---
title: 'Harnessing the Sun Follow-Up: Lighting Tips with John Salmon'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dHYsgmp4p4'
video_id: '1dHYsgmp4p4'
date: 2026-09-10
duration_sec: 1814
channel: 'RocketJump Film School'
---

# Harnessing the Sun Follow-Up: Lighting Tips with John Salmon

> Source: [Harnessing the Sun Follow-Up: Lighting Tips with John Salmon](https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dHYsgmp4p4)

## Summary

In this follow-up podcast, Director of Photography John Salmon and the RocketJump team discuss practical lessons from their 'Harnessing the Sun' tutorial, emphasizing resourcefulness with natural light, DIY tools, and the art of lighting the human face. They answer viewer questions, share behind-the-scenes stories, and offer advice for shooting with minimal equipment.

### Key Points

- **Introduction of John Salmon** [00:58] — John Salmon, DP for RocketJump's visually striking projects (Video Game High School, Skyhook), joins to discuss the 'Harnessing the Sun' tutorial and answer questions.
- **Origin of the Tutorial Idea** [01:26] — John wanted to teach laymen cinematography concepts they don't think about, like paying attention to the sun's path, which can improve footage without expensive gear.
- **Learning Through Trial and Error** [02:11] — John learned about lighting through mistakes, not film school, and hopes to save others from the same frustration.
- **Simple Tools: Sheets and Bounce Boards** [02:38] — A white sheet or bounce board can achieve professional results; John used a sheet clamped on a deck to diffuse light on 5SF, showing that simple tools are effective.
- **Home Depot DIY Approach** [05:06] — John frequents Home Depot for custom lighting solutions, like building an eye light array, emphasizing that expensive gear isn't necessary.
- **Resourcefulness Over Expensive Gear** [06:25] — The overarching moral: stop thinking you need expensive equipment; a white show card in the car can save you, and the sun is a free 18K light.
- **Bed Sheet Love on Set** [07:06] — Sean Dixon, DP for the tutorial, preferred a bed sheet over a bounce board for its softer results, proving simple options can be best.
- **Answering Viewer Question: Solo Shooting** [08:11] — For Rob T. Jones: when shooting alone, use ideal times of day (golden hours) for natural rim light, and have actors hold their own bounce cards.
- **Golden Hours Advice** [09:34] — Shoot during the first or last three hours of daylight for picturesque results; schedule scenes around these times.
- **Natural Bounce from Buildings** [09:51] — For a Hulu commercial, they used a building's natural bounce to light a 130-foot street, impossible to light artificially, highlighting the power of observation.
- **Happy Accidents with Light** [10:43] — A reflection off a car or a streak from a 2K light created beautiful, unplanned effects, showing that accidents can be rewarding.
- **Cheating with Reflectors** [12:55] — For close-ups, have actors hold a white card just off-screen to act as their own bounce; use clamps from Home Depot for DIY setups.
- **The Revenant and Natural Light** [14:08] — The Revenant was shot entirely in natural light, causing long production delays, but it's a testament to the beauty of waiting for the right light.
- **Scheduling Around the Sun** [15:25] — Shooting in natural light means you have limited time; you can shoot in 30-minute chunks, but you must be prepared to act when light is right.
- **Movies to Study for Natural Light** [15:52] — John recommends The New World, Tree of Life, and other Malick films for their use of natural light; The Revenant's DP also shot Tree of Life.
- **Overcast Light and Negative Fill** [17:30] — Overcast light lacks shadows, so use negative fill (black sheets) to create contrast and shape, as done in Game of Thrones.
- **Overcast is Not Easier** [19:15] — While overcast is easier to expose, it's harder to make interesting images; you need to create shadows or color contrast.
- **Golden Hour Tips** [19:58] — Don't waste golden hour setting up equipment; use it for specific shots, as it's brief and beautiful, with a unique color spectrum.
