A few weeks back my friend, a very talented singer and musician, asked me to shoot a simple music video for her cover of Jhene Aiko’s music. I felt that this was a great opportunity to practice what I have learnt so far outside of university. The song covered by my friend was called the “The Worst” which, to put it simple, is about a rough break up. The whole feel to the song was sad and loneliness, and I wanted to portray that through the lighting in the music video. In terms of scene, it had two subjects: my friend who was singer and my other friend who was on the keyboards. The subjects are set up in a way as if they were recording a take of the song.

The Lighting set up was very simple. I hired two LED lights from AV Loans that had a tungsten filter on it with a temperature of 3100 K. In terms of the quality of the light, I wanted the light to be very soft. I bounced one of the LED’s on the roof from the left side which acted as the fill. The second light was shone towards the subjects from the right side, which acted as the key light. The key light was very diffused as I placed it outside, in which it was shining through a window and white thin curtains.

I placed the singer right next to the curtain, as she will receive a stronger highlight than the keyboardist. In terms of their position in the room, I placed the subjects in front of the corner to achieve some depth in the shot. I was also able to sperate the subjects nicely when it came to the side profile shots.

Overall the lighting was very warm and soft, which is what I was what I wanted to achieve. I was able to get some nice shadows which were a few stops darker than the highlights. Overall this kind of lighting gave the scene a ‘moody’ look so that it would complement the song itself.

Here are some of the shots I took for the video: