Top 10 Lighting Mistakes Beginners Make

lighting is arguably one of the most neglected and least understood topics for most beginner videographers and filmmakers I know because I went several years in my video career before really taking the time to understand the elements of good lighting and how it can transform your image so my goal in this video is to prevent you from making a lot of the early mistakes that I made and that I see many of my students making today so I'm going to be sharing with you what I have found to be the top 10 lighting mistakes that I

see beginners make and to help me teach these lighting principles I have on with me today Brady Bessette how's it going I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to teach some lighting tips today now Brady runs his own YouTube channel he's a very talented DP and gaffer or lighting technician we've personally hired him to Gaff several of our projects and I recently teamed up with him to create an all-new in-depth 30 video lighting mini course called lighting Mastery and we just launched it so if you get some good value in this video and would

like to further your knowledge on lighting you can check that out in the description below or as always it is included in our full-time filmmaker course as well but let's now dive into our first mistake okay so the first mistake that I often see beginners running into is over exposing your background or overexposing your environment as a viewer our eye goes to the brightest part of the image so if the background of the window is much brighter than your subject itself it's going to be pretty distracting a method that I used is actually to just

expose for your environment first so before you even bring in any lights I make sure to stop down the camera darken it expose for the windows exposed for the outdoors and then bring in lights selectively where you need it so prime example is say you're shooting in the day inside by a window our first step is to stop down our camera so that window light in the background isn't blown out and really Overexposed and then the next step from there was to bring in a key light to bring up the exposure and the level on

your subject then bring in any other lights that you need to bring up exposure wherever you need in your scene so that way we keep the background and any windows in the scene exposed well as well as keeping a flattering light on your subject which brings us to mistake number two and that is to have a flat image due to poor lighting direction I have a whole separate video on my Channel about this topic but in that video I reference a student of mine who said why does my image look so boring and this master

class interview that I watch looks so cinematic and the biggest difference between these two images is lighting specifically the image on the left is flat and the image on the right is full of depth and dimension and the way to create that depth is through light Direction now most rookies when they place a light on their subject think well I gotta light up my subject really bright so they'll either put a light right in front of their subject or two lights equally bright on either side now if you want a flat look then that's fine

but if you want depth and dimension you'll want to utilize Shadows to shape the curvature of the face the most common lighting pattern used in Hollywood films is called Rembrandt lighting which is when you bring your key light about 45 degrees to the side of your subject and then slightly above your subject this creates a drop shadow on one side of the face and underneath the chin with a little pocket of light on the far side of the face and then you can use feel light to decide how dramatic or undramatic you want that shadow

to be but the point is is that Shadows are good to help you set certain moods most rookies believe that the idea of good lighting is to eliminate all Shadows there is a time for that but generally you want to position your light in a way that creates some Shadows which will give you depth and dimension to your subject to help it feel more three-dimensional and less flat so bring us to the next topic which is really understanding the difference between High high and low key lighting and also just understanding contrast ratios and really working

with or without Shadows so you really want to make sure that you're conveying the mood accurately of your film of your project commercial whatever it is so as Parker mentioned there are times where you're going to want to eliminate Shadows throughout your entire image and this kind of goes towards the direction of something called High key lighting meaning eliminating a lot of the Shadows throughout the entire frame evenly exposed not a lot of contrast and I see this a lot in lighthearted stuff like comedies or romances for example in the office you see everything is

very bright and evenly exposed throughout the entire frame but to contrast that and yes that pun was very much so intended there's a time and place for low-key lighting that's really where you're embracing Shadows you have a lot of dark areas a lot of Shadow areas in this you can see a lot more in stuff like Thrillers or dramas or horror movies where you're really creating this balance between your highlights and shadows in your image and this is done so to create a desired mood a desired feeling or emotion that you want your viewers to

feel you can also understand that direction of light and how it creates a shadow and really the mood that it conveys so for example say you've got this really intense Thriller scene and you've got this really mean guy you might have a light straight over a head your subject because that's going to create these raccoon eyes creating this mystery like you can't see into their eyes kind of feeling then say you take that light from above and put it underneath then you start to get this Ghost Story horror Halloween spooky feeling of lighting creating shadows

in the other direction so moving your light source around can do different things as far as the emotion that it conveys now light direction is just one element of great lighting another important element is light quality which brings us to our next mistake and that is the overuse of hard light most rookies don't understand the difference between soft and hard light and when to use each the common mistake that I see is the overuse of hard light and not even realizing it hard light Which is less flattering on the face makes blemishes and wrinkles more

pronounced and creates harsher abruptor Shadows whereas soft light is more flattering and more forgiving on the skin this creates a more gradual Shadow both hard and soft light have their place but generally for key lighting a subject you're going to want softer light which can be created by having a large light source in relation to the distance to your subject my first light I bought was a little six inch light source and I'd use that little light source to key light my subjects now it was better than having a poorly lit subject but it wasn't

