Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello everyone and
welcome to the course. My name is Scott
Baker and I've been in the film industry since 2009, working on major
films and TV shows. While also directed
my own short films, documentaries, and music videos. And I've now been creating
classes since 2019. If you've taken any
of my other classes on here, then welcome back. This is your first time. Then it's great to have you. I'm sure many of you have
heard of magic hour. For those who haven't.
It's that time of day when the sun creates the most spectacular
lighting, sunrise and sunset. But have you heard of Blue our, well, blue our
accompanies magic hour. And in this quick class, we're going to focus
on these two times of day and learn how to get
the best results while filming or photographing at these times will be using
familiar tools such as ISO, aperture, and white balance. And we'll go over
how to apply them specifically for
magic hour and blue, our, whether you're a
beginner or experienced, understanding these practices
is integral to capturing the best footage and photos when the Sun offers us it's
most stunning lighting. So I invite you to join me in this class and add to your
knowledge and skills.
2. Magic Hour: Magic hour, also
known as golden hour. It's that beautiful
time just after sunrise and just before sunset. We romanticize about watching
sunsets and sunrises. So it's no surprise. Filmmakers love filming
during this time. Magic hour creates a
beautiful ambient light, which is perfect for
soft lighting people. But as the sun sets behind
buildings, trees, hills, or other objects, it
creates a long shadows, offering a dimension
of hard light as well. Only the Sun can offer both
extremes of hard, soft light. And we can capture
this stunning footage without the need of big, expensive lighting setups,
but it can be tricky. So let's discuss what we must do to make sure we
perfect these shots. Before we can even think
about rolling cameras, we need to know
exactly what we're doing and what to expect. Because with only an hour or so of Prime light
conditions to work with, there is no time for mistakes. If you're filming a music
video or a narrative film, you will need to scout the
location in advance and watch the sunset or sunrise to
know exactly how it looks. You may think you have
the perfect spot. And then you realize
that the sun sets behind a building and
you're left in the shade. Or perhaps it's not accessible at certain
times of the day. Such as a park
that closes early, or a waterfront that
gets a high tide. Once you have your location, you need to plan out every shot. And it's best to only
aim for a few shots. If you scheduled ten, there's no way
you'll get them all. So it's best to keep it to two or three shots max and make sure you
capture them properly. It's better to have two
or three great shots instead of ten, okay shots. If actors are involved, it's important you check with them to make sure
they're fully prepared. And if they have any questions, you can have those
discussions beforehand. When it comes to filming, be there well ahead of time to block and
rehearse the shots. That way when the
light is just right, everyone is ready to go. You hit record and call action. When you are ready to record, make sure the camera is not
set to auto white balance. If it is, the camera will sense the warm amber colors and then balance it with
cool blue colors. In the end, getting rid of the beautiful look
that we're aiming for. To put it very simply, auto white balance defeats the purpose of filming
during magic hour. So what setting
should be habitat? We can either create
our own custom preset to get the look we want, or choose one of the existing
white balance settings. For a custom setting, I choose daylight white balance, and I keep the color
temperature to around 5,600 K. If choosing a
preset white balance, I find cloudy
usually works best. By choosing a preset
or creating your own. The settings will remain
the same instead of constantly adjusting to the changing colors
of magic hour. This will ensure that
the camera captures the proper color tone and the gradual change
of color properly, instead of constantly adjusting to changing light conditions. In this example, we can see that this guy
is getting darker, but we see almost no change in the color from
the setting sun. Whereas in this example, we can clearly see the change of color in the sky
and from the sun. In this example, the auto
white balance was left on. And when I sit down, the camera is exposed to more of a blue background light sensing, there's too much
blue in the shot. Auto white balance kicks
in and makes adjustments. Watch the change in
color as a sit down, especially on the back wall. This is not a rule, but more so a bit of advice. And of course, it comes down
to personal preference. But try to film on a wide angle lens for at
least one of your shots. It's such a beautiful
time of day. So why not capture all of
what nature is offering? Close-ups and insert
shots are easy enough to re-create the lighting for magic hour creates a
beautiful setting for you. So why not film at all? The lighting during magic hour
is changing by the minute. There's no one setting or one answer that will
solve this issue. So it's good to be mindful
and adjust your aperture, shutter speed and
ISO as necessary. Avoid the forage from being
over or underexposed. In this time-lapse,
the shutter speed was never adjusted as
the light changed. The ISO, which we set to auto, began to increase in order to compensate for that
lack of light, resulting in lots of
grain near the end. So it's important to always check your settings
and adjust as needed because the
light is always changing and it's changing fast.