- **Twilight's Unique Colors** [20:43] — Dawn twilight is cooler and milkier, while sunset has magentas and oranges; twilight is John's favorite time for its beauty.
- **Lighting the Human Face** [22:13] — Cinematography is mostly about shooting faces; learn to shape light for different skin tones, as film stocks were historically biased toward pale skin.
- **Skin Tone Considerations** [23:18] — Different skin tones require different lighting; gold reflectors can enhance caramel tones in black skin, but experimentation is key.
- **Directing Light per Actor** [24:39] — Light actors differently based on features: lower key light for deep-set eyes, higher for weak jawlines, and adjust for age to flatter or emphasize.
- **Small Adjustments, Big Impact** [25:40] — A tiny finger dot (small black flag) can significantly shape an actor's face, as seen with Elizabeth Banks, showing subtlety matters.
- **Historical Actor-DP Relationships** [26:22] — Actors like Marlene Dietrich had custom lenses (Dietrich lens) and preferred specific cameramen to ensure they looked their best.
- **Actor-DP Trust** [27:28] — Building trust with actors is crucial; they look for the DP's reaction after a take, and knowing shot size affects their performance.
- **Upcoming Low-Light Tutorial** [29:18] — They plan to break down low-light shooting techniques in future videos, addressing common viewer questions.

### Conclusion

The podcast reinforces that great lighting doesn't require expensive gear—resourcefulness, observation of natural light, and understanding the human face are key. Upcoming content will delve into low-light techniques.

## Transcript

Hey guys, it's Lauren, and welcome back to the Rocket Jumps Home School Office House Podcast. And today we're doing a follow-up to our Harnessing the Sun video with John Salmon, Director of Photography. He's done Video Game High School. He worked on Rocket Jumps the Show and a bunch of our different shorts. We're going to talk about what we learned
doing the actual tutorial, and we kind of get off on a little bit of tangent on our favorite things about writing and the human face and things we're excited about coming up, specifically role-right. So, hope you guys enjoy.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Roger Joseph School Podcast Office Hours.
Today we are talking to Director of Photography, John Salmon, who has shot all of our prettiest stuff. We have Video Game High School. We have Skyhook. We have Rocket Jumps a Show.
Like, all the cool stuff. And you guys will probably know John from our Harnessing the Sun video where we showed you how to use sunlight to your advantage. So we just wanted to do a follow-up and kind of answer your questions and talk about what we did on that.
So, like, you were the one who brought the idea up first, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I want to do a lot more of things like this with Roger Jump Film School. And where it came from and where any topic like I have an idea for comes from is what's something that's really useful that, like, a layman to cinematography doesn't think about.
In this case, it was just, like, literally paying attention to the path of the sun, like, thinking about it. Because so many people just kind of go out and they go, like, why doesn't it look like a professional movie? And it's like, well, there's details you can pay attention to that, by paying attention to them, don't talk to you anything.
but that can really benefit you, you know, just to have them in your mind. So that was the original reason, just getting people to think about it. Yeah. I was never told that directly in film school. Like, it's something I learned through trial and error of, like, this doesn't look right.
Why doesn't this, oh, the light's not where I want it. Right. Why is that? Okay. So it's like, oh, duh. So I'm glad we're telling people now so they don't have to go through it. I have so many crappy things.
Yeah. Really, but it's true. Yeah. It was cool. It was like when John, yeah, you first picked the idea. And even just having worked with you for so many years with 5SF, like the amount of stuff you can accomplish with just like a sheet or a bound board.
Right. And the infinite ways that you can use those two things to a great result. And a lot of people, again, like you said, don't even think about it or could and should benefit from these things because you could apply it to anything.
Are there any cool examples that you use the stuff we talked about like in 5SF or Google Party is another thing that you worked on which was kind of rad. But you guys are always like 5SF was on low budget fast running down type stuff.
