A beginner’s guide to video lighting
When you make a film, all of the different crew members work together to help tell a story - whether a writer, a make-up artist or a stunt performer. One very important piece of film storytelling is lighting. Light is important in a practical sense, so that the cameras can capture the image, it is used for far more than that when telling a story. Lighting can convey meaning, tone and style. The person who designs the lighting is called a cinematographer, or a director of photography (DP).
In this post we’re going to look at two key elements of lighting - the quality of light and the direction of light.
Quality of light
When starting out in film it’s important to understand how to communicate your ideas about lighting, so it’s good to know some of the regular terms that are used to describe the quality, colour, direction and source of light. In this post, we’re going to look at the quality of lighting. The quality of the light doesn’t mean that a light is good or bad - it refers to something that we all notice, but rarely talk about in day to day life. The quality refers to how harsh or gentle the light looks on the subject of the video. A cinematographer would refer to these states as hard and soft and soft light. Let’s look at these two words in a little more detail.
What’s a hard light?
Imagine you’re walking down the street on the hottest day of the year. There are no clouds in the sky. When you look at the ground your shadow has crisp edges and is a perfect silhouette of you. In the film world, we’d describe this as hard or harsh light. Using hard light can create drama, tension and striking imagery.
How do you make a hard light?
We don’t need to rely on good weather to achieve this - you can get a similar effect using artificial light when you focus a strong small light source directly at the performer - like using a spotlight on a singer during a concert.
To try filming with a hard light at home, and don’t have access to specialist video lights, you can try using a desk lamp. Don’t put the light too close to someone’s face though - it can be uncomfortable to be in a harsh light for too long, and it can be damaging to eyesight.
Interesting fact
One of the reasons that people used to wear sunglasses in old gangster films was to protect their eyes from the lights. The high-intensity arc lights they used at the time caused a condition known as actinic conjunctivitis - which was extremely uncomfortable for the actors!
What’s a soft light?
Now imagine you’re walking down the same street in autumn, on a misty overcast day. Look at the ground and you may have a fuzzy shadow or no shadow at all. This is because the light has had to travel through the clouds and mist, so the rays are coming from a lots of directions. This is what we refer to as soft or diffused light. Soft light is gentler and more flattering to the people you’re filming - it looks great on people’s faces.
How do you make a soft light?
Cinematographers use all sorts of methods to soften light. They will often use various thicknesses of fabric (called silks or diffusers) placed carefully between the light and the scene to emulate that ‘cloud’ effect. They sometimes even use these to soften the light of the sun on a bright day.
To get a similar soft light effect at home, you could shine your hard light at a white wall to reflect it onto the subject. Or if you have a cold LED light, you could shine it through some fabric or tracing paper.
Direction of Light
The direction of the light plays a huge role in getting the right feel for your film. One of the most important questions to ask is where should you place the light in relation to the actors or performers.
Front lighting
Front lighting is effective. It’s often used in sitcoms or when you need to clearly see a character’s expression. However it does little to enhance the mood or tone of the film. It can sometimes feel a little flat and is generally seen more in photography than film.
Side lighting
Side lighting creates more shape on the character’s face which can add three dimensionality to a two dimensional medium. It builds lots of contrast, but it can feel a little too dramatic for some situations. The greater the angle, the more shadow you’re creating on the actor’s face. The most common type of lighting is placing the light at a 45 degree angle.
Back lighting
Back lighting is usually used as a discreet way to make a character stand out from the background. If the only light is a backlight it can be used to quite dramatic effect and even silhouette the character.
Try playing around by moving around all three elements, the light, the actor and the camera to find what you like. You can try top lighting, or even under lighting - which makes you look like you’re telling a scary story. There are no right or wrong answers! The best way to get better at it is to practice.
Check out our articles about lighting, , and source.
At Chocolate Films we look at lighting techniques in our script to screen and our music video workshops. You can contact us to organise one for your school or youth group, or check our upcoming workshops to see if there’s one you can join!