3. Blue Hour: Blue, Our also known
as Twilight hour. It's often overlooked because
of magic hours popularity. Sometimes it's even assume
that it's part of magic hour. But blue hour is the time
just before sunrise. And just after the glow
of sunset has faded. It's the residual light from
the sun that spills over the horizon and creates
that nice blue color. Just as its name suggests. It also creates a
beautiful soft light. And because there's
no direct sunlight, it will be low contrast and
void of any hard shadows. The name Blue hour is a
bit deceiving though, because it certainly does
not last a full hour. It's actually closer
to 20 to 30 min. So if you feel pressured for time when filming
during magic hour, be ready to double
that pressure for blue our because we have
even less time to film, the best thing to do is reduce the number of shots
that we plan to get. Instead of two to three, like magic hour, we'll only have time for
one or two shots. And it's best to keep
these shots simple. Do not complicate it with intricate Dolly movements or stance that required
time-consuming resets. And of course, have it all
planned out thoroughly. Just like with magic hour, we must never use
auto white balance. Once again, choosing
a preset is best whether that's one the camera offers or creating your own, such as daylight at 5,600 K. This is technically
incorrect, but a blue look is what
we're trying to achieve. And we don't want to remove that with the proper
white balancing. Another similarity
with magic hour is that the light conditions
will be changing quickly. So it's still important to be constantly monitoring
our exposure settings. This time to make sure that we don't underexpose our footage. This includes lower
shutter speeds, higher ISO, and lower apertures, which is why it's important
to have lenses with apertures that can reach
between 1.4 and 2.8. And these will most often
be found on prime lenses. And if you're using a zoom lens, then using its lowest focal
length will allow us to use the biggest aperture
that the lens offers.
4. Colour Temperature & White Balance: Before we discuss creating our own custom white
balance settings, we first need to understand
color temperature. Color temperature is measured in degrees Kelvin and
represented by the letter k. This scale runs from
about 2000 to 11,000. 2000 k being the weakest light and 11,000 k being
the strongest. Think of 2000 kelvin
being represented by a candle with warm
red and orange tones. And as the temperature goes up, the color of the light
transitions through the color spectrum into
blue and white tones. 11,000 K, which is basically the sun and
will be pure white. So instead of always adjusting
white balance settings, why not just let auto
white balance do its job? If the lighting in the scene
is consistent throughout, then this can work. But auto white balance
will struggle when there's multiple light sources that have significant temperature
differences and they're mixed together. E.g. a. Room with
fluorescent lights, which give off a green tone. But there's also daylight
coming in through the windows which
have a blue tone. If this happens, auto
white balance will try to correct for
both and ends up falling somewhere in
the middle and not giving a proper balance
for either light source. If we find ourselves
in a situation where auto white balance or the
other presets don't work. Then we'll have to manually white balance
the camera ourselves. I'll demonstrate this
on my Sony DSLR. So keep in mind that the menus
may look a bit different, but the process
remains the same. And it's actually much
easier than you may think. Once the scene is lit
and ready to film. Go into the menu settings
and select white balance. Then scroll through to
find the custom presets. On some cameras, you
may have to select the Custom Preset first
and then set its balance. For this Sony camera, I'll select the set option. The next step is to
set the white balance. And for this, I highly recommend picking up a set of these
white balance cards. They're small and inexpensive. If you don't have these cards, a piece of white paper
can also work or find a neutral color in
the scene, such as gray. Snap the photo to
see the result. Then select the custom
preset to save it under. We can then choose which
custom setting we want to use. We will set it to custom
setting number one. Then if we go into the menu, we see that custom one is set to 3,200 K. After doing that, if you're not quite
happy with the result, feel free to
experiment by choosing different shades to set
the white balance to. But keep within the black
and white spectrum. Using an object that's
blue or red will dramatically change the look
in a very unnatural way. That's because the camera
will think the light in the scene is all red, all blue. And we'll correct for
that by balancing it with the opposite color
on the color wheel.
