WEBVTT

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- Hey, how's it going?

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Todd with Shutterstock here,
and let's talk about Roger Deakins.

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Roger Deakins is without a doubt
one of the greatest cinematographers of all time.

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And obviously, I've always been
a really big fan of him,

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not only because everything he shoots
is just pure cinematic magic,

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but I've always thought it was really cool
how willing he is to share his secrets

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and how he achieved certain lighting setups.

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The man even has his own website
with a forum that you can go on there

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and just ask him how he did certain things.
And lo and behold, he will actually tell you.

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One thing that always comes up
is that he loves to use ring lights.

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And specifically, he likes to use ring lights
with tungsten household regular light bulbs.

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And in this video, I'm going to show you
how to make one of these,

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a Roger-Deakins-inspired ring light.

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♪ (mellow electronic music) ♪

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All right, so we are on our way
to pick up some supplies

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to build our very own Roger Deakins ring light.

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I guess Roger Deakins
didn't really invent the ring light.

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A lot of people use ring lights.

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- I've seen it in tutorials on YouTube
and fashion vlogging stuff,

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where it's just people sitting at desks
and you can see the light in their eyes.

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I've never used one,
and I don't care for that kind of light,

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how you can see the literal circle
in their eyes and it kind of gives it

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a weird robotic feel.

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- The thing that he does differently
is how he uses the ring light.

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What he tends to always do for warmer scenes
is he takes one of these ring lights

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and he puts tungsten bulbs in them
and just dims them down to, like, 20%.

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That basically just creates
a really, really warm, pleasing light.

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It just seems like it's more
about the quality of the light,

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almost like the science of it
or something.

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♪ (off-key vocalizing) ♪
(laughs)

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I've just always been super intrigued
by how it clearly does something different

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than any other type of light.

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So to make one of these ring lights,
here are the supplies that you're going to need.

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First, you're going to need
a whole bunch of light bulbs.

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Here, we're just using
some 60 watt tungsten household light bulbs.

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And the light that we're making
is going to have 25 different sockets,

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so we're gonna need at least 25 light bulbs.

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You're going to need 25 lamp holders
or lamp sockets.

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They should cost something
like 2 bucks apiece.

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You're gonna need a 4 foot by 4 foot
piece of plywood.

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And you're gonna need something
like 30 to 35 feet of lamp cord.

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You're gonna need some sort of power source,
so here I used a power tool cord replacement kit.

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But you could just cut one end
off an old extension cord,

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and that's going to be the part that
will actually plug into the wall.

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And you're gonna just need some screws.
I use some 3/4-inch screws.

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And that's what I'm gonna use
to screw the sockets into the piece of wood.

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And definitely make sure
that you have a car that can fit

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a 4x4 piece of wood,
because we didn't think that far ahead,

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and things got a little bit dicey.
- See you in a few hours, buddy.

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- If you get in a wreck,
I will crumple

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like an accordion.
- You'll die.

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♪ (mellow music) ♪

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- First, to start, I just laid out
all of my sockets and just kind of made sure

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that they were going to fit
on the piece of wood.

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You want to make sure
that you're not gonna have

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too many large gaps
between each of the sockets,

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because if you do,
then you might get some nasty,

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multi-shadow kind of problems.
Now you need to make your circle of plywood.

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To do this, you need to measure halfway
from side to side going both directions.

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And that's going to tell you
where the exact center

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of your piece of plywood is.

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From there, just screw a screw
into the very middle of your piece of plywood

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and just tie some string to it.
And then on one end of the string,

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just tie or tape a sharpie
and mark a circle going around the piece of plywood

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all the way to the edges.
Once you have your first circle drawn,

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now you can draw the inner circle.

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So what I did to do that
was I just twisted my sharpie a few times

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to where I knew there would be enough room
for my lamp sockets.

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And I drew another circle
inside of the bigger one.

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And once you have your two circles drawn,
you can go ahead and grab a jigsaw

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and just cut along the red lines
or the lines of your sharpie.

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And don't worry too horribly much
about getting it perfect.

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Just try to get as much
of a perfect circle as you can.

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And once you have your circle of wood,
you can go ahead and place all of your lamp sockets

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back onto the piece of wood
and get it all laid out the way that you like it.

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And then what I did was
I just went around with the sharpie

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and lifted up each socket individually
and put a little dot right underneath

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each and every socket,
so that I would know

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where to drill my holes later on.
Then you'll just go around the entire circle

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and drill a nice 1-inch-ish kind of hole,
where each dot was.

