Three-Point Lighting - Seminole Cinema: SEHS Film - Home



IB Film 1: W17.1Introduction to LightingThe Other Aspect of CinematographySo far you have learned about one half of the cinematographic game -?camerawork.However, there is also a whole other world to consider to be a true cinematographer.You must also learn to master light.Watch This: LightingAlthough every Lighting setup will have its own requirements and eccentricities, it would still be a good idea for you to learn a very basic lighting setup, what is known as three-point lighting.It will serve you well in a variety of shooting situations, and is a good setup to practice repeatedly until you have it memorised.Safety Warning!Make sure everyone keeps their awareness level high at all times!If you are using professional photography lights, be sure you have received adequate instruction in their use.?The three?main safety hazards are:Professional lights draw a lot of powerSometimes as much as 750 watts, or more.You will not be able to connect more than one to a single power board without tripping a circuit breaker.Ideally, you want?each light on a separate circuit.Extension cords to other rooms in the house will help make this happen.?Professional lights get hot - very hot!They have metal boxes around them, and metal conducts heat.You need a pair of gloves?to handle lights that are on for any length of time.On a related note, you should never handle any bulbs, especially Halogen bulbs, with your bare fingers. The oils on your fingers rub off on the bulb and when the bulb gets hot - boom!Halogen lamps tend to have bars across the front for this reason.?Never remove those safety bars.Also, never put anything in front of a light, except for a lighting?gel?or a?gobo. Anything else will melt.?Professional lights are prone to tippingThey are usually mounted on stands that can easily be tipped over, and when they fall - boom!Make sure the bases are weighted down with something heavy, like a sandbag, to help prevent this from happening.While you are at it, tape down all cords with duct tape or electrical tape.Film sets can be crazy places.?Make sure everyone keeps their awareness level high at all times.Okay, enough of the scary talk, let us take a look at a very common technique for lighting a scene.What's the big deal about Lighting?Good lighting can completely change the meaning of a scene?It can enhance the atmosphere and mood of a shot, and be the difference between a good film and a great one.Controlling light, making it appear where you want it, and disappear where you do not, is an incredibly rewarding, though sometimes frustrating, challenge.If you have ever held a flashlight under your chin while telling ghost stories at a slumber party, then you have been a cinematographer (or at least a lighting designer) without even realising it.Why do we do that? It's?simple.It creates a spooky effect. It enhances the telling of the story, making a merely suspenseful tale into one that chills to the bone and has your hairs standing on end.How much light is enough?Take control and design your lighting?Too often, student filmmakers just take whatever light happens to be in a scene already without deliberately taking control of the lighting and designing it.It is like they forget how to hold a flashlight under their chins. Get in touch with your inner Bard of the ghost-tale and light that scene!One aspect to keep in mind right from the start is the awareness that the camera is not your eye.The human eye is far more sensitive to light than a film camera.What might look like plenty of light to your eyes, will often be not enough for the camera.This is especially true in low-light situations.Too often, students end up frustrated when they capture?footage only to find those evening shots that looked so moody when they shot them turn out grainy and dark in the edit bay.As a general rule of thumb -?if the scene looks just right to your eye, add a bit more lighting, and it will be just right when you edit the footage later.What is Three-Point Lighting?Key light, fill light, and back lightPractice, practice, practice?Three-point lighting gets its name because it incorporates 3 lights, each of which act as 1 of the points - key light, the fill light, and the back light.We will take each of these one step at a time, but first you need to round up some lights, so you can actually practice this setup while you learn about each point.If you or your school?has access to professional photography lights, then use them, but you can just as easily do this exercise guerilla-style with what you have at home.In fact, home lights might be a better choice for today's lesson, since that might be how you actually shoot for your film projects.Search your house for three lights.A strong one, like a living room lamp, or a workshop light.A medium one, like a desk lamp.A small one, like a good flashlight or clamp-on light.Before you unplug all the lamps in the house, you let your parents know what you are doing, and obviously, be sure to put everything back when you are done with the lesson.Also, find yourself a nice subject to shoot, preferably a person.Younger siblings work well.Parents and grandparents do, too, if you can get them to sit still long enough.What is Key Lighting?Controlling ShadowStart with no lighting at all?Or at least just the bare minimum of light so you can see what you are doing.Sit your subject in a chair.Get that strong light source you found.This will be your key light, the main source of light in the scene.Put