Lighting for Single-Camera TV | 3 Cinematic Styles

What's going on guys, Ted here with the A-Team. Today we're going to be talking about cinematic TV shows, how to light them, and how do we get started. Let's do this. What's up guys, today I'm here with Valentina Vy. What's up? So Vy is not only the new host for 4 Minute Film School, but she's also a DP that has worked with AT&T, Nike, Adobe, honestly all the brands out there. And today, to kick things off, Valentina's actually going to be teaching a couple tutorials first as a guest. So, Vy, what are we talking about today? Today's really exciting. We're talking about how to set up lighting for dialogue scenes, but specifically for different genres of television. All right, so when we approach lighting for television, what are the first things that we got to think about? Well, number one, genre. And I'm not just talking about whether it's comedy or drama, you also have to think about, is it multi-camera, is it single cam? The lighting for The Office is not going to be the same as the lighting for Breaking Bad. Today we're focusing on only single camera TV shows. Number two, you have to think about your locations, because where you are, whether you're on a set, or whether you're in a practical location, is going to matter, and the lighting's going to have to match that. Sometimes you're on a set, and you can control everything around you, but sometimes you can't. And thirdly, if you're shooting a wide master shot, and you're going in for close-ups, you can change the lighting. You can sweeten them up a little bit. Don't be afraid to experiment. So we're gonna go jump into a couple real-world scenarios. Let's do this. All righty, so we're here on our first lighting setup. What are we going for here? We're going for a network comedy. So like The Good Place, or New Girl, or Fresh Off the Boat. Right, happy, and they're usually shot with a two-shot master, and then over the shoulders, with like a dirty shoulder in the frame. So that's exactly what we went for. Okay, so for our first light, what are we using here? Well, we wanted a nice, soft light in the front. So we introduced two 120 D2s with Light Dome 2s on them, and we wanted to make sure that that light fall-off on the subject's faces was nice and soft, but the daylight was a little bit too much for our scene. We had a lot of browns happening in the background, a lot of yellows, so we just put some quarter CTO on each light inside the gel holder, just to make sure that it was a little bit warmer. Generally speaking, indoors, you're gonna get tungsten lighting, so he's matching those lights in the soft key. Now for the back lights, what are you using there? Well, we wanted to make sure that the subjects were a little bit popped off of the background. If everything's bright, then nothing is really standing out. So to make our subjects stand out, we had LS1Cs, the color temperature controlled lights, all the way on the tungsten setting, and we actually clamped them to the beams that were in the space. We had our subjects sit down. This is a good example of how location affects what the subjects can do, because if they stood up, they would have hit the lights with their heads. And then finally, for our last lights, I saw that you set up two lights that were actually not even hitting the actors at all. What were those doing? Well, we wanted to make sure that everything was bright, because if we had no light on the background, it would be a totally different genre. It would be something more of a drama. So comedy, everything is lit up, everything is bright, so we put two 120 D2s, and we added a Fresnel mount to each of them, and that Fresnel was able to concentrate the beam angle and send it further down into the background if we just had a reflector. It would ping the actors, and it would affect the lighting that was on the actors themselves. So for background lighting, really watch that beam angle and make sure that it doesn't hit your actors if you don't want to hit your actors. All right, so for the close-ups, you mentioned sweetening them up. What does that mean? Well, if you just switch the camera, and you switch the lens, and you move it to a different orientation, it's not gonna look the way you want it to look with the current lighting setup. So what we did was we turned off one of the 120 D2s. We didn't need that much lighting to be hitting the shoulder of the subject whose shoulder was dirty in the frame, but we did keep both of the top lights because that shoulder did have a really nice sort of highlight going. And then we turned off one of the Fresnels in the background, and we only engaged one of them. And we sort of focused it directly behind our subject just so the light would be a little bit more directional. And then we introduced a fill-in bounce on one side of the subject's face so that that lighting would be even softer. So fine adjustments to your lighting when you go in for that close-up, and then of course softening up that face to make it a little bit more beautiful for the lighting for your talent. Again, your close-ups and your wides don't need to match. So let's go check out some of that footage right now. RTV, so what is our second lighting setup? The second lighting setup is for a premium or cable drama. Think about like Riverdale that's on the CW or Homecoming that's on Amazon Prime or basically anything on Netflix. Well, we use the same exact set, but it looks completely different. And that's all based on the genre, but also the space limitations. In this case, we didn't need to shoot a master two-shot. So we only shot singles of each actor. Gotcha, so using that same space, transforming it through lighting. We placed a 120D II with a Light Dome II