very flattering so I soon realized that I need to put a modifier in between that light source and my subject to make the light source bigger so it could be softer but another mistake I see is people will put a nice big three four five foot diffuser on their light but then they'll have that light 10 15 20 feet away from their subject remember that it's not just how big the light source is it's how big it is in relation to your subject to get soft flight it not only has to be a big light

source but that big light source has to be close to your subject so the farther away your light needs to be for a wider shot for example then the bigger that light source needs to be in order to create soft light that's why you'll see those huge diffusers on big movie sets is to create soft light for a big area and we're not going to go in depth about different diffuser material and modifier options in this video we have full videos inside the course for that but the point is it's important to understand how to

create soft light and when to use it and on the other hand hard light is great to use as back lights or to etch out or outline your subject or great for athletes to show more definition in their veins and muscles so they each do have their place but understand what they do to your image and make light quality decisions accordingly so we talked about light Direction light quality but let's go ahead and talk about light quantity or I guess light output and oftentimes a lot of us as beginners will find ourselves not having enough

light in our scene and especially nowadays it's so easy to Just Jack up your camera's ISO I mean I'm shooting the fx3 and you can shoot 12 800 ISO with a totally clean image so why wouldn't you want to just pump that up you know makes it easy but boosting your ISO should definitely be your last resort when it comes to Bringing light into the frame so if you want your scene to be brighter you're subject to be brighter your first step should be bringing in more light and even with these really dark Moody films

that you see you would be very surprised as to how bright those are actually on the film set everything is going to be exposed really bright so you can get a very clean image on your camera sensor and then that dark look is actually oftentimes brought down in post now you don't always have control over the entire lighting so there are times you will need to resort to stuff like your camera's ISO of course if you can't stop down your lens to be brighter you're gonna have to get exposure from somewhere and that can be

your ISO so say you are on a shoot and you're shooting at night outdoors say your camera can't go any brighter you're gonna get so much noise in your image with boosting your ISO and you're like this just looks terrible something to consider could be moving your subject to a different area with natural light whether it be street lights or Urban lights like City Lights so that way you're getting more exposure naturally thus making your scene brighter that way you don't need to bring up the iso so high now on this topic of not having

enough light a common rookie mistake is to only light your subject and not the rest of your frame or as Brady teaches in the course light spaces not just faces a Telltale sign of an amateur film is when the only thing that's well lit in your frame is your subject and the rest of the frame is lifeless or worse yet completely black now obviously there's a time and place for certain moods that you may want the rest of your frame black and just being able to see only the face but most the time you're going

to want to give some life and dimension to your entire space not just the face next time you watch a Hollywood movie pay attention to how they light the background they will still leave little pockets of Dark Shadows but they will also add little pools of light through practical lights or exaggerated window light to give the scene more texture and contrast when you have the Dynamics of both bright and dark parts of your frame this is often referred to as checkerboard lighting so next time you're lighting a shot if your background feels flat and lifeless

and all the same exposure consider adding a pocket of light or two to give the frame more Dimension and contrast and again there's no right or wrong way to do this just do what feels best for the mood you're trying to create so the next topic definitely does bleed in with lighting faces and spaces and that topic is creating separation between your subject and your background now oftentimes it's very easy to have your subject in a scene and they kind of just like blend into the background especially if there's light colors they can Tan on

a tan or a dark color on a dark color in the background so to draw the viewers attention towards your subject you can do things like adding say a rim light or an edge light to your subject which really tells the viewer there's a hard line separating them between the background you can even see it on me I've got this Edge light acting as a hair light kind of on my shoulder and my arm you can actually see the light in the frame separating me from the background here but also another method rather than just

using this as an edge light is you can create pools of light behind your subject and outline them whether it be a silhouette with light on the background and your subject not really lit or just a contrasting pool of light as well behind them it all comes back down to the creative choice of do you want your subject to fall into the background and kind of fall into the Shadow or do you want them to be more predominantly in the frame in the viewer's attention now with all this light that you're going to be throwing

around to create more depth and dimension in your image a common mistake rookies make is over exposing the skin tones now the first step to avoid overexposing skin would be to know what exposure skin tone should be sitting at now there's no one straightforward answer to this it depends on the color of the skin also depends on the mood of your scene whether you're doing High key or low key lighting whether it's a horror or a light and Airy feel but generally you want the key lit part of your face to sit between about 40

ire and 75 ire Ira being the measurement unit used from 0 to 100 to show the brightness of your image on a waveform and using the website shot deck to pull frames from Hollywood movies and a tool called classic color meter the brightest ire I could find for a keylet part of the face in a popular film was around 75 ire there were some shots that had really bright backlights or rim lights that were being backlit by the Sun for example that were meant to give a dreamy light and Airy feel that would get up