5. Exposure: First, why is it
called exposure? It's because every time
the shutter opens, the camera's sensor is
being exposed to light. And to know what a
properly exposed image is, we need to first understand what causes underexposure,
overexposure. And we must be able
to recognize it. An underexposed image occurs when not enough light
hits the camera sensor, resulting in the image
looking to dark. When this happens,
details will get lost in the shadows and the
darkest areas of the image. And can often make
it difficult to separate the foreground
from the background. And easy way to create an
underexposed image is by using a high shutter speed
and a high aperture together. An overexposed
image happens when too much light hits the sensor
and it looks washed out. Although it's easier to see the background and foreground, details of the image still blend together and can get lost in
the highlights of the image. And easy way to make
this happen is to use a low aperture and a low shutter speed when
in bright conditions. Now that we
understand those two, Let's take a look at a
properly exposed image, which is basically finding a nice balance between
the other two. It's not too bright
and it's not too dark. There are two quick ways to
check this on your camera. First is by using
the exposure meter. If the marker is too
far to the right, it means the image
will be overexposed. Too far to the left. It will be underexposed and
zero being the optimal spot. But that doesn't mean that it always has to be
exactly at zero. With most cameras, as long
as you're within this range, the image will have
good exposure. But if the meter is flashing and you've
definitely gone too far to one side and will either overexposed or
underexposed image. The second way is by
looking at the histogram. As we know, the three settings
that decide our exposure, our aperture, shutter
speed, and ISO. Aperture controls how
much light is let in. A smaller f-stop number equals a larger iris opening,
meaning more light. A larger F-stop number
means less light. Shutter speed controls
how long light is let in. It's measured in
fractions of a second. So a smaller setting,
such as one-thirtieth, means the shutter is open the longer, allowing more light. And a larger number, such as one 500th, will let in less light. Iso is how sensitive the
camera's sensor is to light. A smaller number
means it is less sensitive and will
need more light. And a larger number
means it is more sensitive and will need less light to get a
properly exposed image. Two important
things to remember. First, natural sunlight is
the strongest kind of light. And second, the higher
the ISO is set, the more grain, also known as
noise the image might have. So depending on the
lighting conditions of the location that
we're filming in, we will have to adjust
these three settings in different combinations in order to achieve the desired exposure. But before we begin
playing with settings, let's find a good
starting point. And to do that, we must
first select our frame rate. For this example, we'll
select 24 frames per second, which is the common frame
rate used for cinema. Next, we choose
the shutter speed. And if we follow the 180
degrees shutter rule, we must select a shutter speed that is double our frame rate. We chose 24 frames per second. And since there is no 48
frames per second option, we can choose 50 and
that will do just fine. Then for the best quality, we want to choose our
cameras base ISO, for my camera that's 200. But each make and model
can be different. So find out what your
camera's base ISO is and set it accordingly. Lastly, we choose
our aperture and we choose a setting based on the depth of field that we want. Now the chances of
following these steps and the footage being exactly
what we want are quite small. So from here, we must assess
each situation and decide what adjustments we can
make that will give us the best image quality as
well as the desired look. We want the shot to have.
6. Conclusion: Well, that is the
end of this class. I hope you enjoyed it
and we'll take what you've learned here
about magic hour and blue hour and use
it to evolve as a filmmaker and incorporate
it into your future projects. Also, be sure to share any work you've done
here on Skillshare, as well as leave a review. Good or bad. It
doesn't matter as your feedback helps me create better classes
in the future. So thank you very
much for joining me. And as always, I wish you the very best in your filmmaking.
Scott Baker, Filmmaker
