Transcription
These are a bunch of cheap mirrors, and in this video, I'm going to show you how we can use these to create some incredible lighting effects. And you'll probably not like the same way after watching this video. So here's the backstory. I've been obsessed with mirrors for a little while and playing around with them. It actually all started when I learned about the Lightbridge system, which is a very expensive set of mirrors, essentially, that allow you to do a lot of cool things. So I set out to see if I could buy some cheap mirrors and get the same effect and do some really interesting things with lighting.
So by the end of this video, you'll be able to take a shot like this and turn it into something like this, which I think looks amazing. And it can all be done with a $10 or less mirror. So why use mirrors? Well, if you look around the lighting in your house during the day, you'll notice that light is often reflecting off of surfaces and filtered through glass and other objects. This creates beautiful texture in rooms and on walls, and something you just can't create by pointing a light at something. Mirrors are a great way to take a light source and add a ton of character and texture to it.
As an example, I've got a tiny scene here in front of me with a plant and a lens, and I have a light off to my side facing away from this little setup. And I'm going to walk you through a couple little hacks you can immediately start to see and learn about with mirrors. So I've got a tiny two-inch by two-inch mirror here. I'm going to put it in front of this light, and as you can see, I can start to paint this little scene with light. I can move the mirror closer to the light to create a larger patch of light, or further away to create a smaller, dimmer one.
Now I'm going to set this one down and double the size, or almost double it, to a three-inch by three-inch mirror. We'll do the same thing. As you can see, it kind of looks like light splashing through a window or between curtains. You can move it around, change the size and brightness, all kinds of good stuff. Now I'm going to move to a much larger mirror. This one I've actually epoxied to a baby plate. Throw that in there, and I've got a ton of light coming through. And finally, I'll move this over here, and we'll get a slightly smaller mirror, but this one has tape on it. So you can see I've got gaff tape creating kind of a grid here. And if I throw that in front of our light now, we've got, you know, a really cool kind of lines. It looks like, you know, the silhouette of a window frame or whatever on your scene. So as you can see, there are a ton of different hacks and awesome ways to create really interesting light using mirrors.
Now let's go through three different setups where I use mirrors to create kind of a little scene. And the first one is what you're looking at right now behind me. You'll notice that lamp right here, and there's kind of light that looks like it's coming from a window hitting it. There's actually an aperture light hitting a 12 by 12 acrylic mirror in the background. So I'm going to go ahead and turn the light off. This is what the set looks like without that light. I'll turn it back on, and you'll notice it's kind of a square, but there's a little bit of added texture there. It looks like the light is kind of going through a tree into a window and hitting the wall. And the way I did that is with this just kind of some fake plant, uh, from IKEA. So it's a great place, or Michael's, or Hobby Lobby, whatever. You could go and buy some of this stuff, and you just kind of drape it in front of your light. Gives you some really nice shadow effect. And once the light goes through the fake plant and into the mirror, the return light, which is what you see projected on the wall, is just a really interesting, super natural-looking, lots and lots of character. And I just love the way it looks. You cannot create something like this by just pointing a light on the wall. You won't get the same geometry, uh, and it's just awesome. So that's our first setup.
Now let's talk about setup number two, which is going to involve kind of some B-roll. So let's head over to the bench and take a look. Okay, so here is another setup. We have a camera on a table with some lenses, a little plant off to one side. And I want to first show you what it looks like with just a simple softbox. It's okay, but it definitely is pretty sad. And these mirrors are going to make a huge difference. So now I'm going to do is off to the side of the camera, I have another light here. I'm going to turn that on, and you'll notice we have the mirror on a C-stand, and this light is actually going right into the mirror. At this point, I'm going to dim down. Actually, I'll just turn off the main light so we can see what this setup is doing. As you can see, I'll turn this light all the way up. We've got beautiful natural daylight-looking light coming out of that mirror.
Now, what I can do is turn on the softbox again, but this time I'm going to dim it down and use it as kind of an ambient light. So something around there. You know, you could pick and choose if you want it more well-lit or flat, or you can dim it down to just, just add a little bit of kind of ambient, which is pretty natural for a room. You know, if this was window light coming through a window, the sunlight spilling through a window, it would probably bounce around the room and fill things in a little bit. So there's without the softbox, there's with the softbox. Here's an overhead diagram of this lighting setup to give an idea of what's actually happening here. And I'm now going to go over here and remove this mirror. And the setup is just so simple. You essentially have any kind of light going in one direction, and then you take your mirror and you go ahead and light with it. You kind of paint with these, which is really cool.
So now I'm kind of Hollywooding, uh, the mirror just to show you a couple tricks. So, uh, you can change the angle obviously and get, you know, different angles. If I wanted light coming from a different, you know, direction, I can totally do that. You can also rotate it. So you can see as I rotate this square acrylic mirror, we're getting different, you know, angles here. Another trick, I'll go ahead and put this back on the C-stand and tighten it up, is making this square larger or smaller on the table. Now, you can obviously change the size of the mirror, that'll dictate the size of the reflection. But the other thing you can do is just move the light itself. So now I'm back behind this light here, and I'm going to go ahead and back it up pretty far. Let's go, I don't know, six feet backward. And as you can see, I changed the size of that square. It's a little skinnier now. If I bring it back in, you can see it gets larger and larger. So just moving your light makes a big difference.
