 Welcome to the Crimson Engine. My name is Rebedi and today we are talking about hard light. How to use it, how to utilize it, and how to make it look good. There's been a big trend lately for soft sources. Larger and larger lights to give softer and softer illumination to your subjects. It makes things look beautiful. It makes shadows invisible. It just gives everything a warm glow. I think hard light and the advantages of hard light are neglected. Not just using hard lights to bounce off something and make them soft but actually using hard light for what it's good for. Creating hard edges, creating a spotlight, creating really punchy, bold, bright images. There are a lot of advantages to using hard light. Practically on set. You can place the lights very far away or you can just use available sunlight. Hard light obviously gives hard edges. It's not as flattering as soft light but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its own aesthetic that can be just as beautiful as soft light. You do have to know how to use hard light so it doesn't look like you're lighting your set with a spotlight held by someone just off camera or you don't end up looking like an ENG news reporter in front of a hurricane. First thing I would say is that hard light doesn't need to be bright light just because hard light sources like Fresnel's have huge output. They don't need to be turned all the way up. I have a IntelliTech light cannon mini just on top of the camera here. Probably about a foot above and a foot behind the camera. It's on access and it's dialed all the way down. It's still giving me plenty of exposure. I could have this light 50 feet away and totally empty my set of lights and still get illumination but I've chose to keep it reasonably close. A big part of making hard light look good is use the angles that flatter the face. So like this on access meaning almost exactly in front of and above the camera or using hard light to create a Rembrandt style light. That means that the shadows it creates still flatter the face. Don't create competing shadows. Don't mess up the lines of the face and make your subject look beautiful. Hard lights create hard shadows but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a very graphic immediate almost on camera flash look that has an aesthetic that you can embrace. Hard shadows look great when paired with bright colors, strong patterns, bold choices. They can even serve to outline your subject against the background and make things really pop. If you're worried about the shadows that hard light creates you can balance them out. Here I have a young your light stick if I place it just off camera below and fill in the shadows that the hard light creates you get kind of perfect illumination almost another graphic look where your subject is really highlighted out from your background. Lighting a subject like this really covers up any blemishes or imperfections in the skin makes it look a little bit like a magazine cover. But you shouldn't always shy away from the imperfections of your talent. Sometimes it can be really great to place your hard light directly side on and really accentuate the textures of your subject. Danny Trio, a famous actor here in LA has an amazingly distinctive look and it would be a mistake to try and light him with beauty lighting. He really stands out and creates a really more powerful character when lit with hard light. Hard light like the sun illuminates everything evenly and this is kind of why it gets a bad rap. If you're using artificial hard light like an IntelliTech light Canon pro or this light Canon mini you can use it to isolate your subject from the background meaning put much more light you know five or six stops more on your subject than the background and really make them pop out of the background. It's much easier to get a bright hard light than it is get a bright soft light. Hard light can be your friend. It is an amazing tool and you don't need to follow every trend and make every light as big and soft and diffuse as possible. Hard light will really let you say a lot about your characters in film. It will really give you a punchy bright distinctive look when you take photographs. That's my look at hard light. Thank you very much for watching. I will see you next time.