How to make your Lighting more Cinematic with ONE CHEAP LIGHT

How to make your lighting more cinematic with one cheap light.

In this video, I show you how you can use one cheap light to create a cinematic look.

The position of your light makes all the difference. There isn't one specific thing that makes something look "cinematic" but this is a common technique used if you want a moody low key look.

Here's a link to a similar light (not exactly the same but close as they don't make the one I used in the video anymore) : https://amzn.to/3jkQG7y

Going from a flat high key look with no depth, to a low key moody and cinematic shot.

To show just how accessible and easy this technique is, I'm going to be using an a cheap £20 light from Amazon and I will also give some examples of how you can even use window light to achieve similar results. 

There is nothing special about this light at all, it's a simple 5500K daylight bulb that comes with some very basic diffusion. For these examples as I was working with a cheap light that has no dimmer, I tired to keep the light at roughly the same distance away from the subject. When working with your own lights you will have the option to change the distance or even the power output to adjust the quality of the light to suite your needs.

First we start with nothing, our subject is standing in front of a purple wall and I've used blackout curtains to block out as much natural light as possible. 

Let's introduce our light. 

It's currently placed almost directly behind the camera, pointing down on our subject at roughly a 45 degree angle. 

As you can see, it does the job of lighting the scene and not much else. It's also spilling onto the background quite a lot.

Just by moving the light even slightly to the left of camera, can improve this shot a great deal.

The light now gives us a bit more shape to the face and a nice catch light. I often light interviews in this way, either with an actual light or through a window as it nice a subtle depth to the image. 

If we move the light around even more, you can now see how this introduces even more shadows to face, making it slightly moodier. You could even class this as Rembrandt lighting as it features the signature triangle on the cheek.

Moving the light around even more, it's now completely side on to our subject. This is were it almost becomes a reverse key light, leaving the near side of our subjects face in shadow. 

I added a bit of negative fill as well in this example, to exaggerate the shadow slide slightly more. 

Moving the light almost behind our subject in a reverse key position, produces a very moody cinematic look.

I've added a bit of negative fill again to strengthen those shadows even more. 

This is a common technique used by cinematographers and when used correctly can work really well. 

While still keeping the light roughly in the reverse key position, I moved it slightly closer and added some fill to bring back some details in the shadows. This is a slightly subtler version of the previous example. 

Just to show you how can achieve similar results with just a window, I've used black out curtains and slowly opened them to change the look and feel of the light on our subject. You would need to change the postition of your subject rather than the slight to archive the reverse key look in this scenario.