it directly in front of your subject and turn it on. What do you see?Probably what you see is good overall illumination, but the subject looks flat.You may recall the problem of the third dimension?Here we see another aspect of it. Poor lighting makes the subject look washed out with no real sense of them existing in 3 dimensions.This is sometimes known as the deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. What is missing?See if you can put your finger on the answer by yourself before you move on.If you surmised the missing piece is shadows, or something along those lines, then good for you. Well done.Lighting is not just about controlling light, but also about creating and controlling shadow.Shadow is what helps create the sense of dimensionality on a subject. When features stand out, they block light, and blocked light is what makes shadows.Since you have the light right in front of your subject, there are no shadows on the face. Everything is evenly lit. deer-in-headlights. So what do you do?Move the key light to one side or the other. How do you decide?Well, an un-thinking amateur would flip a coin or just make the choice randomly. You are better than that.Think about what you are trying to create in the scene -?the illusion that the world of the film actually exists.Where would the primary light in the film world be coming from? From the sun streaming through the window? Put the key light on that side then.From an actual light on the set, what would be called a practical light? Then put the key light on that side.Make sure the key light shines on your subject at an angle - 45 degrees is good - rather than profile.Light coming at 90 degrees from the side is going to create the opposite problem, in that the shadows will be extremely long.Jump CutGo ahead and place your key light.Play around until you feel like you have the right angle and distance from your subject.Make sure and reassure your subject that they are absolutely fabulous!So, a quick recap -?The key light is the main source of light in the scene and mimics where the main source of light would be coming from in the world of the film.What is Fill Light?Filling in the shadowsCreate a softer, more normal look for the scene?Now you have your key light shining on your subject and you have a sense of dimensionality created by shadows.You still have a problem, however. Can you guess what it is?The effect is similar to the flashlight-under-the-chin example,?isn't it? It is a bit creepy.Now maybe that is the desired effect in your shot, but in this case, we are looking to create a softer, more normal look for the scene.Those shadows, the ones you worked so hard to create, need to be softened a bit. In other words, the shadows need to be filled in. Thus -?the fill light.Get your medium light source.Where do you think you should put it? See if you can figure it out on your own before you move on.If you guessed the fill light goes on the other side of the subject, then pat yourself on the back.If you, additionally, figured out the light should hit the subject from the same or similar angle from the other side, then go get yourself a snack. Get one for your actor, too.The fill light's function is to fill in shadows, but not remove them entirely.It needs to be a weaker source than the key light, because if it were as strong or stronger then it would become the key light itself.It would also create harsh shadows on the other side of the subject's face, and then you have a big mess of light and shadow.If you need to weaken your fill light (or any light for that matter) you can simply move it further away.Jump CutGo ahead and place your fill light.Play around until you feel like you have the right angle and distance from your subject.Shadows should still be present, but muted.A quick recap -?The key light is the main source of light in the scene and mimics where the main source of light would be coming from in the world of the film.The fill light fills in shadows, so they are still present, but not as harsh.What is Back Light?It makes the subject 'pop out'It lights the subject from behind and above and adds nice highlights to the hair?The missing piece now is not as easy to detect by the un-trained eye.The problem now is how to make the subject stand out - or 'pop' - from the background.This is where the back light comes in.For this reason, it is sometimes called a hair light.Other terms for the back light are rim light, or Kkcker.If you have ever seen what seems to be a halo effect around someone's hair, this is the effect you are going for.It just adds that extra sparkle that really makes the subject stand out and increases that sense of dimensionality.Jump CutGrab your smallest light.Find a way to suspend it behind and above your subject, angled down, pointing at your subject's hair.Again, play around with angle and distance until you feel like you have a nice effect.To recap -?The key light is the main source of light in the scene and mimics where the main source of light would be coming from in the world of the film.The fill light fills in shadows, so they are still present, but not as harsh.The back light makes the subject stand out from the background.There you have it - three-point lighting.Before you dismiss your actor, just quickly try turning each light off and on a few times, just to reinforce for yourself what each light does.What is Key light?The amount of light in a sceneClose answerFeeling a little 'low key' today??Key, as you can probably guess, refers to the amount of light in the scene, its overall brightness.If the key light is bright, and everything in the scene is brightly illuminated, the scene can be described as being high key.If the overall scene is dimly lit, and the key light is dim then the scene is referred to as being low key.Have you ever used the expression, 'I'm feeling a little low-key today?'