Lighting People, Products and Cars

Taught by Mike Seymour

Course Number:
DOP216
Software Version:
 
Original Run Date:
January 2013 
Duration:
5 hours 7 minutes 
production
The aim of this course is to show how to light common sets, people and objects such as cars, but with an eye to CG lighting. For example most of the car lighting will be our DOP Ben Allan ACS directing a CG artist. You will learn the techniques of lighting on set, the types of lights and many tricks of the real world - that are increasingly relevant in lighting in CG with the advent of Physically Plausible Lighting. Most lessons will be live action, but about 30% will be CG applications.
Ben Allan has taught DOP courses at fxphd before very successfully and has a great knack at innovative problem solving, while himself being very fluent in digital tools and plugins.
 
Lighting People, Products and Cars
Watch our overview of the course

Class Listing

Class 1

The product shot. Shooting a cereal commercial style pouring shot. We show how to light desktop objects, and table top size sets. Covering both talent, Backlit (translight) and high speed product shots.

Class 2

The many faces of one set. Over two lessons we will be lighting the same location for several "looks". Just by varying the lighting types we shoot a high tech lab, a police station and a moody late night office set up. We learn about the quality of light as well as the range of lighting options.

Class 3

Part 2 of several looks. Continuing our look at the range of modern lighting options and how they affect the mood of a set.

Class 4

Exterior lighting and how too keep consistency throughout the day and using the sun as multiple sources. We discuss why a sky or dome HDR is great, and why it isn't when doing CG exteriors.

Class 5

Part 1 of lighting cars. Looking at a big problem on a small scale.

Class 6

Part 2 of lighting cars. Applying the real world in a cg world. Ben has lit many cars on many shoots but most car shots today are done in the computer, we see how Ben's real world approaches carry over to the CG world.

Class 7

Lighting people. Comparing techniques such as hard vs soft light, using diffusion vs reflection, real lights, highlights and comparing classic Hollywood lighting with modern film lighting.

Class 8

The importance of eye-light. Looking at how to create eye-light and how eye-light can be used to show different emotional responses in characters.

Class 9

Lighting CG character for live background plate, color space of an HDR and using china-ball for multiple characters.

Class 10

Lighting shiny objects and glass bottles using simple lighting setups.