Lighting Tutorials?

knightly

knightly

It's been brought to my attention that having a series of broken down, how-to, lighting tutorials might be something that would be both useful to folks and possibly lucrative to me.

My initial thoughts would be to either produce 1/week or so (given time) on topics of:

light as a physical object

Lighting Control

-0 lights
-1 light
-2 lights
-3 lights
-4 lights
-more lights
Standard Lighting setups
non-standard lighting setups

no-budget
low-budget
high-budget

rent vs. own
Exposure levels
Mood / ratios
on set shortcuts
Reading a set to get believable lighting
Color of lights

Q&A
Live shows / hangouts?


Thoughts / Comments? Would you all find these useful?
 
Most importantly to me (selfishly)… once they're all made, would you be willing to buy a DVD or digital package of them?
 
Yes. Depending on the price point, of course. :)

There is probably a market for some kind of ongoing subscription service as well, if you were interested in continuing to produce more information on a regular basis. Some kind of web-based training, with optional downloadable or DVD order, etc.

I'd be happy to talk through some of those options/idea with you in perhaps a more private setting. :)
 
you should release beginners version for free then the rest at an affordable paid amount like £3 - £5 charging more than that would be deemed selfish in my eyes.
 
8salacious9 said:
you should release beginners version for free then the rest at an affordable paid amount like £3 - £5 charging more than that would be deemed selfish in my eyes.
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You haven't taken many college courses or specialized training, have you?

The subject matter knightly is talking about covering is probably more on par with the kind of courses taught at FXphd than some random dude showing off his lights filmed with an iphone.. :P
 
Will Vincent said:
You haven't taken many college courses or specialized training, have you?

The subject matter knightly is talking about covering is probably more on par with the kind of courses taught at FXphd than some random dude showing off his lights filmed with an iphone.. :P
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no I'm self taught, I'm presuming anyone who wants to check out his proposed stuff would be from the same mass growing culture as me, then again I am probably from a different generation to you, we don't like to pay for things, only if we find value in them.

Also i think my suggestion is fair, I don't think iv seen anything from knightly that makes me think this guy is a lighting genius.. no offence intended just haven't seen any posts from you, maybe you could post them so we can see your techniques being used?
 
No problems 8S9, fair questions. I'm thinking lower budget point for the later purchases. I've become the first call No-Budget DP for several local filmmakers. I went to school and have a degree for this type os stuff, but most of the learning I did on these topics predates my schooling.

I have been through many of the available content online, and I've found a lot of gaps in the learning… There's plenty of nano-budget stuff… but they tend to be more "buy a clamp light and point it at your subject" than being specific replications of established lighting techniques. It also seems to me to be a fishing expedition for information once you get out there, and non-of it is presented in a concise knowledge building format that starts with no assumption of experience/understanding/skillset and builds up from there.

I've spent thousands of hours over the past decade and a half researching these techniques through the web, through BTS on films, through School, and through conversations with professional DPs and Gaffers/CLTs. Other than time expended, I paid nothing for the knowledge (stating again that I'd learned most of it before attending school), so while I'll want to try to recoup production expenses, I also want to try to "give back" to the educational ether. I'd rather have folks benefit from my research than make a hefty profit off of it.

I also welcome you calling me out on my work, I'm happy to show it. Here's a couple I have laying around, I'll have to look for others as they're on my Editing workstation, not my laptop. I have detailed my entire learning process (the whole production company's for that matter) at my website (link below in my signature). There are moments in the earlier stuff where you can see the information making its way into our work if you watch them in order. You can also see where we upgraded equipment after I started running into limitations either in lighting control available, or CRI issues with our CFL lights that we were running for so long.

Turning a brightly lit locker room into a moody end to a thriller
Screen shot 2011-11-21 at 10.36.35 PM.jpg
The Sun was too bright coming through the windows, so all of the sunlight on their faces is faked with lighting and gels. We needed it to look natural at this point in the story, but had a specific lighting map we were trying to achieve in terms of contrast ratios throughout the piece.
Screen shot 2011-11-21 at 10.37.16 PM.jpg
 
I'll buy, but only if you show things that are not already readily available on the internet.

