How to ACTUALLY turn everything CINEMATIC with Lighting!

The most important factor in achieving the cinematic look is the light. The difference between a $10,000 camera setup and a $2,000 camera setup is around 10-20%. But the difference between a simple lighting and cinematic lighting is day and night. It's achievable with one light, two light and sometimes nothing but the available light. When it comes to cinematic lighting, it's all about... To create cinematic shots, you must develop a taste for what you regard as a good-looking shot and the elements that make it so. Over the past year, I've been saving the images I like the most from different movies and shows in a notebook, in order to create some sort of a reference book. Simply studying well-made shots and taking notes about what you observe can teach you a lot about cinematography, from the composition and framing to the angle and quality of the lights and how they grab your attention and direct your eyes to see what they want you to see. The good-looking shots, in my taste, are the ones who succeed in creating depth and making a two-dimensional image look a bit more three-dimensional, mostly with contrast and stacking up different layers. I've started this with just shots from movies and TV shows. But recently, I think even animations and drawings are incredibly inspirational. And there's one way to make this learning process even faster. This frame contains two bright windows that's supposed to resemble street lamps or moonlight. The lights are harsh and coming from below. We can start from there. To turn our boring bedroom into something close to our reference, I used two Zhiyun X60s and placed them under the two windows with 20% power and 5800 color temperature. Since they're small and battery-powered, you can fit them easily anywhere. The second light is a soft edge light, motivated by the windows coming from behind to separate her from the background. I used a Zhiyun X100 with a small softbox and a grid and set it to 5800 with 50% power and placed it right behind the subject's head. The next light can be the practical, the key light, and the reason for the reflections on the table all at the same time. So I just used a power bulb. The last light is for the bright spot on the wall, and for that, we used the Molus 500B with a Fresnel lens in order to control the light on a small portion of the wall. And because clean windows are not that interesting, spraying some waters on them can create an extra layer of depth. And since the room is very small, I used a 2.8mm from Typog Cimera C lenses. They're very compact, fast and suitable for solo operation. Then we just need a couple of props and a very slow handheld shot. Pre-production is always beneficial in filmmaking. Even this video was planned 3 weeks ago through the best app for organizing ideas, Milanote. The first thing in pre-production of this video was to write a script and dividing the whole story to 5 sections. Then, it's the music that will determine the mood and pace of the video. So I saved all the songs that I thought would match the vibe in Milanote. The costumes and their color palette had been planned before in Outfitboard as well. Something to decently separate the subject from the background. Once the first draft is complete, I will begin adding references from other films in order to make the pre-production board a bit more visual. After choosing at least one song for each section of the video and finalizing the costumes and outfits, it's finally time to make the shot list and storyboard. We used Milanote's drawing tools for that as well. By organizing your ideas in this way, you have a much higher chance of doing your project the way you really want it to do. Milanote has lots of different templates for every kind of project. It's very easy to use. And the best thing about it? It's free! Without any time limits. You can use all the tools and features without any subscription. I've been using it for 5 years now and I highly recommend it. You can check them out now with the link in the description. And thanks again to Milanote for sponsoring this video. Lighting nighttime exteriors is actually a lot easier than what people think. Because usually half the job is already done by your location. You just need to put the right thing in the right place. And that's it! All the scenes you watched were lit with just a single light, in order to enhance the available light to a more pleasing look. The payphone scenes were lit with the Zhiyun X60 with a softbox and a grid on a 45 degree angle. And all the green and orange backlights were provided by the bar behind. For the second scene, we just wrapped the orange backlights that were coming from the shop and street lamps with the Zhiyun X60 on a softbox with a 32000 color temperature to make it more believable. The next scene was just a magnetic tube light placed on the ceiling with the same color temperature as the available lights. And the very last scene was lit with an ATM sign. We just placed the Zhiyun X60 with a 32000 color temperature behind the subject to act like a street lamp. I think the most important aspect in lighting is controlling. In almost every shot in this video we need to control the lighting somehow. With grids, blackboards, choosing the right angle. It doesn't matter if it's 1 light, 10 lights or even nothing but the natural light. And we also failed 100 times. Some scenes didn't work out, some shots didn't look good. It's always part of the process and it happens to everyone. And as cliche as it sounds, if you just don't give up and keep doing it, you will be amazing at it.