Yeah. I'm trying to think 5SF. I always thought of how great and convenient it was because on the 5SF deck there was that grading thing. What do you call it? Wood.
Yeah. It's like a wood ointment. It's sort of transparent. It's not a full roof, but we can easily just clamp off a sheet to diffuse the light coming down onto the deck. I always thought that was a neat and unique feature.
A neat? A neat. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. It was an easy way to just clamp something up without using any stands or something like that. Right. I mean, it was already pre-written, like, by, 12 by or something like that.
You'd throw up. Yeah. And, like, a few, I always thought, the first time I saw it was, like, when, what's the, just give me some more steroids one where they're out on a, like, restaurant.
Right. Yeah, on a deck there. Can I have some steroids on my salad? Oh, I'll take some, too. I'm getting some f***ing steroids! Yeah, yeah, you can use effusion to make things more flattering. We just have an overhead like that. I mean, I remember, if you want to talk about, like, lighting for Files of Sus,
the thing is, we would always get together on a Sunday and just sort of shoot when people were available, which happened to be the middle of the day, if you had to do resourceful. I remember there was one that we did called War Horse that was, like, a parody of War Horse. Oh, God.
That we deliberately shot, like, right at sunset. One day, sunshade will be yours. Is that a parody? I love parody. Yeah, so it made it look really nice. That's right.
Yeah, yeah. You had to make it look like a work film. I love the beauty lighting on Brian in this terrible wig, terrible makeup. He's the ghastly.
Oh. Yeah. It's great. It's great. He went for it. So what are, like, kind of jumping into it, you know, kind of reviewing some of the stuff we talked about.
There's the fusion, but there's also reflectors. We talked about DIY stuff, going to Home Depot. How often do you go to Home Depot? I go there a lot.
Whenever I have something, like, really crazy. These days, it's when I have something really crazy I want to build, you know? Like, if you want to create an eye light. There's stuff you'll do sometimes that's custom, where, like, you want to have a whole bunch of light bulbs in an array and create some beautiful eye light or something like that.
Like, people still do that. So, like, Roger Deacon still builds lights randomly, you know, with truth detectors and stuff like that just to get a certain look. You guys should check out his forums because he puts up almost everything.
Like how he builds stuff, what materials he uses, and he answers questions. You can talk to Roger Deacon. And he answers all the questions. You can go on there and ask him anything. What's the key thing to use? And he's like, yeah, I use this one.
It's awesome. We were more talking about the Home Depot thing because the mentality was like, you and I use Diffusion, we use 12-Bys, we use all these things that are frankly not accessible to most people across the country, especially people who are in high school
and are trying to do it for under, like, 30 bucks, you know, or do it really on the cheap. And I just remembered how I think a big thing that seems to be an overarching moral, especially at the camera department of Garage Jump Film School,
that I'm noticing is, like, stop thinking that you need this really expensive thing to make a great film, you know what I mean? Like, to create great lighting. Like, you know, in the back of my car, I keep a show card, like a white show card that saved my butt like a million times.
Just because, as you know, just a little bit of something can make a world of difference. You don't necessarily need to shell out for the $10,000 light. You actually have an 18K available to you every single day.
It's called the sun. You just have to pay attention to where it is and shoot at the right time of day. So it's just about being resourceful. I remember on set of when we were shooting Hard to See in the Sun, on set being just our day at the park, which was lovely.
But Sean Dixon, who was our DP for the actual tutorial of the thing, started to really fall in love with the bed sheet. Right. And he's like, wow, you actually gave great results.
Stop using the balance. Use the sheet. It looks way different. He really liked it. Yeah, he really started to fall in love with that bed sheet again. It was awesome. Whatever tools you have available to you on an actual film set like sometimes it much nicer to go back to Sometimes the simplest option is the best option
Yeah, I agree. That plays into, yeah, get that notion of, like, you don't need the expensive thing to get it. Right. And I could see that happening, like, on the spot of the shot. Yeah. Yeah, it was really nice. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, let's throw it over to our producer, Cherish, over here. We also want to answer your questions. We read every comment that pops up on our videos. So, like, what's one of these? So, Rob T. Jones, I know, John, you and I both jump on to answer this in the comments, but it's a good question.
