Andrew, I would really like to thank you for taking the time to shoot all these breakdowns. You have absolutely no obligation to share your experiences, yet you still enlighten us. It's such a shielded and tightly closed industry, every opportunity to learn about different scenarios apart from - obviously, each of our own jobs, is highly appreciated. You are a vauluable source of education. Thank you!

wow thanks for this sir..u teach better then my film school teachers.

Great episode! You explained it so much better than I did:)

Damn.. Never thought about the "blindspots" close up that the grid creates.. This was super helpful!

Solving this problem is something I've been struggling with for a while now. This help was invaluable. Never stop making these videos haha

Thank you so much for this episode! Very helpful! I learned A LOT and will definitely practice using these methods!

holy cow, this is so valuable... mind blown please keep teaching us!

This video is a incredible explanation, as someone who has learned how to gaff overtime through moving up in the chain of electric/learning from every DP and other gaffers I have worked with and never really having a mentor these videos have been a absolute godsend

Hat off. This is SO valuable information jammed in here. Super clear about ISL (loved that extra graph you pulled up), using the near-occlusion-effect in grids are VERY rare to see some one talk about on KZfaq (double grids for even more effect) and you are the second person in my 25 years of lighting that mention that the f-stop scale follows ISL, and can be easily converted into any measurement (feet/meters/pizzas..) for quick and very accurate adjustments. 10/10 episode.

OMG. I newer thought this way about the grid. Thank you.

Brilliant! Thanks for the education.

Hi, I am huge fan of your channel, and don't buy a light unless you recommend it. I think everyone is wrong with why this works, would like to hear your thoughts. Inverse square law applies to the point light source emmiting in all directions, it is basically calculation of the sphere surface size based on the radius (distance). Light doesn't loose energy, it just covers the bigger surface of the sphere. Any directional light (45% and narrower) would fool ISL, as it is not spreading the same way as the point light would, but bigger lights would do it better. Directing the light basically moves the light source to where it would be if it was a point source, considering size and angle of light. The bigger the light and smaller the angle, it "moves" the source further away. If you move it by 3 meters, you eliminated the worst part of the ISL. The video of you while moving away from the light is perfect visual presentation of this. Without the grid that undirected light would hit the first line of dancers and nothing else, by blocking that light you directed the rest of it, and moved the light source further away. That's why adding grid drops the light level near the source drasticaly, and by a small amount further away. So it doesn't really work because you are lit by more lights as you move away, but because you get much less undirected light when you are close to the light. Still waiting for forza 500B review. :)

All wheat...no chaff. Superb.

Agree, i always like to place the light further away to maintain the natural transition of the light, i didn't know why, but now you are perfectly explained. Love it!

Hi Andrew, hope you're well. I really enjoyed this video. You spoke frequently of the technical constraints which dictated side light for the dance troupe. I found that so interesting. For me it would have been the dance troupe which dictated side light all other things be damned. I spent more than a few years after high school working in a 500 seat theatre which frequently hosted ballet companies. We always side lit the dancers for the sake of presenting the dancers' bodies as the model forms of athleticism they were. There was never any question about that. It's just how it was done. Granted, we were lighting for the human eye, not a camera, even so the end customer is the same. I'd love to hear more about how you coordinated with the live event crew on lighting. Lighting for a mixed audience (in house and at home) is rarely done beautifully. Be well, John Paul

This is one of the best breakdown and informative channels on you tube - keep it up 👍

This is brilliant! I had never encountered the grid workaround. That makes so much sense once you explain it.

Thank you so much for this channel, it's been an unbelievable help in growing my understanding of gaffing.

I love the pro tip at the end there about walking lights off in feet similar to f-stops. Insta sub

What a great breakdown Andrew! Thanks for sharing your knowledge bombs & experience.

That's beautiful, man!

Very useful information :)

Phenomenal video, Andrew! You just taught me a number of things I’ve been completely unaware of, or wrong about for many years.

Great video. Correct me if I’m wrong but the correct term is “occlusion”; the principle by which the exposure of a subject decreases as a gridded light source is moved closer to the subject (effectively working opposite to the effect of the inverse square law).

Hi Andrew, Nice move add that grid! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 I always did it with screens and flags, but this is a great solution! Thanks for share! Happy 2020!

Loved this explanation on the use of grids! Great stuff

Great lighting and thank you for excellent breakdown.

Such a great and intuitive explanation of the Inverse Square Law!

Thank you very much Andrew. Sharing a ton of knowledge as always with your videos. Thanks again!!

This lesson was amazing! So exciting to see work on this level! Thx to ALL that made it HAPPEN

This explanation is AMAZING. Thank you!

