Lights Film School Blog

How to Create Film and Documentary Trailers

Creating a trailer for your documentary or film is a great way to expose your story to the world. Essentially a trailer is a short montage of the text, audio and visual components of your film that act as an advertisement for the longer format version. This usually means that the most exciting footage is used in condensed format in the hopes of stimulating audience interest in your film. Everybody’s style, of course, is different and part of the joy of filmmaking is putting your stamp on your...

Lighting Tutorial: Color Temperature

In our last post we looked at the basics of lighting. Specifically we looked at lighting direction and intensity. In the lighting video tutorial below we're going to look at color temperature. It's an overlooked part of the independent filmmaking process so watch closely and take notes!

Lighting Tutorial For Independent Filmmakers

Watch the video below to  learn more about lighting for film. This introductory video will guide you through the basics of molding light around a subject's face. Learn about back lighting, front lighting and side lighting. We'll also show you how to use cheap reflectors (i.e. white foam core). You can see all of our public videos on our YouTube Channel

How to Light a Documentary Interview

If you’re shooting an interview for your documentary you will be using either natural light sources or studio lighting. This blog post will outline how to properly use indoor or studio lighting to optimize the production value of your documentary. If you’re shooting indoors or in a studio, the basic 3 point lighting technique is a favorite amongst filmmakers. It fully exposes the facial expression and emotions of your subject as well as isolates them from the background and hides unwanted sha...