit blown out, the face is what you're paying attention to. And then we also used a little bit of fog in the background to make the windows feel more like a bloom and less like a digital sensor clipping up with the exposure. So as far as lights that you then brought into the scene, what was the first light? So we used a 120D II with a Light Dome II, and that was just rimming her as if it was coming off the windows behind her. We still needed a lot of light to fill in her face to make sure that she stood out with the bright windows behind her. So we brought in four 300Ds, which we put onto one stand, and then that went through a four by frame of opal, and then that itself went through an eight by frame of magic cloth. And that was right next to the talent to get as much exposure out of that and softness as we could. Using the four by frame between the eight by and the source made it feel like one source by the time it hit the eight by frame, and it also allowed us to have the lights a little bit closer to the frame than we normally like, and that's just because of the location size limitations. So you also added a cutter at the bottom of that. What was that? So we added an eight foot wag flag, which is pretty much just a paddle with a bunch of rolled up black grid on it that is used as a great bottomer or topper for eight by frames and larger frames like that. So I was able to cut the light off of her body while still keeping a good look on her face, and that's just to, again, draw the audience's attention to her face. You also introduced some negative fill there on the left side of the face. So we added a four by flop just on the left side of camera, and that was just to get a little bit more of a ratio on her face than we had before. So to give that definition, having that negative fill, super good, super useful. Even high key lighting can still feel motivated, and you can still have a contrast ratio. Yeah, let's take a look. So this is our last setup, and it's actually the easiest, I think. It's an over the shoulder interview setup with, again, the window is in the frame, but the window itself isn't doing much. So how do you augment that window? Right, so when we started off with this, we put an ND6 on the front of the lens, and we also stopped down a little bit. So that means that everything outside of the window was exposed. Then we used our lights to match that. So we brought in a 300D with a light dome too. Also, it had the control grid in front as well as the fusion, and that was just boomed out behind her, giving a bit of a rim from behind and also acting as the key. And then you had another light, a 120D with a light dome off right, kind of behind our over the shoulder talent. Exactly. So that was just helping to wrap the light a little bit, and it gave a little bit of that Rembrandt triangle down here on her fill side, and then that was just supplementing the window that we had flagged off with a WAG flag on camera right. Especially with interview lighting, it's really important to just build off of your environment and use what you already have. All right, let's take a look. So there's your commercial lighting episode, specifically using big windows in your shot. So Dave, what are the things that we should keep in mind yet again? So with those big windows, you can always wrap that light with your own big source. Just remember that the more light is in the frame, the more light you need to bring in to supplement that. Also, don't be afraid to bloom those windows if it matches the scene. This brings me to our comment question. Do you know any scenes from a movie or a TV show that used huge windows as a light source? I want to know what it is and how they used it. The best answer is going to win an SKB case. Just the case though, not all the lights inside. If you have a question for Dave or for me, all of our social media is going to be down in the description, so go check it out. And if you like this, if you like what we do, please actually do subscribe and like. It really does help and we appreciate it. Other than that, have a great day. Bye.