Very helpful! Thank you so much Andrew!

Absolutely brilliant! Wish I could give it 100x thumbs up.

Thank you so much for all these information! Really grateful!!!

Brilliant. Highly educational and very informative. Thanks for this. And truly hope to one day say to you that the first round is on me. Cheers.

You're awesome. A big hug from Brazil.

This is gold! Thank you 🙏

That was great👌🏼 Thanks

Really good teaching mate! Keep it up!

I've done a bit of both lighting and sound in live production, but have been watching your series to learn a bit more about film production, great stuff, and loving your channel. Talking about the light fall-off being logarithmic is something that I knew, but it brings up something that is commonly a part of audio sources: it's 4pi*r^2 for a point source (the area of a sphere), but lines and planes actually have lower falloffs. For instance on an infinite line, since that would be the area of a cylinder it would be 2pi*r^2, with a finite line being somewhere in between. The falloff for an infinite plane then has even less fall off, with a finite plane again, being somewhere between an infinite plane and a line source. So it seems to me that in general just making the area of the light-source a large area (in this case with diffusion), should reduce the fall-off even without the use of a grid. Am I thinking about this correctly? Has this matched your experience? That equation for line sources may also may be useful knowledge with the proliferation of linear LED light sources. Also, as an aside, I didn't know that F-stop was a logarithmic scale. It turns out that one F-Stop is about 6dB. Maybe just trivia for most, but for me it helps my understanding.

Whoa. Mind blown. I cant wait to try this out!

Thank you. Excellent tutorial

Super helpful video! Thanks so much

Thank you sir - yet again.

superb, mate! Thank you for this

Absolutely brilliant, thank you! Subscribed!

Thanks so much for this great explanation!

Wow! Super useful tip the one of the grids.

thank you, great stuff

Cheers for the great grid/inverse square detail. I’m loving your quality content. I only recently discovered this channel, and I’m catching up quick, so I apologize for the late comment. @Gaffer & Gear One thing I didn’t notice either mentioned or diagrammed - and sorry too if it’s outside the scope of this channel, but it seems related - was the fantastic mottled lighting reflected from the camera movements by the dance floor surface treatment. This element raised the polish on the whole production for me off into outer space. Could you please comment on the floor treatment, and how it was implemented? For me, it seems like serious gaffer’s wizardry, and I can’t imagine this commercial having been shot so great without it - thanks!

Incredibly Great!!!!

wow great tip, tank you so much

Thanks for your great explanations ! Take a bow :)

Oh my god so many DPs and gaffers have explained this to me incorrectly. I feel like Neo when he first woke up from the Matrix 😭

WHAT A GREAT TRICK (with the grid)

The sun is a good example of inverse square law. It is so infinitely far away that the earth looks to be uniformly lit.

Very nice sir thank you for your👌😊

Genious

12:29 - Mind blown!!!!

You the GOAT

dude you're awesome

very useful

So. Damn. Good.

Hey Andrew, love your channel! Just wondering what’s your favourite diffusion material for passing light through for softness and most transmission?

here before 100k

I have a question about the inverse square law. Let's say you are able to move the unit farther back, either from finding more distance or using mirrors- but you want to use the LCD trick and have the diff closer to the talent. Would the light be falling off from the distance of the source, or would the diffusion cloth act as the new source and the light would fall off from that distance? I am not sure if the question is clear enough but I am happy to clarify. Thanks!

Awesome! Had no idea! What was the shiny floor material? Dry but reflects like wet and isn't screwed up by friction from all those feet!

Hello Mike.

Thanks very much for that Andrew it was very well explained!! In terms of the lighting for the interior, I'm guessing that there was no way of lighting from the front by hanging lights and diffusion? I realise that you had to get the crane in but could the crane not have swung under the lights thus not casting any shadows? Again, many thanks for taking the time to share 👍🏻👍🏻

Hello, love this, better than any film school, i've got one question thought so. Why do you put the gels on a frame and away from the light, what is the difference between having a gel on a light to on a frame? Also how much distance do you give it? Thank you!

OMG all this time i was using inverse square law in a wrong way. I'm so glad that i found out your channel, more gaffer should aware of this law so they don't guessing the distance to move the light. is it possible to use it with meters tho ? i'm not get used to it when using imperial unit. i'm also using lux reading than foot candle

Would a grid also keep the subject lit relatively consistently soft until you get so far back that all the cells light the subject?

This might be a stupid thought but wouldn't it be possible (let's say you don't have the space to move the light further away) to just use big mirrors to lengthen the way the light travels?

The video is excellent, the dancing is gay.