How To Use An Open Window To Create Shadows Inside Cinematography?

Capturing beautiful images in camera is easy with a killer silhouette shot. Place the subject by a window and lower your ISO or f-stop to create a contrast between the subject and the background. Use shadows to sculpt subjects in three dimensions, adding complexity to visuals. Hard light can create strong shadows and high contrast, adding drama and intensity to the image. Soft light, on the other hand, is large and diffused. Balancing windows in interior locations can be difficult, so mastering film lighting requires practice, experimentation, and a keen eye for details. Different lighting scenarios might call for harsh shadows created by hard light or blended shadows created by soft light. Film Lighting is the ultimate guide to cinematic lighting, including essential elements, terms, techniques, and a FREE cheat sheet. To get the best out of natural light, increase the light inside the room by about 4x and drop the exposure in the camera two stops. Add a single “hard” light outside the window to overpower the sun, but may be a bit pushy if on an upper story of a building. Shoot in a direction that leaves anything outside the window backlit or in shadow.


📹 Advanced Cinematography | Using Shadow

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📹 Uncommon Cinematic Lighting Tips

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How To Use An Open Window To Create Shadows Inside Cinematography
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Rafaela Priori Gutler

Hi, I’m Rafaela Priori Gutler, a passionate interior designer and DIY enthusiast. I love transforming spaces into beautiful, functional havens through creative decor and practical advice. Whether it’s a small DIY project or a full home makeover, I’m here to share my tips, tricks, and inspiration to help you design the space of your dreams. Let’s make your home as unique as you are!

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6 comments

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  • I was waiting this kind of tutorial for a long time! Sometimes i feel you use to many light in some scenes ( but it’s ok for the purpose of a tutorial). I hope you will make more tutorial about negative fill and shadows. One time I regret using too much light was during a music articles. We set a lot of candles in the background ( 40 more or less) and also 2 led panels diffused with some cloth. I didn’t use any grid or negative fill, and so not only the singer and the dancer were lighted,but also the background, losing the visual interest of candles. Using less light and a harder one would have been better.

  • Sure there been times were I lighted with to broad strokes, getting the background lit up…But as long as your lighting ratio in the scene is good, I dont mind to pump in extra light for a cleaner picture. But alot of time when you have an practical in frame. Then I have to match scenes exposure to that practical. A few days ago for example I shot a scene with paraffin lamp in frame. I hade to keep the overall lightning low to not overpower the paraffin lamp. It would be way better to use an M9 to add some extra light, or to put in the practical lamp and be able to puch up the overal exposure a little.

  • I think I generally tried to overexpose when I first started making articles. I was worried about showing everything that was going on in frame. After doing that for a while I tried one article with a single light source and it turned out to be one of my best looking articles, even if it had more shadows than all my others

  • My first night shoot we had the subject go from left to right through some trees, so we decided to put lights behind the trees to outline the shadow but they were a bit to bright and in my opinion made the trees look way too bright, thats where i wish i had known more about lighting before going on that shoot :/

  • @Aputure I have suggestion, you start a new playlist entitled create your film, you create in it short film genre for example horror, suspense, romance… etc, the good thing in it you show how to light with blocking, because the four minutes film school is showing how to light still frame like photography, story of the film is not important the more important is lighting real short project, of course one film will create many tutorials, and will keep subscribers tuned to see next episodes

  • Answer: any time that a client insists on shooting midday in one of the sunniest, hottest states in the country ( I, unfortunately, reside in sunny Florida). Genuinely though, I once had a client insist on going out to shoot part of a promo article on a second story patio first instead of waiting to shoot that end of day. Would have loved less light that day, haha.

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