Skin Tones Studies | Virtual Cinematography
Dark skin tones react better to very diffused lighting setups, which combined with the rich specularity of the skin is enough to shape the characters. Bradford Young uses this technique all the time.
Good shaping can be obtained trough the specular highlights of the skin.
Tungsten lights (3200 kelvins) are the go-to for getting that warm and golden look.
Eye lights or catch lights are one of the most important things to consider when lighting characters, it makes them look and feel alive.
You can also not use it when it serves the story and the physcology of the character.
How light scatters trough the skin is very important when using backlight setups.
Here I have applied the counterchange technique to distinguish the silhouette of the character, you can play with light and shadow to create depth and enhance the separation between midground and background.
This lighting study is the result of my time studying film and cinematography, especially how light interacts with the characters and how is used to set the mood, emotions, and overall storytelling.
For me, this is the most important part, through my studies of great cinematographers I've noticed one thing in common. The lighting supports the story and simultaneously creates a powerful image with a wide range of emotions in the movie.
I believe storytelling is often left aside and replaced by the standard lighting setups like three-point lighting, Rembrandt, Underlit, etc. While this has proven to be one of the most efficient ways to light characters is not the only way to get nice shaping, readability, and most importantly to influence how the audience should feel when looking at any image.
Modern films often follow a lighting setup created with story and emotions in mind, lighting the environment in a naturalistic way through bounce light wrapping and shaping character's faces using lights motivated by their surroundings.
In addition to this environment-centric lighting setup, there's often a wide variety of color schemes that keep rich skin tones, this is one of the intrinsic characteristics of film, and in digital mediums is achieved by color grading.
Skin tones are widely different, they react to light in different ways and we need to capture the details accurately for every skin color.
This work was heavily inspired by the works of great cinematographers like Roger Deakins, Bradford Young, and Emanuel Lubezki.
Created on Unreal Engine 5 with a physically based lighting workflow.
