Fundamentals

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milk

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✧˖°. Houdini ⋆.˚

✧˖°. Solaris ⋆.˚

Cinematic Lighting Principles

What is Cinematography?

Cinematography is essentially the way we see a story on screen. It’s about how filmmakers use the camera—through angles, movement, lighting, and framing—to create images that not only look aesthetic but also help tell the story and convey emotions visually. By carefully choosing what to include in each shot and how to light it, a cinematographer sets the mood and guides your attention.

How should we approach Lighting for Cinematography?

 

  • Overview of lighting’s role in storytelling, mood, and visual aesthetics.
  • Importance of understanding lighting for environments and products.
  • Brief preview of key concepts like quality of light and gradients.
I made this for people who prefer looking at Triangles for Visualization

 

Cinematography is basically telling a story with visuals. If you’ve got the story behind your shot in your head, it makes your choices way easier. The story is what drives the mood and the feels you want to hit the audience with.

  • Our main goal is to bring out the emotion, mood, and story of the scene. at this point you should have the story that the shot should convey written down in 2-3 short sentences to always remind you about this main goal, aswell as look up references (from shotdeck for example) with the keywords that your summary has. reference is everything.
  • Next, we’re helping people’s eyes follow the action with contrast. Gotta keep the subject clear, but not let it mess with what the story’s about.
  • Only then, if there’s room, we make it look pretty. This shouldn’t mess with the mood, story, or contrast
Lighting’s what ties it all together—it’s how a scene hits you emotionally. The same shot with different lights can feel totally different

Properties of Light

  • Intensity: How brightness affects visibility and mood.
  • Direction: The angle of light and its influence on shadows and depth.
  • Quality: Exploration of hard vs. soft light, including the role of gradients.
    • Characteristics of hard light (sharp shadows, defined edges) and soft light (diffuse shadows, gentle transitions).
    • How gradients—the transition from light to shadow—vary with light quality (e.g., sharp gradients with hard light, gradual gradients with soft light).
    • Techniques to achieve different qualities of light.
  • Color: The spectrum of light and its emotional impact.
  • Psychological effects of light quality: Soft light for intimacy or calm, hard light for drama or unease.
  • Color’s role in time and place: Warm light for golden hour nostalgia, cool light for a stark, modern feel.
  • Light source size impact: Larger sources soften shadows, smaller ones sharpen them, altering mood.
  • Modifying light quality: Using diffusion or bounce to shift gradients and emotional tone.

Behaviour of Light

  • Inverse Square Law: How light intensity decreases with distance, affecting gradients across a scene.
  • Reflection and Refraction: Light’s interaction with surfaces, relevant for product lighting.
  • Absorption and Transmission: How materials alter light, important for environment design.
  • Practical use of inverse square law: Adjusting light distance to control falloff and focus attention.
  • Managing reflections for storytelling: Using highlights on objects to hint at unseen elements (e.g., a window).
  • Refraction for mood: Creating ethereal effects through glass or water to enhance mystery.

Light Sources

  • Natural Light: Characteristics and practical use in cinematography.
  • Artificial Light: Types and their properties.
    • Tungsten, fluorescent, LED, and HMI lights, with pros and cons
  • Mixing light sources: Blending natural and artificial for seamless mood transitions.

Color Temperature

  • Explanation of the Kelvin scale and common color temperatures.

 

Controlling Light

  • Diffusion: Softening light to adjust quality and create even gradients.
  • Reflection: Bouncing light to fill shadows or enhance illumination.
  • Blocking: Shaping light with flags or barn doors, including creating intentional gradients across a scene.
  • Gels and Filters: Modifying color or intensity for creative effects.
  • Shaping with tools: Cookies and gobos for patterned light, flags for precise shadow cuts.
  • Negative fill for depth: Absorbing stray light to darken areas and boost contrast.

 

Measuring Light

  • Using light meters to measure intensity and ensure proper exposure.
  • How light measurement ties into controlling gradients and quality.
  • Pixel Tool in Houdini

 

Lighting Ratios & Contrast

  • Balancing light and dark areas to control contrast.
  • How ratios influence the perception of gradients and scene dynamics.
  • Calculating with tools: Using meter readings to nail exact ratios.
  • Key-to-fill vs. total contrast: Subject focus vs. overall scene vibe.
  • Guiding the eye: High contrast to pull focus, low contrast for subtle exploration.

Lighting for Storytelling

  • How lighting sets the mood and emotion:
    Using light to evoke feelings (e.g., dappled light for mystery, harsh light for tension), reinforcing the story.
    Why: Central to your main goal of emotional storytelling.
  • Using light to direct the viewer’s eye:
    Techniques like contrast and color to guide attention (e.g., brighter areas draw focus), keeping the subject clear.
    Why: Matches your secondary goal of guiding the audience’s focus.
  • Creating aesthetically pleasing images without compromising the story:
    Balancing beauty with narrative needs, ensuring gradients and contrast enhance the shot.
    Why: Reflects your tertiary goal of making it “look pretty” without sacrificing intent.