What if it's just you and a couple of friends of the tripod and you and your friends are the main actors in the movie? Do we have any tips for Rob? So, how do you have all this, you know, these tools and you don't have anybody to hold them, I guess?
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if we're saying that we're down to all the people who are participating in this or acting in front of the camera, and maybe there's one person just rolling the camera,
and that's pretty much it, then yeah, you're right. It's going to be hard to actually have bounces and stuff like that in there, and you don't have equipment. I don't expect you to. The best answer I can say is try to shoot towards more ideal times of the day. If you look into, for example, towards the sun when the sun is setting,
you automatically get a natural contrast, like a rim light around them. And that's already really kind of beautiful. There's a lot of value to just paying attention to the way light is naturally in the world. And I think a lot of DP's can miss that.
You're still busy trying to manufacture your light. You don't notice it. Like, wow, when the light comes through that curtain at this time of day, it's absolutely gorgeous. You know, like it leaves this pattern on your face. And like you can, you know, it's, so there's a lot of ways you can just use existing natural light.
You know, most photographers that I admire, all they have is really a camera. You know what I mean? Like, they don't have a massive crew half the time, and that's just about paying attention to what's already sort of there. But the thing that's sort of what the moral of this video was,
that, like, if you want something that's picturesque, you generally want to lean towards the first three hours of light in the day or the last three hours of light in the day. So if you can schedule your scenes to be around then, that'll help. Yeah. Also, pay attention to your location. Like, we have a 30-second teaser up for the Hulu commercial,
and we shot at a very specific time of day, one, because most of the street was in shadow, but then the sun was hitting the other building and creating a natural, huge bounce, like, bigger than we could rent or fabricate at all.
And it was creating this nice, still light just on the entire street, and so that's when me and my gaffer noticed and we're like, okay, ideal time of day, 4 p.m. on or 3.30 and on,
and we had, like, maybe one or two hours max to get the perfect lighting there. But we couldn't really light for that whole entire street. It was 130 feet of track. Right.
On a dolly with three million things happening, and we couldn't really light all that. So using a natural bounce off of a building that was already there. Yeah. Super cold. Yeah. And then I remember one of my favorite stories you had was,
I think it was on DJ Chess, where there was a specific reflection off of a car that hit Joanna's face or something. Oh, yeah. that lasted like 15 seconds during the day or something? Yeah.
Let's see, a reflection off of a car. A window. Yeah, well, I remember that there was something where, oh, here was a story. That wasn't actually the sun, but it's an example of sort of how accidents
and things that can happen with light are often really rewarding. One of my favorite ones was we were trying to film this scene and it was Ellery trying out for the,
I gotta think about this, RPG, maybe RTS, would be RTS? Yeah, real-time strategy. Real-time strategy, okay. So it was when Keith wanted to try to crash the RTS classroom,
and we were trying to light this live shot of her waiting in the audience, and we wanted to make her look kind of alone, and we were in the middle of trying to put up a soft still and pointed at her, and my gaffer, Justin, was like panning a light, and he was in the middle of panning, and then there was this still coming off of the side of a 2K,
and just created this one long streak that went across Ellery's face and went, stop! Because we just saw, like, don't do anything. Because, like, this weird kind of accident just happened that was just beautiful. You know what I mean?
Like, it wasn't something I could have designed. It was just something that just sort of happened. It's the fall between the barn doors. It was literally the idea of doing, like, a streak of light that just kind of cuts across as if it was coming out of the back of a projector that lights her face, but then it falls back off.