Every lighting tutorial teaches three point lighting, and inverse square law, etc. What I don't know how to do is how to light the environment with a reasonable amount of lights, and without a generator and without HMIs. What I mean is, if I'm shooting at night, inside a house, and the subjects are lit, the trouble is that the background, the walls, the room in the background that can be seen through the doorway or passageway is not being paid attention to. And in the final edit it's quite evident that my stuff is amateur.

How do I make sure that I'm paying attention to all of this and what can I do to make sure that this can be done in a reasonably cheap way, even if it means using tungstens and playing with the white balance. The real question is what is the best way to make things look like a film in any given situation, on the cheap?
 
As much as I think this could be a good idea (I've been tempted to do something similar myself in the past), I wonder where the point of difference would be to the many readily available courses (i.e. Alex Buono's Visual Storytelling, Hollywood Camera Work, fxphd even Film Riot). Perhaps price-point - but then Film Riot is free.

To sit at an in-between price value, I guess it would at least have to provide more use than Film Riot's videos - but then you also have blogs like Hurlbut's and magazines such as Videomaker that have free articles online.

I originally thought about creating a lighting blog full of 'lessons' - I want to cover things such as realistic night lighting, with and without budget and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I just need to find the time to do it!
 
I'll be honest, the only one I've personally watched is Alex Buono's - but Alex Buono's is basically identical in purpose and outline as this seems it will be.

I'd heard Hollywood Camera Work covered a bit, but I may be wrong.

IMO, I've found that actually doing (i.e. hands-on workshop) is the best/only way to really understand lighting. I also think there's a lack of understanding with newbies on the fundamentals of the thought behind lighting - i.e. why we light, why we put lights where we do etc.
I have a couple ideas on the best way this sort of thing could be delivered.
 
I've seen ( Edit: meant "Lighting for Film and Television", not hollywood camera work. I was going through hollywood camera work. can't seen anything on lighting, just camera movement). It's all about subject lighting. 3point. Nothing about lighting the environment. Nothing about lighting a background other than with a cookie pattern. I'm telling you guys, the only gap in the lighting tutorials already available is the background / environment lighting. Fill this gap you experts.

How does one light a room? How does one light a boardroom, a bedroom with small windows, a bathroom, a garage, any place with fixtures? Subject lighting is everywhere. Environment lighting is nowhere.
 
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I'd heard Hollywood Camera Work covered a bit, but I may be wrong.
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I haven't seen them with lighting material. You may be thinking of... well heaps of other sources.

Knightly, your competition is very stiff. There are heaps and heaps of tutorials out there, both paid and free. Since you're not a big name cinematographer, I'd imagine that if it was a decently priced version marketed right, you'd find yourself carving out a small sliver of the niche industry. Would it be big enough to be worth your time, effort and cost?

I'm sorry to say, it's not something that I'd buy, though I'm not your target audience so no great loss. Though, could I think of someone who would buy it. I'd also say no. Do I know people who could use it, of course.
 
Camera and lighting tutorials are everywhere. From gear lists to techniques. If you found a clever way to promote and market these tutorials to make them look truly helpful to the indie filmmaker (and deliver), then you might have a shot.
 
@Knightly
As others have said, your competition is stiff. Here is what I'd buy in a heartbeat:

"Lighting for Story"
- Use or write a simple, short script with beginning, middle and end, AND an identifiable theme. Couple of actors at most.
- Use or develop a shot list or storyboards for the same script (prob. not necessary).
- Start your tutorial by lighting the first shot. Explain "why" you chose to light the location the way you did. Now, you decided to keep a character's eyes in shadow. Why? Film noir lighting? Why? Etc., etc.
- Change your "director's" intent/vision and light the same shot a different way, explain why. Does it work better? Why or why not?
- Now you can discuss the technical lighting details, but within context of the story and your D.P.'s vision.

