Product Lighting | Commercial Cinematography 101

Hey, it's V from the A-Team, and today we're talking about product commercials, specifically, how do you light them? Let's go. Welcome to 4 Minute Film School. My name is Valentina V, and I'm here with Brent Barbeno, who is a cinematographer and co-founder of ShareGrid, and he's fresh off shooting some Nike product videos, so we thought, what better lesson than product video? Yeah. Now, Brent, what is the one thing you would say is most important in a product video? There's a lot, but the number one rule that you always start with is you gotta make the product look good. Make it the best you can possibly do. Every product is different, and every campaign is different, so you really gotta follow what your client wants and the agreement that you have for the campaign. So today, we are having our client be beer companies, and we are shooting beer bottles. Let's take a look. So here's our first setup. Makes sense, it's a bar, it's a beer brand, and we have this beautiful bottle. So what is your first consideration when thinking about how you light this bottle? First thing I look at is color, of course, and this beer bottle in particular has a lot of yellows and tans, and of course, the bottle itself, the glass, is amber. So to complement that, we lit the background with a blue light. We had a quasar forefoot in the back of the bar with hearty gel blue, and just kind of illuminated the background to really make the product pop. And also, the product has blue on the label. Yes. So it complemented that nicely. And the label has a little bit of green, so we actually strategically placed some green bottles in the background to kind of complement and bring out that green in the label. So how do you light the bottle itself? There's a lot of lights that went into lighting just this one bottle, but we'll start with the key. We first keyed it with a 300D with a light dome and a control grid on it, just off to the camera right side of it, just to give it a little bit of shape. And then we brought in a little bit of fill with a gold side flex fill. Once we lit it with the light dome, we noticed that the reflection on the bottle, which obviously is a very long shape, kind of created a circular reflection. We really wanted to get those long, clean, crisp, symmetrical reflections on the bottle. We brought in two flags on either side and trimmed the circular shape of the key light to give it that rectangular reflection that we were looking for. Another way to get long reflections is to use long lights. Yes. So that's also what you did. So to backlight and give a nice rim on the bottle, we used three quasars. We had two, four foot on either side, and then gave it a nice little rim around either side, both perfectly even. And then at the top, we noticed that the cap of the bottle was kind of missing something. We brought in another two foot, just to give that top cap a little kiss of light. So the bottle itself looked like it had a light within it, like it was radiating light. How did you accomplish that? This is actually one of my favorite little secrets with product lighting with bottles. We actually cut out the shape of the bottle in 250 diffusion, taped it on the back, and then we lit it from behind in tungsten mode with the mini 20 light. And it kind of illuminated it and give it a nice little soft, even glow. That's such a good trick. Yeah. And altogether, it creates this beautiful look of the bottle itself. Makes you thirsty. I noticed you added one more light. We noticed there was a staircase in the back that kind of really didn't have anything going for it with a really beautiful brick pattern. So we took an Aputure 120D II with a Leco modifier. We had an amber gel. Because the brick pattern, it was too red. So we kind of made it more yellow, which kind of fit our overall color palette. Amazing. It looks really great. Let's take a look at how you built this. Here's our second setup. It looks a little bit different. Why did you decide to go for this vibe? Yeah, so this is all about paying attention to your client and your brand. This brand's a little more classy, a little more old school looking. So we went with a brick background, a wooden table, and a really interesting lighting mechanism. So we had the same rim light, four foot quasars on either side, two foot quasar up top. And then also, of course, the 250 diffusion taped to the back and shooting light through that to bring out the color of the beer. We had a mini 20 attached to a Dana dolly, which is typically used for camera movement. But we thought we'd kind of spice it up. Why does light have to stand still? Why can't the product stay there and the light move around it kind of like it's a spotlight almost in a fashion show? It just seemed like a cool idea and it fit the branding. I wanted the shot to start with the bottle in silhouette, but we already had a backlight illuminating the bottle. So we actually blocked the backlight at the beginning of the scene. So there really was just that rim around the light. And then as the key dollied into frame and illuminated the bottle, we slowly took out the flag. So it kind of felt like the seamless transition of silhouette and dark into illumination of this beautiful product. And I really like that instead of just flicking the backlight on and off, you decided to do it at the same speed and the same way that that top light was going. Yeah, it's more organic, it's more natural. You don't really notice it to the eye that so much is happening. You also added one more special trick with production design to help that bottle look as appealing as possible. What did you do? If you want a cold drink or cold beer, it's always essential to make the product look like it's sweating, like it's got condensation, like it's cold and ready to go, ready to drink. So we actually use glycerin, which you can buy at any drug store. It's really cheap. You mix it with water, put it in a spray bottle, and you just spray down the bottle. And that mixture actually helps the liquid bead and kind of stay. If you just did water, it kind of runs and gets really wet and doesn't really have that kind of sexy look that you want. This is a really good way to make the bottle look cold and ready to drink. And you can do that for a lot of different drinks that are supposed to be cold. So let's take a look at how you built this. Cool. So that is your four minute foam school on product video, or at least this particular product. Again, things to remember, take a look at the surface of the product and make sure that it is clean, it is spotless, that it's looking exactly like you want it to look. And also don't forget to compliment the labels and the branding of your product. And take a look at the reflections on the actual item itself and make sure that you're shaping the light to compliment the shape and size of the object so that your campaign is memorable. Speaking of memorable campaigns. What is your favorite product campaign and why? We want to know. Put your answer in the comments below and the best answer will receive an Aputure MW, our waterproof underwater light. I also want to give a big thanks to On The Mark Rentals. We rented their camera gear from them through ShareGrid. And I want to give a big thanks to Brent Barbano for being our guest. I'm Valentina V. See you next time.