And you, rather than having just a soft wrap, you have a very specific contrast. I don't know, it just sort of made sense, but you get a lot of accidents like that. Caffeine accidents. Yeah. I think what happened in the cafeteria once was, like, we were trying to figure out where
a light was coming from, and you had to do all this, like, reverse math for, like, okay, coming off the glass window over there, and the window goes to, oh, my God, it's a windshield, you know? And that's where the sun is. Yeah. And you just put up a, and that's where grips are amazing, is you just put up a flag in
one very specific place. It doesn't seem to make any sense, but it fixes the problem. Yeah. Yeah. I like that rehearsing where sources are from so you can isolate. In terms of, like, if you really do need to go back to the original question,
sorry, I, like, tanned it off. A lot of times you can cheat with, like, if you're doing a close-up, have your actor hold a white card just off screen. Like, hold their own bounce.
I know, and then I see a lot of, like, headshot photographers and photographers holding, like, they're holding the camera here, and they're holding their reflector, like, off here, and they're holding it. I mean, like, you could use a selfie stick now, too,
or, like, a little clampy thing you hold off to the side. Right. But, I mean, you could, anything you could grab, like, I remember you can grab, like, a ladder from your dad's garage
and tape stuff or clamp stuff. You can buy clamps from Home Depot for a dollar, and, like, it doesn't have to be professional. or works at work. Right.
Absolutely. Works at work. We tied the sheet to the camera tripod. Like Sean tied it to the camera tripod because we didn't have enough people to hold the sheet during one take because we were holding the backdrop
so it wouldn't flutter in the wind. And then whoever was behind the backdrop was also holding the sheet I think. We also had the same problem. Yeah. You tie something off
and then someone else holds the other end or something like that. You're after like holding it back here and you can't tell. There's something I want to say about that too. There's a movie coming out called The Revenant that's supposedly going to be shot entirely in natural light.
It would be existing light. They're not even about. And part of the production problem they've had is that they take a really long time to shoot because they're going to be in natural light. We're not going to shoot until this light is exactly in its place,
which is cool. I'm behind. I can't wait to see what this movie looks like. but I only say that in order to get across the idea to you that like the reason we use all this film equipment mostly in movies in addition to creating
a certain kind of light is because we have this many pages to hit per day so we have to be able to recreate you know as you know like sunset light when we're shooting in the middle of the day like we're shaping it but my point is if it's you shooting with a few friends you have the option
to shoot at whatever time of day you want you're not going to be burning a ton of money I assume you know like hopefully yeah hopefully you shouldn be yeah you know I never want to be going like gosh we got to speed this along Yeah you can just go make it work with the environment you have
So why not pay attention to that? The only thing speeding you along is, of course, the sun. You don't have to race you to get it before it goes down. Yeah. Sighting allows you to have sunset for eight hours instead of 30 minutes.
Exactly. Whereas, like, you could shoot an entire movie in 30-minute chunks, like The Revenant probably The Revenant probably did. Right. There's apparently a lot of that. Yeah. There's one, two things I want to ask you.
Since we're talking about this, and we've talked about this in other podcasts, it's movies that you would watch for, you know, for sound design or for costuming. So what movies do you think also are good to take a look at for maybe shooting in natural light?
Right. That's a good question. Yeah. I like that. Because, like, that's been a constant theme is, like, to also educate people on, like, how these people have done it. Like, Revenant is natural light, but when I was in high school and it was a big buzz was New World.
Right. Like, New World was shot in natural light. I feel like the whole Malick collection, you could probably look at that mostly in terms of natural light, you know? Right. Tree of Life, to me, is a gorgeous example, you know, the way they used sun in that movie.
Yeah. And that's, it's the same exact case as the Revenant, actually. I think that's sort of where Chivo picked it up, was the Tree of Life. The DP on Tree of Life also shot the Revenant. But, yeah, it is something where you generally do have to wait it out.
Even on the Hulu show, we both experienced this recently. You have to just sort of warn your AD, like, hey, we're going to be sitting around for two hours. And for people who want to have really efficient capture, that can be really frustrating. You just have to warn them, like, we're not going to shoot until 4.30.
