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Bizarrely Powerful Trick for Cinematic Compositions (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-13 09:59:26
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Been using this one all the time lately! Huge thanks to Johnny Valencia for really driving home the importance of "into the light" cinematography during the boat shoot! I love being able to steal his secrets into the Digital Realm of 3d renderingRelated Videos:Volumetric LightingHow to Cheat Light Rays in CyclesHyperbole Cinematography Breakdown 

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Bizarrely Powerful Trick for Cinematic Compositions

Been using this one all the time! Thanks to Johnny Valencia for really driving home the importance of "into the light" cinematography during the boat shoot! I love being able to steal his secrets into the Digital Realm of 3d rendering.

Comments

alex

Ddopppee!!

Mahdi Poursamad

Although short it was actully a pretty good video. I've come to realise recently that realism isn't really what they go for in movies, it's so fabricated and I didn't even know. Now I've started to shift my renders from realism to beautiful and looking good.

Corza

You can improve the viewport performance of large hdri's by going into scene settings and changing multiple importance to manual and a value of something like 256 without losing any percievable quality :)

Jostein Lie Svalheim

That first trick with the plane is basically light-framing your focus. This is actually a lot of what separates the "amateur" filmlook from the "professional"-look. This is a lot of what we do in the CC/grading stage. For example you could mask a face and then sliiightly brighten it, and slightly pull down the shadows and mids of everything else. This makes the face pop. Principally the same as covering the foreground in darker shadow here while leaving the subject lit so our eyes are drawn to it. After framing, i'd say this is the biggest contributor to a professional "look".

jogrnaut

If you watch some Behind The Scenes of Revenant, the DP Emmanuel Lubezki "Chivo" used this negative fill technique to control the natural light in nature. He would float a large overhead panel above the characters in the foreground so they wouldn't get too washed out creating a bit more contrast on them.

Paul Spooner

I'm sure you know this, but a lot of that temporal flicker will go away once the shot is compressed, because the compression smooths the noise. It is basically impossible to tell the difference between those two shots you show at the end because of the compression smoothing it all out. Bad news for glitter and sequin covered dresses, but good news for CGI.

Shawn Hawkinson

Ian, I use a ton of Polyhaven hdri's too. The Polyhaven addon is a huge time saver, and you can change the resolution of the hdri's from a simple drop down menu. Excellent tutorial as always man!

Pete Burges

Great hack! I have used a similar technique where I set a light to negative values to create a shadowed area, but this is even more economical.

IanHubert

AH! I should get that addon! Man. Such a super cool resource they provide :D

Shawn Hawkinson

It’s awesome, they give you a handy node setup too. You don’t have to add the mapping node to rotate. It’s not a massive time saver, but it’s the little things in life that sometimes bring the most joy. 😊

Clint Shelton

Thanks again for sharing Ian! Stay safe and have a great trip. Can't wait for the new episodes!

Sione T

always love when you talk about composition! I feel it's often overlooked in the general 3D conversation bc people are into the novelty of realism and complexity, but imo it's the most fundamental part of making visually engaging work and it's one of those things you can study and improve on forever. So I love hearing what different artists with lots of experience have to share about it :)

James Combridge (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-20 10:00 niiice. As a concept artist, all the composition talk is super familiar territory. Love to hear you dive into it more & apply the same principles directly in 3d 🤘
2023-02-14 22:36 niiice. As a concept artist, all the composition talk is super familiar territory. Love to hear you dive into it more & apply the same principles directly in 3d 🤘

niiice. As a concept artist, all the composition talk is super familiar territory. Love to hear you dive into it more & apply the same principles directly in 3d 🤘

IanHubert

Ah that's SO cool. Definitely easier in Blender :P Yeah I'd always been in the mindset of having the characters being in the BRIGHTEST part of the shot, but defining them in the opposite way (dark shapes against a brighter background) is so cool, and I'm realizing it's a way more common technique than I thought!

IanHubert

That's true, but it's a lot more evident in 4k! But also in that shot I was fixing even more inane things than image flicker (there was just a bit of weird shadow-action and foot-slippage that was bugging me, and some deformation motion blur madness)

Paul Spooner

Nothing like justifying creative neuroses with more creative neurosis! I feel you man.

Raffo VFX

Cool stuff and interesting thoughts! Fun fact: Sometimes you speak faster then Eminem (but still I perfectly understand what you say :D )

NickTricc

Can I just say how much I appreciate that the blender subreddit still comments “for more realism add moths” to this day😂 Its been years and it’s still funny

your local cryptid

It's wild how effective this is. Thank you for helping me fix some abandoned scenes that I thought were beyond saving

Horse

this is really neat and useful!

Leiko Hayashi

I came here after a Youtube comment pointed out this would be worthwhile, let's just say I've also become your apostel after browsing around here for two days.

Vertex

this is such a Bizarrely Powerful Trick for Cinematic Compositions

IanHubert

Ahahaha I never want to give these things clickbaity titles but "A Plane over the Camera Looks Good Sometimes" didn't have a great ring to it, either.

Xavier Albert

I love this format Ian, Small and full packed with usefull explanations

Blemonade

Hey Ian, when do we hear from you again? Or could this month off silence mean that we can expect a new episode soon? Edit: it was 2 episodes

Conner

I never knew a simple plane could blow my mind so much but this opened up so many ideas for me!