Let’s be honest, ‘cinematic’ lighting is almost the new C-word in our industry at the moment. Many of my older readers may remember a time when clients would ask for their images to be more ‘edgy’, and now the ‘cinematic’ word is quickly becoming a similarly esoteric buzzword that is simply far too overused. But can we distil this all-encompassing trend into a simple and effective setup? Let’s take a look.
I’ll be upfront from the get-go here. This is an introductory lighting setup designed to whet your appetite for the world of cinematic studio lighting. If you like the look of this, please take a look at my now very popular ‘Cinematic Studio Lighting Workshop’. This new course takes things a great deal further beyond this simple setup as we go over how photographers are sorely underutilising so many incredibly effective cinematography techniques. I’ll provide more details at the end of this article if you’re interested.
Obligatory self-promotion aside, let’s examine some core tenets of the ‘cinematic’ look and try to incorporate them into our simple yet engaging lighting setup.
Upstage Lighting
This is an interesting and foreign concept to us stills shooters, but I need you to remember that the subjects on screen NEVER look into the camera! In every film you’ve ever seen (4th wall-breaking art films aside), the subjects never look at the camera, and this means cinematographers light their subjects very differently from us. Where we use key lights in front of our subjects, cinematographers will often use lights behind or ‘up-stage’ of their subject.
In the above images, you can see exactly what I mean. Nobody looks to the camera, so the light is often behind them, and this is referred to as up-stage lighting. The style does mean that it only works when the subject looks away from the camera, so you need to keep this in mind for your interpretation of cinematic lighting. Do you want your subjects looking to camera? If so, you’ll need to adjust the light accordingly, and for the setup, I’ll demonstrate below, I opted to take the inspiration of the upstage light and have a strong light from behind, but I also wanted my subject to have the option to look to the camera. With this in mind, I kept the light pushed back and put more of a strong backlight off of the face.
This simple yet very important element that characters never look to camera in cinematic looks is a very powerful tool. Being cognizant of this decision will quickly and dramatically alter the way you light your subjects, as many of us are so engrained to light our subjects with the ability to look to camera. I’ll be honest: as a fashion and portrait shooter of over 20 years, it’s extremely hard for me not to have my subjects look to camera, but I’d urge you to try it as a personal project at the very least.
Depth and Atmosphere
If you ever wanted to know the worst-kept secret of how to achieve the ‘cinematic’ look, it’s atmosphere. And by atmosphere, I mean simulated depth.
For many of us studio shooters, depth is pretty simple; spend two grand on an f1.2 lens and call it a day (you know who you are). As studio shooters, we typically only have two planes of depth, the subject and the background…. that’s it. Why is depth so important? Ultimately, it’s about managing that depth and determining what’s important in the scene. For us in the studio, it’s the subject, and it’s extremely easy to make that subject a priority when there’s nothing else in the frame for the viewer to look at. However, far grander film sets have a lot of distracting elements that can potentially pull the viewer away from the importance of the character. Sure, a colossally wide aperture lens helps to throw the background out of focus, but sometimes that’s not always the answer.
I know, I know. It’s tantamount to heretical doctrine to even suggest that the widest possible aperture isn’t always the answer but set down your pitchforks and hear me out.
Often in cinema, the scene or background is very important to the character and story, simply throwing it completely out of focus isn’t the answer. Instead, many scenes will employ smoke, haze and other techniques to subdue the background in the scene whilst still allowing it to be relevant and recognisable. There are a multitude of reasons for doing this, but ultimately, it’s about separating the subject from the background so that we are immediately drawn to the subject in a subtle and believable way. You can’t just throw a spotlight on the subject, the subject needs to exist organically in the scene so instead of lighting them more dramatically than the background like us studio shooters would do, cinematographers often opt to subdue the background rather than simply highlight the subject.
For larger sets, haze is a very easy and very effective tool to add depth, but it’s not always practical. I will say that if you have time and are able to, haze does give you the best results and most believable depth, but if that’s not possible for the aforementioned reasons, a lens filter is a great substitute in a pinch, and it’s actually what I used in this setup I’ll go over it in more detail below.
Colour Contrast
The idea of colour contrast is more stylised and highly dependent on the project of course, but the basic principle of drawing attention to the subject with contrast is always applicable, it’s just that we’ll be employing colour as a tool as well as the basic luminance contrast. For example, David Fincher is a master of luminance contrast in his films. Many of David Fincher’s movies have a darker, more sinister plot, and many of them are shot at night. Se7en is a great example of this, as there is actually very little colour contrast in that, but the lighting is impeccable, and every element is visible without being overly lit, as he’s a master of the checkerboard style of light. Counter to this are lighter (in mood) movies, which will often use colour contrast in a scene that is more evenly lit. Wes Anderson is an obvious example of this, and he’ll often forgo any attempt at ‘normal’ colourings in favour of what simply looks best visually.