You know what I mean? We had to do that with a few magic hour shots on the Western this season. And, yeah. And so that's part of the, that's the trade-off with natural light is you do have to time it right, you know.
Be prepared. Yeah. Like you were saying with Dave, they just would rehearse until that time and they would shoot. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you can be productive while you're waiting in rehearsal.
There's rehearsal camera movement. There's, I don't know. So there is ways to make that time productive, but it is kind of a tradeoff of, like, you better know what's happening the second that light hits.
The other thing I want to ask, which we had in the video for a brief moment, but I think that was, of course, overcast. So if you want to talk about overcast light. Yeah, yeah.
So as much as lighting for the sun is, using hard light is about contrast and shaping it and using it just the right way on the face. Overcast is typical because in a truly overcast scenario, there's not really any shadows at all.
And so much of cinematography, I always say, is about contrast. So if you have some shadows, you either have to create shadows or you have to find color contrast. Like you need to have some kind of separation. It's not good to have someone with the exact same skin tone, you know, having a certain skin tone
saying it's a wall with the same skin tone, wearing wardrobes with the same skin tone. It just becomes pretty flat, right? so the advice I would have for overcast scenarios which like a lot of you if you're watching this in like England
you're dealing with that more than you're ever dealing with direct sun you it's negative fill which you guys have a great video on already you can do a lot when you watch a show like Game of Thrones half the stuff you're seeing that happens
in you know above the wall it's kind of an overcast scenario I believe most in Ireland and what they're doing half the time is putting up like a big they're maybe throwing in some light but also putting up like a big black sheet to just take away as much light as possible.
To give it some shade. Yeah, yeah. And I've done it in subtle enough ways where like if I want somebody to have a jawline on, I just bring a little bit of black right here just as a – there's more of a shadow right here. You know what I mean?
Or the cheekbones you put in the black right here and just shade it just a little bit, you know. Okay. Whatever you can do to sort of create some direction again because it's really all in your control. Yeah. At Overcast, I actually, it's funny, I don't know about you, when I graduated from school,
I thought Overcast was the best because it was easier to expose, you know? That's what I heard the most. Yeah. It's the least contrast, you have more control over exposure, but then it's like, control over what? It's all the same thing, so it's not interesting.
It becomes really hard to make an interesting image, actually, you know? Yeah, you can't, there's nothing to adjust. Right. It's all flat. Yeah, exactly. So you don't have control, it's like an illusion of control. Exactly. Like, nothing's overexposed or underexposed, but nothing can be moved around or fudged or nudged around at all either.
Right. So, like, you're stuck. Your best bet is to bring lights in and to shape it with negative filth. Yeah. So, now I like the sunny days. You can do it. That's good. Magic Hour is a similar kind of thing.
I know we didn't say much about Magic Hour or Golden Hour, if you will. But that's in part because I don't think you should be wasting too much time with equipment during golden hour. Maybe you bring your balance in or something like that, but if you only have 15 minutes, 20 minutes sometimes,
where the light is like that, and it's already so beautiful, then you should use it for a specific purpose. And it's kind of like overcast light in a lot of ways. There's nothing direct about it. There's not really many shadows. It has a completely different color spectrum than overcast light.
but yeah it's pretty different um yeah do you i don't know if this is just me i was thinking i got up really early this morning yeah and i feel like the the equivalent of magic hour beginning
of the day like that the twilight dawn um also has its own unique color as opposed to the sunset um post sunset magic hour and it's a completely different more like
milkier, bluer. It depends on what part of the world you're in, but I find it generally cooler. Yeah, definitely cooler. And it's this, yeah, you get more, like, magentas in the evening and oranges and all that stuff.
It's like you can heat it up or something. That's my favorite time of day, personally. Like, some of the most gorgeous stuff, like, what we were talking about, is the cardio of that shot. Like, it was, like, you know, like, any of that stuff. Twilight's just amazing.
