Trick For Shooting Interviews With Only 1 Light

A cinematographer's biggest enemy are images which look flat. The best way to counteract this is by introducing contrast, which can either be done by using different areas of light and shadow, or by using different colours. So let's take a look at a specific type of colour contrast in an interview setting, warm and cool tones, and show how you can very simply create images like this by using only a single film light. That light will be Nanlite's new FC500C, who is also the sponsor of this video. When an object is heated to a high enough temperature it emits light. This light can fall across a range of different colours and is commonly measured through the unit Kelvin. A lower Kelvin value represents light sources which are considered warmer, for example an incandescent light bulb, whereas cooler or more neutral sources of light, like sunlight, will have a higher Kelvin value. Although there are a whole host of different light sources that can be used which come with a diverse range of cooler and warmer colour temperatures, I'd say there are two main Kelvin values which are most often used by filmmakers. The most popular warm light source is what we call Tungsten, which has a value around 3200 Kelvin, the value that all Tungsten filament incandescent light bulbs give off. The other popular cooler light source is Daylight, at 5600 it's the approximate temperature of natural sunlight. Before LED lights, which are now capable of easily changing to a range of different colour temperatures, most film lights either emitted Tungsten light or Daylight, whether that was the warmer incandescent bulbs, Fresnels, Parcans or Dinos, or the cooler Daylight Kinoflo bulbs, HMIs or even the sun itself. Because of this film stocks were designed to capture light at either a 3200 Kelvin Tungsten balance or a 5600 Daylight balance. These same Kelvin balances can be found on digital cameras, as well as giving you the option to dial in a custom Kelvin value anywhere in between. However, many cinematographers still stick to filming with a camera colour temperature set to either 3200 Kelvin or 5600 Kelvin. Let's take a look at what happens when you shoot cameras in different lighting conditions at these two different Kelvin bases. If we set the colour temperature on a camera to be 5600 and we light it with natural sunlight that also has a Kelvin value of 5600, then the image will have true natural colour. However, if we keep the camera at 5600 and instead light with a 3200 source, then the image will appear warm. But if we keep this warm light and change the colour balance on the camera to 3200, then again the colour will be captured with a true and natural look. However, if we take that same camera set to 3200 back outside under natural sunlight, then the image will be cool. If we circle back to the beginning, I mentioned how cinematographers often make footage more interesting by lighting with different colour temperatures in the same frame to create contrast. If those different colours are placed at different planes of depth, it can also make images feel a bit more three-dimensional. An easy way to apply this idea is to light the subject in the foreground with light that has a different colour temperature to the light that is in the background. For example, lighting the subject with a lamp that is a warmer 3200 Kelvin and lighting the background with a cooler 5600 Kelvin light. One of the reasons that this is quite visually pleasing is due to complementary colour theory. If you look at a colour wheel, complementary colours are those which are opposite each other. Because of this contrast, they are often viewed as being visually pleasing when placed next to each other. So a green and a red are complementary, or for the sake of this video, a warmer orange colour and a cooler blue colour are complementary. Now let's take this knowledge and light two different but simple interview setups using cool and warm colour contrast and only one film light. That light is the FC500C, a new RGB capable high output LED from Nanlite. When shooting documentaries or lighting interviews, I like to carry around as little gear as possible that will be quick and easy to set up, yet still able to create beautiful photographic results. This 500C is great, as it gives you the flexibility to change to various Kelvin colour balances or any RGB colour which you'd like. It also has a high enough output that you can soften it with diffusion or softboxes and still have more than enough illumination power. You can also connect it to the Nanlink app on your phone where you can dim, change colour temperature or even go into effects modes wirelessly, all while sitting behind the camera. This makes balancing light levels a breeze. If you're interested in the FC500C or other Nanlite products, go check out the link in the description. For this first interview setup we're going to set the colour balance on our camera to 3200 Kelvin in the menu. Then we're going to place our subject in a room and turn off the house lights so that she is only illuminated by the natural ambient sunlight coming through the windows. Because the camera is set to 3200K and the light source is about 5600K, the image will have a cooler colour tint to it. So even though we haven't set up any film lights yet, we already have a nice monochromatic blue that we can use, compliments of the sun. In order to get a natural looking skin tone I want to set up our light to have the same colour temperature as the colour balance on the camera, so 3200K. To soften the light quality of the 500C I'm going to attach a softbox to the front of it. Then to make those shadows even more gentle and pretty I'm going to shine the light through a second layer of silk diffusion which I've rigged to a stand. The issue now is that although the key light on the subject looks nice and soft and natural, our film light is also hitting the wall in the background of our shot. If you're going for more of a high key look then this may work, but since I want to create a bit more colour contrast it's an issue, since the 3200K film light overpowers the natural 5600K sunlight in the background. I'd also like for the background to feel a little bit darker to create more of a light and dark contrast between the subject and background. I'm going to use a trick called flagging the light. All this means is that I want to stop the light from hitting the back wall, yet still have the light hit the subject. To do this I've very simply rigged some blackout on one side so that it blocks the light from hitting the background. So there we have it, a simple interview shot with the camera set to 3200K, the key light also set to 3200K and letting the 5600K natural ambience from the sun fill in the background. I'm gonna shoot our second interview setup at night, using the same idea of colour contrast but just flipping things around a bit. Here I've set the colour balance on the camera to 5600K. Technically I'm actually going to use more than one light here, but these lights are not film lights. They are what we call practicals, lights built into the set which can be seen in the shot. For example a lamp and an incandescent ceiling house light. To my eye these pracks actually look a bit warmer than 3200, but there's somewhere around that ballpark. Since the camera is set to 5600K and these are around 3200K, they will read much warmer than neutral light. Then like I did in the previous setup, I want the key light to be the same as the camera's colour balance, 5600, with our practicals in the background somewhere around 3200. Another reason for placing a secondary light source like a practical or natural sunlight in the background of the shot behind the subject, besides creating a colour contrast, is because it gives a subtle backlight to the subject, which will help to create a bit more separation and depth in the frame. As I did last time, I've also flagged the key light off the back wall to make the background a bit darker and better emphasise the colour contrast. There we go, two different simple setups that both use one film lamp and play with the idea of colour temperature to create frames with a bit more depth and contrast. Hopefully you enjoyed the video, finally I'd like to say thank you to all of you, especially the amazing supporters on Patreon who keep the channel active. Otherwise until next time, thanks for watching and goodbye.