DIY Cinematography with Smart Lights

Heat. Heat. Heat. up here.

It's been a long time since we've done any kind of DIY lighting, and smart lights have gotten really good and more affordable. And in the past, we've used standard bulbs, daylight, tungsten to get different looks. We've even painted bulbs to get around using gels. But now, you have all these app connected lights that can do any color and are fully dimmable. So, when GOI reached out to partner and offered to send us a bunch of stuff to test out, I figured it was the perfect time to revisit DIY lighting with these smart lights. So, every bit of lighting that you're going to see in this episode, other than the key from this soft box right now, is done entirely with GOI smart lights. So, we went into storage to get our old clamp lights and this DIY light bar build that we made over a decade ago, but now we're using those with these new GOI lights to test an outdoor and indoor horror style scenes. But let's start with outside.

First thing was the house lights. And this takes me right to what I love most about this process and will change how I shoot Film Riot when we're in spaces that we control like our homes. And that is to leverage these types of lights to build the environment then utilize other fixtures to shape the rest. For this moment specifically, I have these GOI permanent outdoor lights prism. We had two options that we could have gone with, but these are great because they have these three independently controlled color zones in each of the heads that run around the house, so I can get a ton of different looks out of them. Then I have these wall-mounted lights here, a flood light bulb, replacing the light for my porch, these yard spot lights, which I place them on either side of the house to light up the house on the edges a bit and backlight the tree on the right side. Then I tossed my indoor strip light pro, which is one of my favorite lights that we tested, into one of the flower beds just on the left side to bring a little bit out over there. They do have outdoor waterproof ones, but these are the ones I had on hand. And these decorative projector lights, one on either side of the door. These are great because you can swap out the sides to get different images projected onto your house depending on the season. Obviously, this one specifically only works for our scene here since we wanted to push that Halloween decoration vibe at first, but outside of very specific uses, these are really only useful as decoration, which I will keep on my house now. So, once I had it all up, I could set the look that I wanted in the app and then we were ready to go. So, next was to get some

lights to shape our subject. So, we grabbed that old light bar that we built in 2014 and tossed in eight go bulbs. Then I can get all of these connected in the app and control each individually. So I can have them all on or select how many I want on. But I can also group these and operate them as a whole. Any color dimming or programming as a scene. And that's the biggest upgrade with this new DIY lighting approach. I don't need any dimmers anymore and I don't need gels. And that especially comes in handy when you are putting these lights in a shot or trying to hide them in small places. I also grabbed the old clamp lights, pop some bulbs in there. So, right here with this fixture and a handful of clamp lights, we have a DIY light kit for around 150 bucks. But with these built, we headed back outside and

we placed the light bar behind Emily to act as a street light. I had all eight on but dimmed down and set to 2,800 Kelvin. Then we had one of the clamp lights in front of her to act as a cold moonlight look, but then eventually the red house lights. For the moonlight to start, I just used the cyan preset in the app and set the intensity to my liking. And that was it. We had our look. So now to get the house to shift those looks on command, I can group all the lights into a tap to run. So I'll include every light that I want, then set each to what I want it to do. Then I have these three ready to go. And the first one is the starter Halloween decoration look. The second is that calm hypnosis look, and the third all red. So now I can run the shot over and over, reset, and shift the lights with just one press. Now these lights aren't made to sync perfectly for theatrical use. So, there was a tiny delay in the shift over, but that was an easy enough solve by bringing it into After Effects and using some masking to correct the timing. And I do realize I'm leaning heavily into red in this episode, and YouTube compression doesn't tend to be very kind to dark and red images, but I couldn't help myself. It looks so cool. So, I guess we'll see how cruel YouTube's compression is. I love this shot here, too. The fog spilling out as the door slowly opens. It feels like such a fun classic Halloween moment. Almost goosebumpsesque. But those permanent outdoor lights prism were really the heroes of the outside shots that I tested with some that I did in the backyard, which we'll get to in a minute. They're serving double duty, an interesting design in shot, but also the main light for those shots. And these specifically can produce something like 16 million colors and gradients that shift smoothly between subtle tones to vivid. So, I was able to get a lot of looks out of this. And I love that triple color effect, too, and how it works in the app. You have basic controls, of course, but also pre-made scenes that you can flip through, including seasonal, which, you know, selfishly I love because I'm just leaving these on my house year round and never have to put Christmas lights up again. But you also have this DIY area

where you can get really granular and build out your own looks and effects, like pulsing looks. And you can do this with any light. So, since I replaced literally every light inside my house with a goi light, including the recess lights in my kitchen, I was able to create this pulsing effect, which I made all red because I'm daring YouTube to destroy it, I guess. But I can offset them, make some faster than others, and get this really great and unnerving look right inside my house without having to worry about hiding or even running new lights to do it. This is just all built-in lights and that one indoor strip light pro, which I had laying on