Such a beautiful time of day. Yeah. I feel like such a nerd. I was going on carpooling with Anthony. and I was like, can you see all this gold over there, but it's like a pale gold, and then there's a white blue, and you have these color blinds, and you're like, I'm trying to drive.
And I'm like, put it up, so I'm just like, oh, no. That's what happens when you start shooting and lighting, is you start noticing nerdy things. Yeah, it's true. I know, it's funny.
The more you guys pay attention to light, and this is something I definitely felt in college, the more I like, when I would get off the set, all I could think about was light, meaning like I would look at the fluorescence in my apartment. I'd be looking at, you know, like the, which is good.
You've got to get your head in that mindset. You're thinking about the headlights coming through the windows and everything, but you just sort of get in that mindset. Yeah. One thing that just popped in my head when you brought up the negative still, like, right, jawline and cheeks and stuff like that is,
and I actually want to do a whole tutorial on this later, was as filmmakers, most of the time our subject is humans and the human face. Right. and human skin tone and human, like, just learning how to shoot the human face.
Right. And how light interacts with it, how light interacts with different skin tones. Because the thing that I noticed in film school and especially looking at when we were shooting a film and doing film stops is film stocks were all geared towards pale skin Right yeah Caucasian skin tone Caucasian skin tone and that where all the tests were
and that's how you learn how to light and how to do contrast, and there's this amazing conversation right now with Bradford Young and Ava DuVernay and how to do black skin and brown skin and dark skin,
and looking at stuff, they have yellow undertones or pink undertones or blue undertones, and, like, that is something that I wish film school had delved into more. Right. And, like, have you noticed as you've been learning as a DP and, like,
what have you noticed about the human face that has kind of struck you, I guess, is my question. Well, yeah, you make an interesting point. I realized about two years in when I started shooting that, like, cinematographer is very often not necessarily about just simple overall photography like 90%
of what we do is shoot the human face and so much of what we learn to do is how to shape it make the most flattering or unflattering as it were how to hide the eyes um anything involving that so yeah you're right it's that's the tricky thing is learning how to expose like how to light and
expose for different skin tones like some people for example say that with black skin uh using like a gold reflector is stronger because it brings out more of like the caramel tones and stuff like that Yeah, I mean, it's like talk to your gaffer a lot of the time.
There's a lot of different things going around. I've been reading stuff from Bradford Young. I think you kind of have to experiment with it yourself in terms of skin tone. Bradford Young did Selma and Dear White People and a bunch of – he's just so good.
Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah, he's a D.P. in residence at UCLA now too. So those students are lucky. I'm jealous. I'm so jealous. Really can't have the benders here. You have to fit in on one of those. Yeah, yeah. is probably going to crash it.
Anyway. We have some friends there, right? Yeah. Maybe. They don't know we went to USC, right? Blew it. Blew it. Anyway. That was brilliant. I find we're almost talking about lighting the human face.
As I would say, much of the same way that a role is directing actors is that you should direct each person differently because each actor has a different style and a different history and it's a way some people want to reference. Steven Spielberg has some amazing stuff
talking about that on YouTube, too. But I think as a DP, you should light people differently based on their... So for example, I won't get specific into which actor I'm talking about, but like an actor who has really deep set eyes, I would
generally bring their key light down a little bit so I can still get light into their eyes and create some contrast. An actor who maybe doesn't have a strong jawline, you bring their key light up so that it creates kind of like what you see on the earth, like a
shadow right here that sort of separates them so they're not just blending. You know what I mean, you like each actor differently. You know, older actors you might like more flattering, or you might like with hard lines because you want them to look older
and you want to play their age. Deeper wrinkles and contrast and depth. Yeah, yeah. More interesting. I remember hearing a story from a Gaffer friend of mine who worked with Harris to Vitties before he passed away on my Good Morial commercial,
and that, like, he was amazed when he looked over at him working with the key grip because the key grip, like, they were shooting something like, I think, Elizabeth Banks and they had like a tiny little finger and dot which is like a tiny little black like slab they just put it with a t-stand and like Elizabeth is right here they just
that's it well they would step back and that was it but just that alone was making such a huge difference for them in terms of the shape of what was happening on her face you know what I mean it does get that particular yeah especially in makeup and yeah yeah it's interesting that you
say that I feel like I've heard stories about certain actors who have like their own sort of lighting person or like even a person to like approve like a shot. Yeah. Or the way an actor is.