Now, this setup, I think looks great as it is, and all I did was throw in a cheap acrylic mirror. But you could mix it up even further by adding more mirrors. So here are two tiny squares that I've been really enjoying playing around with. One is, I believe, two inch, and then we've got a three inch. And what's great about this setup is you're not stuck with, you know, having to add more lights to add more mirrors. I can just take these mirrors and put it in the, you know, line of this light that's hitting me. You can see me over here in the background getting plastered with light. So I have all kinds of room to add mirrors. So let's put one maybe over here. So you can see we've got kind of this darker area behind the camera and in front of it. So I could maybe down here, close to the table, I could add a streak of light there. I could add a streak of light back here. And if I wanted to get crazy, I could add multiple streaks or highlight different parts of the camera or this, you know, plant in the background. So it just adds even more depth. Just an example of using three mirrors or one mirror to get a pretty amazing natural light look.
Our next setup is a little more cinematic. So I have a little scene here where I'm sitting in a chair, I open my eyes, and then I get up. I have the camera facing straight down from a C-stand, and this entire shot is lit with a single light. So we're using the same light as our second setup, and it is firing into a one-foot by one-foot mirror with a bunch of tape on it. So similar to what I have right here, where I've got black masking tape on the mirror, I just put a whole bunch of strips of tape on this mirror, and that's creating those lines that run across my face and hitting the wall. So those are the three different setups.
One other quick one I want to show you is kind of a bonus round is what's going on over here on this wall. So what you're seeing projected as like a fake window is actually an aperture spotlight with a gobo. By the time you add up the light, the spotlight mount, and the gobo, and all the gear, it's quite an expensive thing that you're seeing going on on this wall. It looks amazing, don't get me wrong, but that's a lot of money. So I took that same cheap light we talked about earlier, and I shot it into a much larger mirror, again with tape on it. And here is the final result. So as you can see, looks pretty awesome considering it is significantly more affordable than buying all that aperture gear, including the spotlight mount, etc.
Now let's talk about the mirrors themselves and some really interesting things I found, uh, where to pick them up, what types to get, all that good stuff. We're going to start with the difference between actual mirrors, which are glass, and acrylic mirrors. So I would recommend as much as possible, buy acrylic. It's way more safe. You know, this big piece of glass, if this breaks or falls from a C-stand, that's going to be pretty gnarly. Whereas if you get something that is acrylic, you know, it's just going to kind of crack. It's more plastic. It's not going to shatter and cut you. So if possible, go with acrylic. I found these little glass ones to be totally fine, but, you know, it's just easier to break glass, so try to avoid it.
The next thing is going to be the size. I found for most setups, including kind of larger sets like this, going with around a one by one foot was just about perfect. Again, you can move the glass closer to the light source to create a larger projection, but going with something larger than a foot for most setups is probably overkill. But of course, if you want to throw light really, really far and have something really large like this window deal behind me, you'll want that larger mirror. For small stuff like this, kind of little set B-roll, little things, these small mirrors are perfect. I actually bought a whole pack of these little glass ones and created a little, uh, mirror kit with a cheap case I got on Amazon. So as you can see, I'm now ready to rock and roll with these little fellas.
And the other cool thing you can do to mount all these mirrors is to epoxy different things to the back. So these little mirrors, I actually epoxied on a little quarter-20 bolt on the back. It's the kind of thing that comes with like a friction arm, and that allows me to do stuff like this where I've got a nano clamp with a friction arm, an adjustable friction arm, and then I can thread on the mirror, attach this to a C-stand, a light stand, a desk, whatever I need to do, and easily fine-tune the mirror itself. When it comes to these larger ones, you can do what I did here, which is to epoxy on a baby plate to the back of the mirror. Now, I probably wouldn't recommend doing this with something too large, but it has worked fairly well for me. So this is actually a piece of glass. I'm not going to be putting this over anyone's head anytime soon. But, uh, right behind me here, let me grab it real quick. I have a giant acrylic mirror, and this is also attached to a baby plate. So I epoxied this to the back of the mirror, and then use a bunch of gaff tape as some kind of insurance, which I don't think it's actually going to work. But as you can see, a massive piece of glass, even though it's acrylic, that I can use to rig all kinds of crazy stuff up.
So that's kind of how to mount the mirrors to kind of push this whole idea even further. Again, using gaff tape or preferably masking tape to create different grids, different lines, things like that. That's a great way to go. But there's another way to go if you want to avoid glass or acrylic altogether, and that is to use reflective tape. So this is actually a piece of foam board, like this kind of poster board, and I've just used this shiny reflective vinyl tape, and it actually works pretty well. It's not going to be maybe quite as directional. You can see my reflection is a little fuzzy in the actual mirror itself or the tape, but it gets the job done and it's super lightweight. This isn't going to crack and, you know, cut anybody. So a great way to go. You can cut it into thin strips and do all kinds of crazy stuff with it.
And then along with that, again, poster board is your friend. You can do so much with it. You could use little clips and kind of clip it to the mirror to kind of mask or flag off different parts of the mirror, or what you could do is cut patterns out of these and, you know, tape them to the mirror. So you could have a whole bunch of these ready to go. One that's got lines in it, one that, you know, has a circle on it, whatever you want, and just clamp it or tape it to the glass or acrylic, and boom, you've got custom patterns that you can go nuts with.
So that is how I'm using these crazy little mirrors to do all kinds of cool stuff to create really interesting light. Um, I am in love with this idea, and I'm probably never going to like quite the same after having discovered all of this, because just having one of these off to the side with a light going into it does wonders for your shot. So if you want to check out anything mentioned in this video, everything will be linked to down below, including some of the lights that I use. I hope you enjoyed this video. Let me know if you have any questions. Happy lighting, and we'll see you in the next video.