I make the very real distinction between luminance contrast and colour contrast here because they both play a vital role in understanding how to manipulate light and mood in a scene. I spoke about David Fincher’s film Se7en earlier. That’s a movie about chasing a serial killer, and you wouldn’t light that with soft washes of colour and light. Instead, he opted for strong contrast and edge light that leaves an area of darkness that instils unease and tension in the viewer. You need to know what you’re trying to say with your image or portrait and choose appropriate lighting.
In the above image, you can see some examples of colour contrast. The top left is the most obvious as I bathe the subject in a very subtle blue tone and then light the background with an orange glow. On the top right, I use colour contrast in the subject’s outfit to make them stand off from the background, but I’m also using a very hard light on them to increase the colour contrast in the clothing. You may have missed it, but look at the razor-sharp chin shadow again. See how it’s a very hard light illuminating her, but it’s filled in with beautifully soft light as well. This is an extremely effective hard-light technique that isn’t plagued by heavy, visually distracting shadows.
Lastly, look at the bottom image and see how completely different the black-and-white version is. This is the very powerful difference between luminance contrast and colour contrast. The colour shot on the left draws us to the face and separates it from the somewhat dominant surroundings, whereas the black-and-white version loses all depth due to it all being of a similar luminance.
Learning how to drive visual direction with colour is crucial and you simply cannot rely on the basics of lighting ratios and light meters to direct attention in a scene. Having a firm grasp of visually dominant and recessive colours will quickly elevate your shots.
The Setup
I’ve covered a few of the basics above and upstage lighting, atmospheric depth and colour contrast are just a couple of the ‘cinematic’ triggers that you’ll often see in movies. But let’s now look at employing some of that knowledge in our simple 2-light setup.
First off, let’s look at the setup itself. Then I’ll explain some of the finer details below to hopefully answer some of the questions you may have.
TL;DR/ADHD/Artist Setup Explanation
- Setup curtain backdrop with folds to catch light
- Position 90cm softbox directly above the subject
- Adjust this to be ‘cold’ AKA 6500K
- Position smaller hard light back behind the subject and up high angled down
- Adjust this to be ‘warm’ AKA 2700K
- Try to position this to light the model, hit the camera and also scrape across the backdrop
- Include shiny/translucent foreground elements in front of the camera lens
Kit Used
- 1x ZHIYUN Molus G300
- 1x ZHIYUN X60
- 1x 90cm Parabolic Softbox
- 1x Bare Reflector Dish
- 1x Large Brown/Grey Curtain
- Foreground Elements
- Lens Filters
Camera Settings
- Camera – Nikon D850
- Lens – DC-Nikkor 105mm f2
- Shutter Speed – 1/125th
- Aperture – f2
- ISO – 100
- Kelvin – 4600K
- Focal Length – 105mm
The Results
Breaking it Down
The good news is it’ll be quick. After all, there are only 2 lights, so how complicated can it be? But as we tentatively navigate around complacency, there are still a few core creative elements that I’d like you to consider and adjust to your own taste.
Upstage Lighting
You’ll need to determine how much you want to lean into this style yourself but to stay true to the upstage look, you’ll need to think of that strong, hard light from behind as more of your key light. That means it won’t often look great when the model looks to camera as it’ll awkwardly catch their nose or worse. I know I can’t help myself, and I never do a shoot where the model doesn’t look to camera for some of the best shots. So I often opt to be inspired by the upstage look, but push the light further around behind so it won’t catch the nose. I’d urge you to experiment with the look, though, and see what works for you.
Depth & Atmosphere
Arguably, one of the best parts of the cinematic look is the atmosphere and visual refractions you can get away with. An easy trick for this cinematic haze is to use lens filters. I personally think actual haze is best for the true depth look, but if time or environmental limitations prevent that, a lens filter is a great substitute. I’ve tried scores of these filters over the years, and you can see which ones I prefer here: Cinematic Lens-Flare Filter Comparison. Ultimately, you’re after a lens filter that will add a little flare to the image, and you can get ones that produce everything from blooms in the highlights, lowers contrast, simulates haze and even ones that fake the anamorphic horizontal flares.
Lens Filters
If you’re curious about how much these filters are doing in a shoot like this, I shot with several filters on and off in this shoot. So here are the examples if you missed them above.
These 3 images show a good range of looks, and as you can see, lens filters can play a very significant role in how the final image looks.
The most popular choice is arguably the bloom-style filter, and you can see that it creates large flares with light hitting it. If you look carefully, you’ll also see it blooming off of bright highlights, like the model’s cuff button, too.
