Create cinematic lighting:

Getting that cinematic feel to your footage can take a lot of time. It’s made up of multiple components, including the lighting setup, type of camera, shot composition and much, much more.

Lighting is incredibly important for establishing a cinematic feel to your film and there are a few quick tips to help elevate it from average to great.

In today’s article, we will focus on lighting and how you can create cinematic lighting with these 3 simple tips.

Let’s check them out below!

3 Quick Tips To Create Cinematic Lighting Immediately

These tips are for any type of film set; whether it’s no budget, low budget, indie or a full-blown Hollywood production. These tips will immediately improve your lighting setup to get that cinematic feel you're searching for.

Here are the 3 quick tips to get you started.

Use negative fill lighting

Using negative fill lighting will immediately improve your lighting setup. This is a form of “blocking lighting”.

Essentially this removes light from the shot to create contrast. Usually, you would need some pretty heavy gear to achieve this, but these days black/dark sheets or curtains will do the job.

Why you ask?

In this day and age, affordable LED lighting is low heat, meaning it’s easier to create negative fill lighting. A dark cloth or black curtains are enough to achieve this contrast and trust me, this will give you that cinematic look you want.

Perfect for a scene that’s key to the story. For example, maybe your main character is admitting to doing something that will help push the plot further.

Diffuse your light

Diffusing your light will help you to achieve that cinematic edge.

This will help you create evenly spread light that gives it a softer feel. A low budget way of achieving this is to wrap translucent plastic around your lighting equipment.

This will help spread the light evenly, creating a much softer and evenly-spread lighting effect.

Bouncing your light

Bouncing light is the final tip to achieving cinematic lighting. It doesn’t have to be a costly exercise at all.

Genuinely, you do not need to buy expensive bounce cards or boards. Just grab a bedsheet, which will help you direct and bounce the light to your desired subject.

This is essentially how you get a light source to your target in the most efficient manner possible. It helps light your subject clearly and professionally. You’ll establish a cinematic light setup in minutes and have a clearly lit subject ready to shoot.

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