So I've been making short films with my friends for awhile and one of the main critiques we always get and notice ourselves is the sub par lighting.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get good lighting with standard house lights and lamps?

Paint with the lights. Move them around, put shades on them or in front of them or anything just to get a different look of light depending on what you're going for. Also you might want to get some clip on lights from home depot or the likes. They're good in a tight spot and can be fairly directional or not, depending on where you point them or what you put in front of them.

To get inspiration or ideas I watch movies and imagine where the lights are and what might be between them and the subject. Turn lights off and on to see their effect on the image.

Just practice a lot even if your not shooting anything, just light a scene in your room or your house and see how it looks.

Hopefully that was a little helpful.
Good luck.

Yeah it was, thanks

My advice would be to get a cheap light kit. At some point you have to want more out of your productions. Save up some money and just get the basic 3 light package with some 250's and a 500. It's not that expensive. House lights will always look shizzy and using baldmans stunning words of wisdom like "Turn lights off and on to see their effect on the image." you'll notice a bigger differance with the 250's opposed to a 40 watt house bulb.

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Fingerpaint with light and you'll burn your damn dirty paws off http://www.abelabilities.com

Do you have any screenshots?

I'm guessing it would be a lot easier for us to give specific constructive criticism than broad generalities about lighting in general.

I don't have screenshots but here is a link to a video on youtube:


http://youtube.com/watch?v=Cuy6Wootm6Q

That's not so much bad lighting, just not that great of anything. Sorry to be harsh. I only got through the first 2 minutes because it was pretty hard to bare. Don't get discouraged by me though, because you guys look young, and that is good! You guys are doing the right thing, going out and making movies, and then asking for help. There's so many people that say they're filmmakers, and don't have anything to show for it.

Although lighting would help you out, you really need to work on your camera work, and story telling as well.

From what I saw there was no story. I'm sure for you and your friends this is pretty funny, seeing Johnny screaming like a girl, etc. But no one else really knows your friends, they would need to know the character to think that it's funny. However there really isn't any character there. I would suggest reading a few scripts (http://www.script-o-rama.com/ has a LOT of them) and the book "Story". Someone else can probably help you in this department more than I can.

I watched about 2 minutes, and with shorts you really need to capture the audiences attention fast. Having a 30 seconds of kids running around across the street with a camera that wasn't even focused on them really doesn't do it. Also don't be afraid to cut, show what you want/need to show to achieve what you're looking for. If it was important to have them across the street for that long you could have cut to some nearer shots to make it more interesting.

Also get a tripod and use it. It looked like a few shots were using a tripod, but a lot of it was hand-held. I like hand-held shots don't get me wrong, but it is hard to do with small camcorders. Also again don't be afraid to cut, long takes are cool when they're highly orchestrated and well lit and timed. Have your friends do the same action/line from a couple of different angles. Watch in movies how they place the camera, and how it moves.

You can get 500 watt halogen work lights for cheap at hardware stores, but they're hard to control the light. A little bit better solution is the lights with the dome reflectors and clips, but even those can be hard to work with (they're top heavy and don't like staying clip to stuff). You can get reasonably priced light kits at www.bhphotovideo.com. I'm hoping to get a light kit for Christmas, because I'm sick of using shotty hardware lights. To see how to use lights effectively try searching google for three-point lighting, there's tons of stuff out there about it. Also this site has a nice flash example of three-point lighting http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point/simulator.html. Mess around with them too, you don't have to follow the formula, just know it so you know why you're breaking it.

Hopefully I was some help and wasn't too discouraging. Good luck with your next project!

Yeah man I would have to agree... I wouldn't worry about lighting to much at this point. I would say until you know how to efficiently tell a story and properly compose a shot, lighting (no matter how good or bad) will make absolutely no difference. Keep practicing and reading until you have a grip on the solid fundamentals, and then worry about the aesthetic extras.

Thanks for the criticism, I do appreciate it, otherwise I probably wouldn't even be on this site. I think I can agree with you that there were a lot of things wrong with it, but it's the best thing we've made so far and as long as it keeps getting better and not worse I still feel somewhat accomplished.

I agree the beginning was pretty horrible. This was actually for a school project, and the day we shot it was raining. That is why it doesn't show closeups at the beginning, I couldn't get the camera wet so it was on a tripod under an awning. That wasn't the planned intro either but since we had only a few hours to shoot , we had to work around everyone's schedule, and it was raining, not much of the script went according to plan.

As for bad camera movement, I know a lot of it was really bad. Part of the problem was when I had to be in a scene the camera just went to whoever wasn't in that scene at the time, and everybody was in a rush. Nobody else was really worried whether the shot looked professional or anything so that was a problem too.

Again thanks for the feedback. I know it's not very good but if you could watch the entire video and then give me some critique I would really appreciate it.