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And this is where we're gonna be able
to run our electricity through

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and keep everything nice and organized.

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After you have all of your holes drilled,
you can go ahead and start with the first lamp socket.

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So now you're gonna take your power source cord
and you're going to strip a little bit of it down.

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And you're gonna start by hooking up
the black wire to the brass terminal.

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So the black wire is always going
to be the hot wire.

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And that is always going to need
to be wired up to the brass terminal.

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And then you're going to take the white wire,
and you're gonna hook that up to the silver terminal.

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(bell dings)
Hot wire always goes to the brass terminal,

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and the neutral wire always goes
to the silver terminal.

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So now we're going to use the lamp cord
to wire up all the rest of the lamp holders

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all the way around the rest of the circle.
So first, you'll take your lamp cord

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and split the wires apart.
So the way that you're going to be able

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to tell them apart is that the hot wire,
or black wire in most cases,

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is going to be the one
with the writing on the side of it.

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You'll notice some little inscribed lettering,
and it's also the smooth one of the two.

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So there's a smooth wire,
and then you'll notice

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on the neutral wire,
there is a little bit of a bumpy edge to it.

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And that's going to be your neutral wire.
So always remember the bumpy one is the neutral wire,

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and the smooth one most of the time
with the writing on the side

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is going to be your black wire
or your hot wire.

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So again, you're going to strip down
a little bit of each wire.

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You're going to kind of twist it up
as tight as you can,

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and then make just a little hook
going in the direction of the screw

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so that when you hook it around
and you screw it down,

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it actually tightens onto itself.
And you're going to do that for both sides.

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♪ (mellow electronic music) ♪

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And then you're going to go ahead
and stick the lamp cord

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back through the hole
up through the next hole

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so that you can go ahead
and wire the next lamp socket

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and just go ahead
and screw that down.

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And every time I wired one
of these lamp holders up,

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I went ahead and just put a couple strips
of electrical tape underneath

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just so that I could have one layer

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of something in between all
of the electricity and the wood.

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So now you're going to just repeat that process.

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For me, it was 25 times.

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Stripping the lamp cord
and then putting the smooth wire

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into the brass terminal
and then the bumpy wire into the silver terminal

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and then doing it again on the other side
and then putting on some electrical tape

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and running the wire back down
through the hole and up through the next one

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and then screwing the lamp socket down.
And you do this enough times

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to where you get into kind of a rhythm with it.
And it starts to feel just kind of therapeutic almost.

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You'll either get really chill
and throw on some music,

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or you'll lose your mind,
one of the two.

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♪ (off-key vocalizing) ♪

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♪ (upbeat electronic music) ♪

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So once you have all of your lamp sockets wired up,
you can put an optional cross beam

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down the middle so that you have
kind of a handle where you can carry it.

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And I happen to have
an extra baby pin wall plate adapter

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laying around, so I went ahead
and screwed that into my cross beam

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so that I could use this light
with a C stand.

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I also went around the edges
and added some command strips around the edges

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so that I could stick
some fabric around the sides

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to act as a skirt for the light
and control it a little bit better

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when it was being used
in a top light scenario.

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Now, a light like this is really versatile,
because you can use it

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as a really beautiful top light
for a tabletop-type scenario.

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You can fly these above your scene
and get a really, really nice look.

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But these lights also make
a really, really nice key light

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to supplement for a tungsten practical.

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All you have to do
is just put this ring light behind it

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and dim it down to match the color temperature
of that tungsten fixture,

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and you have a really beautiful,
wrappy, kind of soft diffused light.

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And if nothing else, you can just use
one of these lights to provide

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a really beautiful, warm ambience
to the entire scene.

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If you just want to kind of give everything
a little bit more of a warm glow,

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using a light like this would just provide
a nice, warm ambience to everything in your scene.

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Anyways, a light like this
is just a thing that I've always wanted

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to try to build for myself.

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I know now that I have one,
I'm gonna use it a whole lot.

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And I'm actually gonna take
the circle that I cut out

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in the middle of the other
one and make a smaller version

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so that I can have two different sizes.
So try some stuff yourself,

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experiment a little bit,
see what sort of cool looks

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you can come up with
with your ring light.

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And as always,
I hope you found this video helpful.

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Be sure to subscribe,
hit the Like button, all that stuff.

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Anyways, I'll see you guys next time.
Thanks for watching.

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♪ (upbeat electronic music) ♪