in the 90s but otherwise most skin was in the 60s or 70s for the keylet part of the face for lighter or brighter scenes and in the 50s and 40s for dimmer scenes or darker skin the lowest key light exposure I could find was at 36 ire for a very dramatic shot of Daniel Craig in Skyfall so again somewhere between about 40 and 75 rres where you want to shoot for as for the darker part of the skin it just depends on how much fill light you want to add but in the Stills that I

pulled some of them got as low as one ire but the point is when you're choosing your exposure in camera in combination with choosing the amount of light output you want to add from your key light pay attention to your waveform or your false color tools and try and get your skin tones to sit at a healthy level we won't cover using exposure Tools in detail in this video in the course again we show how to expose for skin properly but when lighting your subject make sure to keep your light quantity in check I hope

we're doing good we get a couple more for you now I want to get into light color and I don't mean like red green blue I mean color temperature and understanding what these numbers mean on a Kelvin scale I'm sure you've heard the term Kelvin understanding color temperature and also the relationship that it has with your camera is very important to get a nice clean look or a desired creative look every white light source will have a different color temperature Sun in the sky middle of the day is often something like 5600 Kelvin but then

as it gets lower in the sky you get something warm nice like 3200 Kelvin or fire can be like deep 2000 Kelvin and then to contrast that Blues cool tones like blue hour after the sun has gone down that could be as cool as like eight nine ten thousand Kelvin on this scale say if you're indoors and you really want like a clean white look but a lot of the lights in your scene have these 2700 Kelvin lights these really warm tungsten lights you're gonna need to change your camera's white balance to say well 2700

Kelvin is what I want to be white so you drop that down it'll cool everything down to make it more white but like I had said before rules are meant to be broken we don't always need to have this clean white look with your lighting and that's where we get into this creative direction of things let's say there's the scene in Ozark where there's a conversation being had over the phone between a character in Mexico and a character in the United States and when the scene is going back and forth you can see that the

character in the US is very cool contrasted by you know this warm look as well when it's on the character in Mexico and this could either be done with your lighting but it could also be done in the color grade as well pushing towards this warm and cool Direction in the post-production process and since we're on the note of color we can talk about something called color contrast adding color contrast with lighting to your frame does a great job of creating depth Dimension and visual interest into your m now a great example of this could

be say a night scene you've got your subject sitting next to a very warm household lamp but then to contrast that we've got a very cool tone Moonlight coming through a window and we see warm and cool tones a lot like this orange and teal or orange and blue color contrast probably the most in Hollywood we are also always used to seeing these warm and cool tones matching up we've got the sun contrasting with the blue sky and the Moonlight with household lamps inside we see a lot of these warm and cool contrasting color tones

in our day-to-day life so it just feels familiar we talk about all of that in the chorus because we don't always need these complementary colors of just you know across the color spectrum sometimes it's great to have a monochromatic look all one color but it's important to when possible say like oh well a warm lamp could look nice on this very cool scene and that wraps up our top 10 lighting mistakes we see beginners make again keep in mind many of these mistakes are only mistakes if used accidentally in the wrong situation it's important to

learn the rules and principles of light and then intentionally choose the lighting you want to use to create certain moods rather than accidentally creating moods that contradict your story rather than add to it again lighting is a huge part of great cinematography and storytelling so we highly recommend taking the time to further your education on lighting and that's why I've commissioned Brady to put together this all new 30 video lighting Mastery mini course within full-time filmmaker so we spent months prepping shooting editing this course to be ready for you and I'm excited to finally have

it available to you so the way that I formatted this course is into a five chapter structure so chapter one is the basics and this is really tailored towards beginners Say You're Just wanting to get into the film world this chapter is going to be great for you it's going to teach you stuff like dictionary terms and definitions things that you'll hear on a real film set on location and then also stuff like set etiquette how to behave and this Dynamic that you're going to see on a set and many more topics like this are

going to be in chapter one chapter two we dive into the technical side of lighting like understanding quality of light when and how to diffuse light light color light Direction and so on in chapter 3 we focus on modifying light and show you the art of shaping and controlling light to create wide varieties of looks and moods for your videos or films now chapter four now we're starting to really learn everything here I like to think of this one as almost an internship now we're really seeing all of these topics that we've learned applied in

real life scenarios like shooting Outdoors lighting for a moving subject shooting for a wide and a tight shot as well and then in chapter five we have and we'll continue to add job Shadows to show you how to work in real world client scenarios so you can feel comfortable to light like a pro no matter what challenges are thrown at you so there you have a look at what's inside lighting Mastery even I have learned some great things from Brady in this course so if you want to up your lighting game link below to join

today or again it is also included in our full-time filmmaker membership as well so that's it thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe for more free content just like this also head over to Brady's channel to subscribe for more free lighting tips and if if you have any further questions please let me know