Shooting with Practicals | Motivating Light

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“Practical Lights” are any light fixtures that are visible in the shot. These can be great for background depth or even lighting your subject. The issue with having practical lights providing the light for the subject is that to make them bright enough you will likely blow out the highlights. The alternative is to have a light out of frame hitting the subject, motivated by the light coming from the practical. Today on 4 Minute Film School, we’ll show you how to set up a light that accurately imitates the light coming from practicals.

In this video, Matt from the A-Team shows how to motivate light from a lamp in-frame. First, he looks at what kind of light the lamp is giving off on its own. This will help inform the color and softness that the additional light needs to be. Next, he sets up a light outside of the frame and matches the color and quality of the original light. This is done using either RGB capabilities or gels. Lastly, he uses light shaping tools to make the size and spread of the light coming from the lamp. This matches the size of the light source in the scene.

The main aspects addressed in this video are light color and light quality. Light color is important for selling that these two lights are one light. If your lights aren’t the same color, you need a way to match them. Light quality refers to how soft or hard a light is on a subject. Matching the same quality that the practical would be giving off is a good way to sell that they’re the same light.

Lighting with practicals can be a fun way to add interest to your shots. Sometimes the light from the practicals looks great and you don’t need to modify it at all; but sometimes you need to add additional lights, and it’s important to know how to motivate light properly. The goal with cinematography is always to light scenes without making them look lit. Understanding how to do this well will help make your shots look natural, and cinematic without being distracting.


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