Shadowing Practice: simple tricks to hiding lights in a scene - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
Something that I haven't really seen taught that often is how to hide your lighting on set.
2
This is actually quite a crucial skill to have
3
because having lights everywhere is sometimes unavoidable and it gets you the best shot.
4
There's a few drawbacks sometimes of just having tons of grip gear on set, especially for documentary.
5
For one, this is just not how life is.
6
We're not used to just seeing lights around and if you're working with real people, it can be intimidating but also they can get in your shot
7
and limit the style of your shooting and
8
so i'm going to break down a few different ways of how you can have lighting in your shot
9
and get cinematic footage without ever having to actually have a footprint on set of
10
that lighting gear i'll talk about the gear in a sec
11
but i want to break down those four ways you can
12
hide your lights right away the first is just in plain sight with practical the second is through windows
13
and and coming from outside of the building.
14
The third is using overhead things like pull cats and suction cups.
15
And the last one is having someone what we call Hollywooding
16
or hand bombing a light right near your camera and following you along the shot.
17
And actually this technique you will see on huge Hollywood sets all the way up to projects like Wes Anderson's films.
18
There's often a person running around with a China bulb right beside their camera.
19
so one of the goals of today was to see
20
if we can light without seeing the lights trying to do
21
as much of a 360 approach always for my documentary work the less lights i can have on set
22
that are seen to me feels more real
23
and i always believe i'll get a better performance out of people who are non -actors
24
when there is less lighting on set
25
so first let's talk about the overhead lighting We used a device called a polecat
26
and this actually pushes into the sides of your walls
27
and you're able to get your light above your subject and sometimes pretty big lights like this Nanlite Pavo Slim 360C.
28
It's actually quite the big light and using a pretty small polecat, we were able to push that in.
29
You'll hear some people also calling these auto poles as well that go in there.
30
I think there's just different companies or different terminology for them.
31
There's just a few drawbacks about them.
32
For one, I'm always kind of sketched out by them.
33
They always feel like they might just fall, not because they actually seem to be doing that, but the longer the pull you get, the more it bows, and it just seems to be defying gravity.
34
But there's a few things you can do to help mitigate that.
35
Incredible Grip, who was also acting as our gaffer that day, Gabe, puts a little bit of tape around them just to help the actual padding to not slide down.
36
It's just a little extra catch.
37
And the drawback too is you do need the width of your room
38
or the width of the space that you're pushing up against to be somewhat narrow.
39
Now, I've used polecats for a long time.
40
If you remember that one shot I did in Battleground for the dinner table scene, I kind of cheated.
41
I put it into a cabinet and on top of our pull -up bar in our office, but I was able to hang the light above.
42
It allows you to get lights above your subject without having to use huge 750 combo stands
43
and big long boom poles over top.
44
What I really love about using autopoles and polecats is you're able to create that pool of light in a bigger space.
45
And why I like that then is you're able to do 360 shots.
46
You can see Nick and I working around here with Elisha with having that light there, that Pavlos M360C on that slight angle.
47
We threw a grid on there too just to give it some more directional light and take away the spill.
48
But I like lighting from above when I can
49
and adding a bit of an angle so that we're getting more shape
50
and it doesn't just feel like a pool of lighting.
51
now talking about lighting from above gabe actually had one of the tilta suction cups
52
so i think it's called a hydra tilta hydra electronic suction
53
cup i hate names of gear i'm just going to call
54
it whatever i want this electronic suction cup from tilta we
55
stuck to the ceiling we were able to add in one of our pavo tubes above
56
because when i was looking at the shot we were getting daylight coming in from those windows on her face
57
but we wanted to accentuate it we wanted to exaggerate it i think
58
that every documentary filmmaker should have one of these suction cups in their kit
59
because it allows you to rig a small light to any ceiling no matter the room
60
and a big part of this scene too is we're trying
61
to balance out like a very interior part of our kitchen's
62
exposure to where we are never going to get right next to a window
63
so by having an extension of our window light
64
or this tube we're able to shoot kind of a one -er shot where without having to adjust aperture yeah
65
and which is nice because especially
66
if you're controlling in a dock setting for someone who might be doing an action
67
that you can't predict everything
68
and you give them a range of motion like you can
69
be in the kitchen you can be in the living room
70
this is kind of like balancing you almost 360 from shooting everywhere
71
so by adding that tube there we are able to emulate the idea of that blue
72
cool daylight coming onto her face with the warm tungsten on the back
73
and then we change all of the lighting from the app
74
it's really an exciting time to be doing lighting on independent small films right now
75
because even in this room right now i have swapped out
76
all the bulbs in my office for these pavo 10c bulbs
77
and we actually had a full kit on set
78
so i think we had about 10 in the end
79
and we actually needed those because when we were down in
80
that big ugly conference room space we wanted to swap out all those ugly fluorescent bulbs
81
and those fixtures were nice we actually could end up using
82
that fixture when we powered our lights to full power as one of our additional lighting sources
83
so I'll just jump into
84
that next thing of hiding your lights in plain sight using
85
practicals I highly recommend grabbing a bunch of lamps every cinematographer
86
or filmmaker should have a stack of lamps ready to go
87
desk lamps tall lamps have them as part of your kit treat them like C stands
88
because they're so handy to put into a room.
