A Completely Free And Simple Cinematic Lighting Setup

It’s true, we all want better lighting in our videos. Why? Well, because videos with better lighting, leads to videos that are better looking. But how do you do it without breaking the bank? Well, in this video, I’m going to share with you one of my favorite lighting setups, that just so happens to be completely free. Well hey there, I’m Brady Shearer from Storytape.com, a cinematic stock footage site that gives you access to unlimited video downloads for one low monthly cost. We publish video production tips and tricks on this channel so make sure you hit the subscribe button below to get the next video, and if you like this video, make sure you hit the like button as well. People that succeed with video usually do this one thing very well: lighting. It’s the biggest contributor to the overall look of your video. Of course, good lights generally cost good money, so how can we improve the lighting in our videos without spending a dime? Well, you can use this lighting technique that I’m about to share with you. Now: the scene that you’re looking at right now was shot in the apartment of a friend of mine. And there’s nothing overly special about this apartment, it’s just your average apartment. But as you look through a number of the different clips we shot in this space you can being to see just how cinematic they all look. And the reason for this is because we used what I like to call, The Single Window Lighting Technique. It is entirely simple and costs literally zero dollars. Here’s how to properly use this lighting technique. Firstly, find a room with a reasonably sized window. Secondly, turn off all the artificial lights in the room. Thirdly, use the single window in that room as your video’s back light or key light. And that’s it. Super simple. Now, you might be wondering, Brady, why would I turn off all the lights in the house? Wouldn’t that make it too dark? Why not use the artificial lights and the light coming through the window? Here’s why, most indoor lights in our homes have a different color temperature than the light that will be coming through your window. And if you keep those artificial lights on, you risk capturing video with mixed lighting. Lighting with two different color temperatures almost always looks bad and you want to avoid it. So make sure to turn those room lights off and only rely on the natural light coming through the window. But that’s just part of the story, another consideration is the brightness of the lights coming through the window. In this clip of the group of friends playing a board game, the light wasn’t particularly strong because we shot this in the evening as day turned to dusk and the window also wasn’t very big. But in this clip of the two friends reading on the couch, the light is much stronger and brighter because we shot this during the day and with a much larger window, which meant more light. So keep those two factors in mind when using this lighting technique, the size of the single window you’re using, and the amount of light coming through that window which will be determined by the location of the sun comparative to the window and the time of day. And there you have it, that is The Single Window Lighting Technique. That’s not all though, because here’s the deal, if you liked the look of the clips we used as examples in this video, you need to know that these clips can be downloaded instantly by you along with more than five-thousand other clips and used royalty-free in any of your creative projects. It’s all part of a platform we built for you called Storytape. Storytape.com, it’s a stock footage site that gives you unlimited access to thousands of cinematic video clips, the first of its kind, shot in 4K ProRes, we add more than a thousand new clips every month, graded, ungraded, 4K, 1080p, ProRes. And like I said, no download limit. There’s no cap. Not only that, but all of our clips are shot in groups that we call Scenes. So now you can be the director. You can pull from dozens of different clips from the same identical scene to craft the perfect narrative for your story. And because there’s no download limit, you can always grab the exact number of clips that you need to create the perfect video. So go to Storytape.com and check out all the we have to offer. Again, that’s Storytape.com, where, finally, you can license unlimited video downloads on a single subscription, including every single video clip you saw in this lighting tutorial. Thanks for watching this video, and I’ll see you in another video.