the ground here. This light strip is a really interesting one for me, too. It's super soft and 16 feet long. So, I can hide this in all kinds of places, like letting it run down my stairs as a bit of fill for a lights off type moment. And what's cool about this is you have zones, these sections that you can choose to have on or off. So, instead of having the entire light on, I can have every other zone on to get a better look for this moment. Then of course dim it all the way down, dip my stairs lights behind her to get a low yellowish tint and again just kick on a few lights throughout the house at a cyan as well. And there you go. Or we could just lay it right on the floor for another surreal sort of look, letting my actress just walk over it. So we're getting this long flow of underlight. Or we could even tape it to the ceiling to get an overhead ambience or even key. And again, this is 16 ft long. So I'm getting this large area of light to use as a key or ambience. So, I took this

out into my backyard to test some looks there. And again, back here, the main meal are my permanent outdoor lights, prisms. So, that is the foundation I'm building around. For instance, this shot here is lit with nothing but those prism lights. I set them to this gradient that I really love. It has this great tone, almost an early 2000's horror feel for me. I have these GOI string lights up as well, which is doing a ton for us visually. I love how this type of hanging bear bulb looks on camera, but the main illumination is coming from the lights strapped to my house. But then I do have some shots like this here where I'm leveraging that wall light to hit her with some interesting looks as well. But I'm getting a nice amount of multiple tones and shape, especially when she's under the pergola since the light from the prism lights above is being broken up and giving us subtle interesting shapes. And I love how this looks. But when I have her step away from the house a bit, she falls completely into shadow. So to bring in a stylistic moonlight look, we brought out that light strip. Now, if I were doing this for real, I would set this across a few stands. That way, it would stay really mobile and flexible. But for this test, I just had two people holding it out to get our coverage across the entire back area. And I love the color that I'm getting here. We have a nice top light coming from the prism, which is being broken up by the pergola. some nice contrasting warm light filling her right side from that wall light and those practical string lights in frame and then the light strip that's giving us this great cyan. So, as she gets up and moves forward, she's stepping into that greenish cyanish key from the strip light, which feels even more early 2000s horror to me than the other shot. And it sort of feels like a pool light, which we found that if we move the light strip around a little bit, it did give us that pool light vibe. Or we could take the light strip and summon the dark lord.

But we're doing the same thing out here. As I mentioned before, we're using these built-in lights to design our environment. Then a couple of additional for the subject, which I can show better if we move back inside. So, we have Emily here with the only additional lights on her being a clamp light as a front key, which I also diffused with a shower curtain to stay DIY, and another clamp light as her backlight. The rest is all from the built-in lighting that I can control right from my phone. So, I can build up the scene here with the key, the backlight, then built-in house lights. And now it's very easy to shift my look just by adjusting the light intensity or color. I could shift to strong colors like blues, reds, or purples or go with more subtle, cooler background or warmer. And same with a shot like this all set up in the same way, but I have the hall back there as well. So I can use my overhead kitchen lights to create a soft ambience then some depth and interest in the hall shifting through whatever color I want or again go very stylized overall and build out a very blue scene throughout the entire space very easily while getting some points of color contrast in there too. And I love this. Obviously I won't abandon proper film lights but this is absolutely going to change how I light general scenes like we do on Film Riot. The idea of leveraging these types of lights to build out the environment and then supplementing that with film lights is very attractive to me because when you have a tiny crew and not a lot of time, being able to pull out my phone and adjust every light in the entire space inside one app was incredibly helpful. But even more so, if you're just starting out, a young filmmaker, or just don't have the budget to spend $500 on a single light, this is genuinely a really great way to start. You could get the light strip and build out a bunch of DIY fixtures like we did and spend under $300. It's a perfect way to get started now until you can upgrade to proper film lighting. And obviously, this is all meant to be home lighting. And GOI has so much great stuff, especially the permanent outdoor lights prism, which are durable and reliable, and they can withstand extreme temperatures and have gone through all kinds of testing for safety and long-term use through any season. And of course, they're waterproof, so good with heavy rain as well. And even though they're outside, they can be useful for indoor shots as well. Not on the first floor for me, but on the second floor of my house where it would be really difficult to get some light in there. I can leverage those lights that are mounted just outside to get some nice light casting inside the windows. Anything from color effects to any strong color or something more straightforward, but now I can have that additional element at any window on my top floor. The permanent outdoor lights prism are available at goi. com or Amazon. Links to both places below. And of course, you can find the rest of the lights that we showed today there, too.

And I will say that in the past, the DIY lights that we built was really just to show what you could do on a budget. We didn't use those a ton. But with these smart lights, I do actually see me leveraging some of these for our actual productions. But what do you think? Is this DIY only to you, or do you see yourself grabbing a few of your own? Let us know in the comments below. And as always, if you dug the episode, do us a favor, like, subscribe, and hit the bell to be notified when we put up more content. And until next time, don't forget to write, shoot, edit, repeat. — Going to hear it. We both know how it goes down. Let me take you home now. I can't wait to keep it. And this could be our little secret. — See you later. T