5 horror lighting effects with 1 light

Published on October 27, 2017

Cinematography & Filmmaking

Halloween, Horror movies, Lighting setups

My favorite holiday is coming next week! Halloween! Jordy is more of a Christmas person, but I love the scary vibe and Halloween costumes. It has something special to see every house decorated with spiderwebs and skeletons. And of course you can scare people without them hating you! Another thing the makes Halloween so fun are the horror movies nights, which i’m a huge fan of Halloween or not! So for This Copy Cat Friday we decided to do something around these horror movies, especially the lighting used is classic horror movies. In this tutorial we explain how you can create stunning horror setups with only using one light!

The light we used is the 120D from Aputure. We just got these lights but there are already our favorites. Previous month we went to IBC  in Amsterdam and saw the 120D in action for the first time and we’re impressed! So now we got them and they are awesome. It’s amazing how much output they deliver even when powered by a V-mount battery. This makes the light very versatile and mobile, which can come in handy when on the road. Another thing that makes the 120D so great is the Bowen-S mount. This is incredibly flexible for mounting any accessory, third party or Aputure.

Except for good lighting your horror, the story is also very important. Filmmakers often try to hard and make the story to difficult. Try to keep it simple, don’t imagine crazy scenery  or super complicated plot twists. Stick to writing what you have access to with relative ease. You would be surprised what you can accomplish with just a dark closet and some scary sounds. That brings me to the next point, sound effects. Horror movies depend on good sound design and music, it will help you create the scary vibe you need. And if you don’t believe me, just watch a horror movie without sound, it wouldn’t be scary at all! Another personal tip I can give you, is don’t rely on blood and gore. These days people are used to it due to overexposure. Try to scare them by making them believe it could happen to them and even in there trusted environment. And of course try to make it as real as possible to scare the hell out of them!

PremiumBeat

We wanna thank PremiumBeat for sponsoring this episode again. They provided us the horror songs from the examples, which we picked out from their custom playlists.

Shutterstock

A stock footage Website to find all your stock footage

Rocketstock

Check out RocketStock’s new and free Sound effects Pack for all your Horror movies.