Colour Contrast
A very well-established and popular technique used in many TV shows and movies today is the colour contrast seen between either end of the Kelvin scale. Yes, the orange and teal look is arguably overused today, but hey, I was doing it before it was cool so you’re just gonna have to live with it! Ego aside, the idea of mixing Kelvin contrast is essential to understand and it’s not too tricky, you simply have some lights far warmer than other lights that are far cooler.
In this setup I had the back, upstage light set to be very warm at 2700K and the light above at a cooler 6500K. The trick then is to set your camera Kelvin somewhere between the two so you get both blue and orange tones present in the shot and for this particular shoot, I was around 4600K.
Foreground Elements
Many cinematic sets and spaces are often fairly small, especially if you’re shooting on-site or in a home studio. One very strong element of a cinematic look is depth, but how do we create depth where there is none?
Depth in a scene is very important as it helps lead the viewer through it or into it, and having foreground elements in the frame is an easy way to do that, so what do we do when these foreground elements simply aren’t there or more typically, aren’t in the right place? The simple solution is to fake them, and you can do this in any number of ways, but I often prefer to grab random elements from the scene around me and place them in the foreground of the shot to attempt to make it a little more believable. As you can see in the above BTS shot, I really am grabbing any random object that will catch the light.
I’ll share a couple of tips for this, but the biggest one is that this foreground element effect really only works when a light behind the subject fires back into the lens. That light will catch on all of these objects and, in turn, refract and flare into the lens.
We also want to find elements that will reflect or catch the light. Think of anything silver or reflective, and here, I’m even using cutlery clamped into C-Stand knuckles to get the shine where I want it. One big tip is to use glasses of water. You can all but guarantee every location will have a glass and some water, but this combo works so well due to it refracting and distorting the light that enters it. You can even see the very clear distortions in the image shown above too.
Couple all of this with light pointing towards the camera, a fancy lens filter and a very wide open aperture, and the foreground elements will be very visible.
Final Tips & Points to Remember
As I stated at the start, the word ‘cinematic’ is, in my opinion, very often overused. Today, nearly everything with a basic Lightroom Preset on Instagram is called cinematic. But the overuse is simply due to how popular the idea of the cinematic style is. If we can understand and utilise what made that style so popular to begin with in our own work, we will likely create some very engaging imagery.
With that in mind, let’s recap some of the core tenets of the cinematic style.
Upstage lighting – Try to light your subjects with a strong light from behind. Couple this with a fill-light in front and as long as the subject looks away from camera, you’ll quickly develop a cinematic aesthetic with light alone.
Depth & Atmosphere – This is the easiest way to get that cinematic look and whether you’re simply adding smoke from a can at a wedding to get those ‘god-rays’ or you’re filling an entire studio with haze to get a dramatic sci-fi night shot, faking atmosphere is extremely powerful.
Colour Contrast – Although orange and teal are often overused today, you cannot ignore the power of successfully using contrasting colours, especially ones on the Kelvin scale, to add drama and separation to your scene. Don’t just look at luminance contrast, pay very close attention to colour contrast as well.
Foreground Elements – This is easier to do than it first looks and yes if you have something on-site that you can shoot through or past then perfect, but don’t be afraid to get creative with foreground elements and positioning reflective and translucent objects in front of the lens is a powerful visual look to lead a viewer into a frame.
Compress the Scene – Simply put, use a long lens. Although this isn’t a strict rule, much of cinema is shot on longer lenses as a lot of what makes a powerful scene, is a close shot of a subject with minimal distractions. Roughly translated to stills-photography, look to use an 85mm or 105mm lens to get the best results.
Blur the Background – You guessed it, shoot wide open! Many of you are already doing this, but shooting on a wide-open aperture is an easy way to reduce distracting elements in a scene. Blurring the background keeps the visual power on the subject and not the potentially distracting elements behind them.
Shoot Landscape Orientation – As portrait shooters, this is very hard for us to do, but yes, the obvious trait of cinematic-looking shots is, of course, to shoot in landscape orientation… But after 20+ years of portraits, I fail at this, so do what I say and not what I do!
Bonus Tip:
Add a little grain – this one is more subjective, but a lot of cinematic looks are reminiscent of film and by film, I mean the analogue kind. Much of cinema is about nostalgia, and with that comes the romantic memory of older movies, and many of them have an organic look thanks to film grain. In all of the images here, I experimented with a new LR Preset from a friend of the community VMoldo. He sent over a new way of applying grain to images with masks for luminance values in each image, which produces a more natural and believable grain than simply applying it uniformly throughout the shot. If you’re interested, head over and take a look at his Filmic Tone Limiter
Good luck if you’re trying this setup. Let me know how you get on, and as always, if you have any questions, fire away in the comments below.
