Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Lighting Setup and Breakdown with diagrams and blog...

Matthew Scott

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
1,313
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Hi Guys,

A lot of you have been asking me to share my lighting setups, so I have created a new section of my blog which does just that. I hope to share my thought processes behind why and how I lit a scene, and the technical specs of each scene. Below are the shots I talk about in my first post. Please visit: http://mattscottvisuals.com/lighting/ and let me know what you think and how it could be improved. To keep things at reduser also, I'm more than happy to answer any questions here.

Thanks!


MatthewScott_DOP_05 by [MTS]Films, on Flickr


MatthewScott_DOP_06 by [MTS]Films, on Flickr


MatthewScott_DOP_02 by [MTS]Films, on Flickr
 
Very nice breakdown Mathew, and great looking shots. Thanks for being so generous.
 
I really appreciate this generosity!

this is the spirit of the reduser community.

Looks like those designs were done with lighting designer app.

in any case nice work and thanks for sharing. We're you set to 5600k for the final grades?

david
 
Thanks guys! And David, the first shot was graded at 5600 but the other two at 3200k :) I'm doing some color tutorials to follow this up too.
 
To me, the lighting feels a hair off from that of "House of Cards". And seeing as how I've seen at least 3 threads of people trying to grade to get the "House of Cards look", I would say that's a compliment.

I'd love to see more blog posts like this one. Incredibly helpful.
 
Thank you very much for sharing Matthew! This is very helpful information for us! Tell me please how many time you waste for setting up a one scene (shot)? Is actor involved in setup procedure? I mean is actor posing on camera for you when you moving and adjusting the lights? Or is one man from your crew posing for main light setup and only after that actor enters the scene and you just need to make a small corrections to the light setup? The light itself on your pictures looks very cool and rich. Pretty softly and bright and faces looks very shaped and volumetric. Nice job! Your pictures so clear and actors and enviroment stays separately from each one. Very good! Love the shots! Nice casting also. What is the place? Is it museum or libriry? Am I asking too many questions? ;)

My English language is poor and word's dictionary poor too so I have a lot of beautiful adjectives in my mind to comment your shots.

P.S. After using online translator a bit I found a few correct words to comment your pictures:
magnificient, amaizinf, impressive... and many many more.

This week I will have one advertising fashion project to shoot so I try to use your setups with my lights. Thank you again!

P.P.S. To not overpraise you I will tell you about blue hairs on the moustache (?) of actor's face in this picture:

8480852844_74be9238c7_z.jpg
 
Last edited:
To me, the lighting feels a hair off from that of "House of Cards". And seeing as how I've seen at least 3 threads of people trying to grade to get the "House of Cards look", I would say that's a compliment.

I'd love to see more blog posts like this one. Incredibly helpful.

Hey Nick, I haven't seen it but will check out bobs link. Thanks!
 
Thank you very much for sharing Matthew! This is very helpful information for us! Tell me please how many time you waste for setting up a one scene (shot)? Is actor involved in setup procedure? I mean is actor posing on camera for you when you moving and adjusting the lights? Or is one man from your crew posing for main light setup and only after that actor enters the scene and you just need to make a small corrections to the light setup? The light itself on your pictures looks very cool and rich. Pretty softly and bright and faces looks very shaped and volumetric. Nice job! Your pictures so clear and actors and enviroment stays separately from each one. Very good! Love the shots! Nice casting also. What is the place? Is it museum or libriry? Am I asking too many questions? ;)


My English language is poor and word's dictionary poor too so I have a lot of beautiful adjectives in my mind to comment your shots.

P.S. After using online translator a bit I found a few correct words to comment your pictures:
magnificient, amaizinf, impressive... and many many more.

This week I will have one advertising fashion project to shoot so I try to use your setups with my lights. Thank you again!

P.P.S. To not overpraise you I will tell you about blue hairs on the moustache (?) of actor's face in this picture:

8480852844_74be9238c7_z.jpg

Hey Andrey, wow thanks for your kind words! We generally work with a very small crew (myself and a camera assistant) and we work fast. Each setup takes me about 20 minutes. I usually get my camera assistant to stand in as the actor to light but in this case the actor was happy to stand in. Using an actor actually makes you work faster hehe :) The cast was amazing, this really helped, as did our make up and wardrobe. We have a very nice team working at the moment and I really appreciate working with them. The location was a function center in Melbourne, usually reserved for wedding receptions. We hired two rooms and the front entrance for the day and wrapped early! It was perfect :) thanks again for the comments, they mean a lot.

And as for the blue hairs, yes, it's over the top, over done... I agree. I need to re grade that shot :)
 
You must be asking about what brand of lights? The 2K tungsten Fresnel were Arri and the LED panels are no names from eBay running from v-lock.

Interesting; is there a horrid green cast on the .r3ds that needed to be graded/masked out? Looks very decent for cheapies, especially given LEDs shortcomings. v-lock powered no less.
 
Interesting; is there a horrid green cast on the .r3ds that needed to be graded/masked out? Looks very decent for cheapies, especially given LEDs shortcomings. v-lock powered no less.
Horrid green cast? Nope....although the 3200 end is a bit off. Dialing them towards day-light ever so slightly helps with that. They cost $350 each and I love them!
 
Back
Top