89
And then especially when you put your own bulbs into it and you can control it with your app, you can begin to create pools of light around the room
90
and take what would be normally a boring corner and suddenly have a nice pool of light there.
91
So we did that in everywhere.
92
When we were back up in the condo, we swapped out all the bulbs out of all the fixtures.
93
Now what's fun with those 10C light bulbs is although they don't have a battery inside, there is a little pack that you can have
94
that will power it off USB -C and then you can dial in your lighting that way.
95
Those packs have a battery power so it's external so we used that
96
when elisha was sitting there on her laptop we just needed
97
a little more of a catch light on her face again
98
without having to bring a light onto set we just threw
99
one of those bulbs there on her laptop we could have
100
rigged something smaller had we had a little light pad like
101
that but in this case we were just using the bulb there's actually one more really interesting feature with
102
that bulb i thought this was kind of cool they have
103
this little like flywheel pinwheel here you can stick this to the top
104
and now you have this in a fixture
105
and you want to cut some of your lighting you could put this in there
106
and then use this little as b5c that's the technical term for this i call it a pinwheel now i'm dutch
107
now quick rundown of all the lighting gear we used today
108
for our outside fixtures was the nan lux 600c lighting we
109
also had an analogs 150c light on the interiors often above
110
or for our main key source we use the new pavo slim 360c this is a light
111
that i hadn't had the pleasure of using yet
112
and this was my first time on set using it we also use some tubes the pavo tube 230xr
113
and as well for our bulbs on set we are using the pavo bulb the 10c bulb
114
and for our camera we had an alexa that's very fun.
115
Nick happens to own one, our DP, who was working with us, and we were using the Arcana Dizio lenses because Nick hadn't tried those out yet, so he wanted to test those out.
116
You see a little theme there.
117
All of our gear, in terms of lighting, was provided by NAN Lux and NAN Lighting, so I wanted to disclose that in this video, that they did provide the gear we got to use on set.
118
And I gotta shout out Nick Pilecki, our cinematographer on this.
119
He's become a good friend a great collaborator we have our power grade
120
that we've made together whenever i call him up
121
and say hey do you want to do a camera test he's all in
122
because we get to try new things and mess around
123
and learn and when we were doing this interview setup
124
which i'll do a separate video on that there was a bunch of stuff
125
that immediately we realized wasn't working but then i got to sit there with him
126
and discuss it and actually learn a new way of kind of setting up
127
that interview space the way i hadn't thought before these are the chance for you to have a a calm mind, a calm set, and no pressure on deliverables,
128
and mess around and try new things.
129
Your favorite Hollywood cinematographer and directors spend months before they go into a feature film doing camera tests, and these are veterans of filmmaking.
130
Just like an athlete takes so many shots in practice so that when they're in the game time, they're ready to go.
131
Think about Air Bud.
132
They practiced all the time.
133
That dog was a champion so that they could win every game they played, and in fact, every sport that we end up seeing
134
that dog and or ape play air bud practices so so should you by the way
135
if you like lighting guides i threw a couple free resources down below these are checklists
136
and guides we have with full breakdowns lighting plots
137
and step -by -step checklists for you to go through your lighting whether it's small interviews
138
or big ones these are free resources that the art of documentary provides
139
so i have those down below if you want have some extra knowledge for
140
when you're going out there and hopefully doing camera tests
141
the next lighting technique to eliminate stands on your set
142
and this is the most common way you'll see people hiding lights
143
and it's not even necessarily really hiding it's just emulating sunlight and that's bringing your lights outside of your set, on the other side of windows,
144
punching them in through those windows and back into the set.
145
There's just a few quick things I wanna say about this that you have to watch out for.
146
One is obviously your pole.
147
This is again now going to be in your shot if you're not careful.
148
We were shooting on anamorphics, so sometimes that helps because your background bouquet is so blurry, but there's still some times that we did catch it.
149
Sometimes just had to hide those poles with foliage, can look a bit goofy, but a person's eye may just see it as a bush.
150
The bigger the light you have, the further you can put it away so it can be out of your shot and punch it back in.
151
We had the Nanlux 600C light and that was helpful, but we still had to have it somewhat close in because it was a giant, giant room.
152
But I love punching lights from outside of windows.
153
It's just nice to have those pool of lights there and you can break it up with what we call dingles, putting some foliage in front of that window.
154
In the case of the condo, we didn't want to directly have it right onto Elisha.
155
It's not all the time that you see in a house where light is just hitting someone directly in the face.
156
You can see my office, it's just ambiently pooling in.
157
So sometimes you do want to have it just bounce into the room.
158
In this case, we shot it off the ground because that is more common, the angle that a light would come.
