Here are four ways you can use light to dress your set.
Apart from sound, good lighting can make or break your scene. Any filmmaker with a deft hand can make the cheapest potato look like an ARRI Alexa. While that’s a gross exaggeration, the fundamental idea is sound.
Lighting is the foundation of your image.
But there’s another way to look at lighting. Not as a way to illuminate, but to add practical elements to your scenes as set design.
The lads at COOPH looked at four unique lights that do just that. Take a peek here.
Production Design with Lights
The four lights that the COOPH photographers looked at were a sound-sensitive light bar, a rainbow projector lamp, a star projector lamp, and a party light. Best of all, each light is well under $50.
Cinematographers might look at these lamps and scoff, but any set designer would foam at the mouth for these cheap, creative solutions.
Let’s start with the sound-sensitive light bar. The series of lights react to the sound that the bar captures and bounce on the LEDs lining the bar. While it might seem like a gimmick, this would be an incredibly creative solution for music videos.
Credit: COOPH
Imagine stacking a row of these behind a musician and having them jump with the music.
Next up we have the rainbow projector lamp. While it’s usually used as bedroom decor, take a look at what COOPH did with their setup.
Credit: COOPH
This light would also add incredible creative options to music videos, but would also work comfortably in fashion-oriented video shoots. Filmmakers thinking out of the box could also use this as a key light to mimic sunlight.
The last two lights we’ll group together, as they create a similar effect. The star projector lamp and the party light both produce wonderful visual effects.
The star projector lamp would be a great narrative tool to add emotionality to drama or comedy projects.
Credit: COOPH
The party light, on the other hand, can be used for party scenes or rigged to add unique effects to your music videos.
Credit: COOPH
Light Isn’t Just for Lighting
Whatever project you're tackling at the moment, it’s time to start thinking of lighting as more than a way to shape your image.
With a little bit of imagination and some cheap lights you can buy from Amazon, creatives can elevate the set design of music videos or narrative projects.
Unfortunately, sourcing these lights might be a problem. Two of the lights COOPH linked are no longer available. But a quick search will yield more than enough options to get your creative juices flowing!
Let us know what you try.
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Source: COOPH