just like in the previous setup, but we only needed one. And we put a lot of CTO on it to make it even grittier, even warmer than usual because we also had a practical in the back and we wanted to match the lighting to the practical. So I love this tip. You don't have to put your key light from the front. People always think it's from the front. Three-point lighting, putting your key light from the back and then you're filling with something else. What was that? We just put a gold bounce to fill it up and just provide a little bit of fill. I honestly didn't wanna have too much diffusion. I just wanted a strong shadow and just the side of her face, be it just a little bit kissed by light. Gotcha, so that's our key and our fill. Now for our background light, I saw you set up one more tiny light. What was that? Yeah, we set up a Mini 20. This was a Mini 20C, so it could also go tungsten so that it could match all the other lighting. And we closed up the barn doors a little bit so it could create an interesting slash on this painting in the background. And then finally, I saw, you talked about it before, but that practical light, do you have any considerations of where to put that? You wanna put that somewhere that it makes sense in the scene and in the composition. We composed it a little bit differently. We didn't put our subject at the one-thirds line. We put her at the bottom in the corner. And you can do that when you're shooting a drama because there are really no hard and fast rules. But what I noticed with this lighting setup that we had was her eyes were getting lost. Personally, I enjoy having a little eye light. So we set up a little LED panel with some CTO on it, turned it up to just 2% just for the little spark in the eye but not to really affect her face too much. And then when you went for the reverse, how did you change the lighting? If he's more dominant in the scene and she is sort of listening to him talk, I wanted her to be looking up at him and him to be looking down at her. So not only did I change the lighting, but I also changed the way the camera was looking. It was tilted up when looking at him. So when I tilted the camera up, I noticed that now the staircase emerges behind him. And instead of having the staircase just fall off into darkness, we wanted to light it. So we took a 120 D2, we put CTO on it so that it matched the color temperature of all our other lighting in the scene. And we just pointed it straight down the staircase, let it cascade off each step and create a little bit more intrigue in the scene and also match what was sort of going on in the background of the reverse shot. All right, so shot, reverse shot, we're changing our background lighting to make sure that they match, but they both have different types of visual interest. Let's go check out some of that footage right now. Okay, so now we're on to our third lighting setup. V, what are we talking about here? Well, sometimes you don't have the lights. You don't have the resources to buy all this stuff. And that's okay. Even big shows like the OA, Atlanta, Breaking Bad, they have a lot of episodes and a lot of shots that were just naturally lit. So for this one, we lucked out. The location had this big windows and it already has a frost on it, so we don't have to worry about any sort of reflections. Now, I know what you're thinking, but Ted, I don't have a window like that. You can find frosted windows basically anywhere, any place that you have diffused glass, this kind of effect can go in. And again, it goes into that second tip, use that location, right? Right, or you could just have curtains on a window, any sort of softening of that window, especially if you're trying to hide the operator and make sure that the operator is not seen in the reflection. Gotcha, so either find or create that soft light. The only thing we did was a big white eight by eight bounce right behind me. Now, for this setup, I took the camera off the tripod on a shoulder rig and my main concern was the ability to move around. I wanted to be able to go in for a closeup, to fold back, to have that two shot. So I wanted that source behind me, whatever that bounce light was, to be big and soft because otherwise you would see my shadow on the actor's faces and that's a no-no. So this giant soft source, soft lighting on both sides allowed us to have this more gritty look but also a little bit more lit than just having the window there. Awesome, so let's go check out a little bit of that footage right now. Alrighty guys, so there's your episode on lighting for TV with Valentina V. V, break it down one more time. All right, number one, what genre is it? And also, is it single cam, multi cam? All of those have certain standards that people like to adhere to. Number two, what's the location? Sometimes there's practicals that you can use or natural lighting that you can use to your advantage. And number three, closeups. If you need to go in for a closeup, know that you can always adjust the lighting to make it a little bit better for you. Right on, so if you like this episode, make sure you hit that like button. Find Aputure on Facebook, Instagram, The Works. Find Valentina V on Twitter, at Valentina V. And just wanna let you know that all of these rules aren't really rules. There's a lot of TV shows that break these standards. So for your question, I wanna know, is there a TV show that you know of that breaks these rules and how do they break it? The best answer will win an Aputure MW. Again, remember, you learn the rules to break them. We're looking for examples that break those rules and kinda show that mastery. So, there you have it, there's your episode. I'm Ted from the A-Team and we will catch you guys in the next one.