Not sure I explained it very well, but I've found this sort of tutorial rare or non-existent (if I'm wrong, somebody let me know!). Partially because it gets into the *art* of lighting, which is tough to teach.

Anyway, just an idea. Best of luck!

kj
 
I've done an inordinate amount of seeking, watching, and absorbing all of the tutorials you've brought up. What I personally haven't seen is a end to end, well structured, findable and approachable resource for beginning and intermediate filmmakers. I've had to compile all of the knowledge I have from so many disparate resources that when I try to find them to link to specific topics while answering questions here, I often fail to be able to recall where I'd found the particular piece of information.

For me, having the information available and having it accessible are not always the same thing.
 
This would be in the "Post-Tool kit" portion in my tutorials as I've concerted them out. I'd like the viewer to have the method / conceptual toolkit built before showing specific break downs. But definitely working through specific breakdowns. I'd like to bypass script writing, camera, blocking, etc… except where it informs the lighting design. Also How to look at a scene that you've lit and be able to analyze what you've designed, to see if anything is "off" about it… which I've encountered on set many times.

In the shoot shown in the pix above, we had an establishing shot in a high school library. We had a doorway in the background that was lit by the existing lighting in the building and slime windows letting sunlight in. We lit the foreground to match that look… when we looked at the screen, I noted that something was off about it. The mid ground was a giant dark horseshoe in the frame that needed pushing up. After 15 minutes of moving lights, we suddenly had a believable shot on screen… rather an image of a location that looked poorly lit.

The how to light a set for story and believability is absolutely something I'd like to address with this. Again, I've found those tutorials… they're few and far between and tucked away as little tidbits in commentary tracks and on obscure DVD BTS. My goal is really to make the info easier to find. The overlap I'd have with other tutorials is only to make all of the information live in one place in a Concept to Color Grade resource that covers bottom up techniques and differing budgetary solutions.

- On set tips and tricks for making real world setups work for you to give the director and the DP what they're looking for more quickly; specific examples from my portfolio of scenes and script breakdowns (the one we currently have in post, I spent a couple of hours on the phone ranking each scene from 1-10 for amount of shadow / contrast ratio lighting list for when we got to set. Putting my fill dimmer at the preset numbers 1-10, got us the correct mood for that moment in the script.

In the edit, we moved things around… and the fill ends up reflecting the mental state of our heroine as she progresses through her investigation of a series of deaths in her high school. Even though the script was fundamentally "day in the life" in its structure, when we moved around the scenes for sake of storytelling, linking the mood of the lighting to the main character allowed us to inform the viewer in a subtle way what was happening around her.

- Final looks during blocking walkthroughs for "Glings." Highly reflective moments that distract from the shot that need be fixed in the lighting setups.

- Lighting for the Color Grade… using color strongly that will eventually be dialed back out later to allow for better and more subtle masking during the grade.

- How do I replicate the look of a piece of reference material… how do I dissect lighting?

- How can I make my clamp lights work for me like your expensive setup (it can be done, it's just harder and requires a strong understanding of the physics of light)?

That sort of stuff...


kjones said:
@Knightly
As others have said, your competition is stiff. Here is what I'd buy in a heartbeat:

"Lighting for Story"
- Use or write a simple, short script with beginning, middle and end, AND an identifiable theme. Couple of actors at most.
- Use or develop a shot list or storyboards for the same script (prob. not necessary).
- Start your tutorial by lighting the first shot. Explain "why" you chose to light the location the way you did. Now, you decided to keep a character's eyes in shadow. Why? Film noir lighting? Why? Etc., etc.
- Change your "director's" intent/vision and light the same shot a different way, explain why. Does it work better? Why or why not?
- Now you can discuss the technical lighting details, but within context of the story and your D.P.'s vision.

Not sure I explained it very well, but I've found this sort of tutorial rare or non-existent (if I'm wrong, somebody let me know!). Partially because it gets into the *art* of lighting, which is tough to teach.

Anyway, just an idea. Best of luck!

kj
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