In this video, I break down the incredible cinematography of the John Wick series and discuss the lighting techniques that make it so vivid and colorful. I go into detail on the lighting theory for how to use color properly in a cinematic film. I go over two big tips for creating colorful lighting:
Make the light softer.
Use color to create depth and dimension.
Making the light softer can be done in two ways, either moving the light closer to the subject so that the source is larger in relation to the subject and thus it wraps the subject more, or you can bounce/diffuse the light which increases its size as well. The reason it’s often good to go with softer light is that it feels more natural, especially when you’re using a lot of saturated colors because colorful light sources in real life tend to be large, soft sources such as neon signs, window curtains, lamp shades, etc.
You want to make sure you create depth and dimension to your lighting so that the entire scene isn’t just washed with a bright, saturated light that blankets everything like a filter. That would only serve to flatten out the image and make everything feel two dimensional. In order to create more depth you can have either contrast in intensity between the foreground and background, or contrast of color itself. For instance, shining the light only on the background, making the foreground darker, will create depth and separation. Also, lighting the subject with a different color from the rest of the scene will help that subject stand out and create depth as well. If you really only want to use one color in your scene, I recommend having the intensity of the light fall off gradually from one side to the other, instead of blasting the light directly from the front and having everything exposed evenly across the board.
These two tips for lighting with color will have your images looking like John Wick in no time!
At the end of this video, I actually do a demo of my creative process, showing you in real time how I work through trying to create a certain look with all the lights at my disposal. In this example, I used a Source Four Leko light with a 750 watt bulb and a few Astera Titan tubes.