159
This is something I do a lot of times in apartment buildings where you can't necessarily
160
get a light outside the window because we're up on the fourth or fifth story, is if you get access to a balcony what I'll do is I'll take the light
161
and rather than point it directly at our subject I'll kind of point it into the ground
162
and let the passive light bouncing off the ground just lift the face 10 to 20 percent
163
so it feels a little more natural than
164
if you took this blasted it right at your subject directly
165
and tried to diffuse it there's always just like there's this
166
uncanny part where like it still looks like you have a light out there
167
so this just a way of like feathering it in
168
and hiding more in plain sight the sunlight isn't always at
169
dusk unless you're shooting on a vr stage like all these mediocre hollywood films these days
170
but you can put the light above and bounce it off of the floor
171
and then up into your character's face like we did
172
so it becomes almost like that bounce that gabe was using earlier
173
so in the condo nick had the idea of having a more aggressive angle with our 600c
174
which we put out on the patio just outside the door there.
175
We had that bounce off the ground into Elisha's face, which was really great.
176
One way to hide those lights outside the window as well is just letting the window blow out.
177
This is normal.
178
Our eyes sometimes will see windows just as big, white, bright squares.
179
If you remember when I had Stefano Ferrari on here talking about his Netflix cinematography, he often will just have a window blowout.
180
So this is another way you can hide
181
that light by just having it fully overexposed but be careful too
182
that you're not shooting directly into the light sometimes it feels like suddenly there's a sun right outside the window
183
which is weird the sun isn't just going to sit there 10 feet from your window
184
so you kind of have to play with it
185
and begin to really ask yourself does this feel realistic is there a way
186
that we can shift it away can i sacrifice a perfect
187
flare in order for the room to feel more realistic it's kind of a push
188
and pull that you want to have
189
and this is where i recommend doing camera tests
190
and for you getting a feel of where you can place
191
a light from an exterior window as i mentioned one of the other techniques you can do
192
so you don't really have light stands on set is what we call hollywooding
193
or bouncing this may seem quite obvious to you
194
but it's still a technique used on all the major movie
195
sets having things like gabe standing there with the four by
196
four bounce just to get some extra catch light onto elisha helped
197
and then gabe since he's handheld he is now the human c stand He can walk around pull
198
that in pull that out
199
and can listen to our DP saying waste it away Bring it in catch that light a little less.
200
This is a way that you can get dynamic lighting on the fly We even had Gabe
201
when he had an actual painters pole
202
and had a clamp on the end of that with the pavo tube
203
And we tried some stuff like
204
that it can sometimes work kind of want to diffuse it
205
can start looking spotty Something you want to be careful with
206
that's why you'll see a lot of lighting techniques people using
207
these big long bamboo poles with china bulbs on the end the china bulb is very soft
208
and it has a lot of ambient light
209
so you're not casting big deep dark shadows
210
so having one of those around set sometimes can help
211
or you'll see people using spotlights like
212
when we did this vr shoot we had adrian our lighting
213
technician running around with handheld lights powered by v -mounts getting
214
us these spotlights it's quite fun you can get some dynamic shots
215
and suddenly your light is acting like a camera picking off people
216
and shooting different areas well i hope you enjoyed
217
that shout out to nan light for providing all of our
218
lighting gear in this video become a big fan of using their gear
219
and they've also just helped support us shoot
220
so many videos i don't know why i'm leaning away i guess i just wanted to show the bulbs again
221
and uh thank you gabe
222
or gaffer kim elisha landon nick just fun people find some people you like
223
and get out there
224
and get practicing all your lighting it's just Those are some of my favorite days the pressures off
225
and I know I'm gonna get to grow
226
and learn as a filmmaker Can't recommend it highly enough get
227
into those resources down below their free resources We put a lot of time in them to make sure
228
that they're practical tips that you can follow immediately in your career and on set I hate goodbyes, but I love Stroopwafels.
229
Yeah, they're good the Dutch you and your windmills produce some tasty thin Syrupy waffles.
230
All right.
231
Have a good one
📺 Same Channel
✨ Recommend Video
B21
24 sentences
7 Easy & Cinematic B-Roll Shots for YouTube Vlogs
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B213
43 sentences
Pixar in a Box: The Art of Lighting
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
137 sentences
How to Disappear and Transform Yourself
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B25
285 sentences
I Built a Fake Home Theater…
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B172
4 sentences
Shadowing English with Suits | shadowing with movies #shorts #suits #learnenglish
High School StudentsUniversity Students+3
B24
183 sentences
This library changes how JS and CSS work together
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
281 sentences
How to actually make eye-catching 3D Scenes | After Effects
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
205 sentences
ZV-E10 Low Light - Best Picture Profile
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
112 sentences
5 Things Under $20 Every ARCHITECT Needs
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
121 sentences
5 Natural Frames That Will Change Your Street Photography
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B181 sentences
How to visualize? The easiest visualization method!
University StudentsBusiness English+1
B21
136 sentences
You Have Time: 12 Ways to Educate Yourself Daily
University StudentsBusiness English+1
About This Lesson
You're practicing English with "simple tricks to hiding lights in a scene" using the Shadowing technique — a method originally developed for professional interpreter training.
Focus on sounding like the speaker — not just repeating words. With 15–30 minutes of daily practice, you'll build real-world speaking confidence.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.