Well, they say part of the reason that back in the day like Marlene Dietrich would date her cameraman, like would marry her cameraman, and like a lot of these people would bring their same cameraman on every single set was because image was so important, it was so technical, and they needed to have somebody who was,
they could rely on to always make them look their best, you know, especially as they got older and all that stuff. Side note, apparently Marlene Dietrich has what was called the Dietrich lens. You guys ever hear about this? It was a 50 mil, but just squeezed you a little bit.
It made you look slightly skinnier than everyone else. They could only use it for her close-up. That's a 10-pound, like, thing. Taking off the 10 pounds from the TV. Exactly, yeah. Wow. Just narrowed it up to the bottom.
Oh, I know. Right? I didn't know that existed. Great. We get a little squeezed. But, yeah, it used to go that way. It's not the same economy anymore. Now it's usually the director, but it used to be like,
no, I'll only be filmed if that person's filming me. Wow, crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's nice to know as an actor, and this is something, another idea I have later on, which is what is the relationship between an actor and a DP?
Because there is kind of, you want separation, but then again, the actor wants to know that they're being taken care of and that they're, you know, being portrayed well. And it's just like, what's, where are the boundaries there? And that kind of stuff too.
So I always thought that was super interesting. It's just like, is there a relationship there? does it depend on the actor, does it depend on the director? There is, yeah. It's funny. I mean, I'm usually interested in building up a lot of trust with the actors over time
and I remember getting to a point where it was like, okay, they'll kind of they're just going to rely on me. They're not going to ask a million questions about it. Very often, some actors, especially people who are more physical comedy oriented will ask what the size of the shot is
and you see what a massive effect it has on them. If you let them know it's here to here, they're going to move around and use that space. If you let them know it's here, they're going to act with their, essentially with their minds and let it just sort of play.
But I remember a really interesting thing from an actress once. She said that, like, the first thing she looks for when a take is done is just, like, even out of the periphery of her eyes, that person smiling behind the camera.
Like, that's the first thing that might go, that was good, you know? You're just looking for that. It's sort of like the audience, you know what I mean? It's the first person to see the movie. And, yeah, of course you want to know what the director thinks as well, but you are
subconsciously sort of thinking about like oh I must have done something and usually ideally the director and DC are so synced up that they're both going to be like like I'm sure you experienced it like with Matt and Freddie we usually would look at each other and just be like yeah that was it
we all know yeah so yeah yeah we do rail a little bit but I feel like even when you're shooting outside pay attention to how your
actor's face looks and also don't make ooh that face after a take right so it's bad yeah and in overcast light you can still do something just use take it as bill yeah
yeah well I know in the comments a lot like the biggest comment we got in the comment section for that video was how do I do night shoots how do I shoot in low light blah blah blah and we have been talking about this
extensively and we've actually shot we shot the horns which was our Halloween shorts we have other shorts coming up that are similar to that and we have different types of low light and different things like that that we're going to break down and actually go through that.
So that is coming. Yeah. We're pretty excited about that. Yeah, I'm really excited to share that with you guys. Yeah. Hang in there. Thanks, John. Great. I love talking, sharing stuff with John because I'm surrounded by directors here.
And I'm just like, I need to talk about filters and lights and color and this is really nice. I was wondering how you were. Yay. All right. Thanks, guys.
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