We recreated a scene from Ad Astra / Behind the Scenes

We decided to recreate the Lighting from the message to dad scene in the movie Ad Astra! I really liked the two tone lighting between the background and Brad Pitt so I decided to give it a whirl! We used the Nanlite Forza 300B and some unbleached muslin for my key, and the Nanlite Pavotubes 15X to give that red/orange light to the background. My camera positioning was slightly off, and the profile shots key light was a bit too hot, but other than that I think it came out pretty decent. Recreating the lighting and shots for movie scenes is a crazy fun/hard challenge, but every time it helps make me a better cinematographer so I encourage all my filmmaking friends to give it a try!!! Which scene should I recreate next?
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[@rowetheflow8447]

you nailed! 🤯

[@chrisbutler8856]

Great video! The composition, lighting ratios, light quality and color grade all are super close! You also shot with a great camera so quality isn't an issue. With all that said, like all of these recreation videos I see online, there is still some magic sauce missing and I can never pinpoint it. You're video still looks like a youtube type amateur-ish shot (this is not at all a slight or to be disrespectful), which the movie looks like a movie. Why is that? Obviously they are using a much better lens but even in a lot of tech videos that compare super expensive movie lenses vs prosumer quality there isn't a gigantic difference. It's mainly seems to effect bocca. It cant be an issue of sharpness either because clinical levels of sharpness don't even look good. Again, those comparison videos are done all by the same amateur content creator. Even when they use those amazing movie lenses it doesn't look like a movie. It's super frustrating to try to understand what the tiny extra seasoning is that makes something look movie quality. Maybe it's just color grade? I've tried to analyze this kind of stuff for years and still can't get an answer. It's not even like this is a complicated shot so it should be able to be recreated relatively easy without a quality drop off. Long story short its always super easy to tell when a movie looks like a 'movie' and when it just looks like a 'youtube video'. I'm not sure if any of that makes sense but would love to hear your feedback because you are clearly super talented and understand the minutia of this kind of work!

[@JustinRomeyn]

Yessss I agree, I was striving hard to recreate the “look” in the grade and lighting but still there’s a different feel. The lenses they shot on, plus this one was shot on film so between those 2 things it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to match shot for shot.
Plus I think having the actual actor in the scene makes a difference. How the lights hit their face and creates shadows and depth, not to mention skin tones. It’s super crazy how many factors come into play to create a particular look and feel in a scene