?That should help you remember the term.What is Contrast light?The contrast between light and shadowA scene with high contrast has a sharp division between light and shadow?The?borders of shadows are crisp, clear, and harsh, where the bright parts are really bright and the shadows are really dark.A scene with low contrast, on the other hand, has a muddled division between light and shadow, where one can hardly tell where light ends and shadow begins.Lighting LanguageIf you put these two?terms and their two sub-divisions together, you have a matrix of four general ways of describing the overall lighting in a scene.If you think about it, the various combinations of key and contrast presented here, form the basics of the language of lighting.Consider perhaps how you have defined language?in your IB Theory of Knowledge course.Does using light in the manner described in this lesson constitute a kind of language?High Key, Low ContrastIf everything on the set is brightly illuminated and shadows are muted, then you have this kind of scene.Typically, you might see this on the set of a television sitcom, like?Seinfeld?or?Friends.It suggests a world of openness, lightness, and fun.?High Key, High ContrastIn this situation, the subject is brightly lit, but the shadows are equally deep and the border between light and shadow is crisp.?Think of someone on stage being lit by a single spotlight.Low Key, Low ContrastSome films seem to be barely lit at all, where characters wander in a murky haze.?Much of the lighting design of Coppola's?The Godfather?is like this.?The world of the film exists in moral ambiguity, as does its lighting.?Low Key, High ContrastThis Lighting setup lends itself to genres like film noir.?When subjects are not very brightly illuminated, but the shadows stand out vividly, this suggests a world of deception, intrigue, and duplicity.?The two Lighting styles create vastly different looks, and mastering both of them will greatly increase your range as a photographer and videographer.Watch This: and DiffusersYou should at least be a bit familiar with two pieces of gear that round out a lighting kit - reflectors and diffusers.What is a Reflector?Bounces light from another source onto the subjectClose answerActs like another light in the scene?Or it can take the place of a fill light in a three-point setup.Sometimes a subject needs just a bit more light. A reflector can do the job.Sometimes the subject needs to be lit by a softer, more indirect light, and a reflector works well for that, too.Reflectors come in three colors -?white, silver, and gold.A white reflector?only softens the light without changing its color. White reflectors are sometimes called bounce cards, because they bounce light indirectly onto a subject.A silver reflector?will change the nature of the light it is reflecting and cools the subject down, in terms of color temperature, not actual air-conditioning temperature.A gold reflector?will warm a subject up, like giving the subject an instant, and non-carcinogenic, suntan.There are combination reflectors as well that have a mixture of these three types in varying ratios.Guerilla ModeDIY ReflectorsIf you can afford professional reflectors, great.If not, get into guerilla mode!Do you have one of those sunshades people sometimes put in their vehicle windshields to keep the car from overheating?That is a cooling reflector.Do you have a piece of cardboard and some gold spray paint?You have a warming reflector!Do you have a piece of white foam core?If so, then you have a bounce card.What is a Diffuser?Spreads and softens the lightMakes light?less harsh and glaring?Unlike a reflector, which reflects or bounces light back, a diffuser spreads light out, thus softening the light,A diffuser is usually white and is semi-transparent (or semi-opaque, depending on how you want to look at it).It?takes the edge off the lighting in the scene.Have you ever noticed when you have your portrait taken, for your school photos for example, you sometimes do not see the bulb on the lights?They are hidden behind what looks like a box wrapped in a white sheet.That is a special kind of diffuser called a softbox.Or, have you ever wondered why so many of the lamps in your house have a lampshade?Go ahead and take the lampshade off and see how the light in the room changes.It is brighter and more harsh, right? Guess what a lampshade is? It is a diffuser. It spreads and softens the light.If you have ever seen a professional outdoor film-shoot during a very sunny day, you may have noticed what looks like a big white sail in a frame hanging over the subject.That is a really big diffuser, and it is diffusing the biggest light of them all -?the Sun.So, whenever the Lighting in your scene is too intense, whether indoors or outdoors, consider using a diffuser to mellow out the scene a bit.Your actors will certainly be grateful, and your film will have a more enjoyable look.Guerilla ModeDIY DiffuserProfessional diffusers are very cool because they usually come in these giant hoops that fold up, through some miracle of physics, into a very tiny hoop that gets tucked in a very tiny bag.However, if you cannot afford one or do not have access to one, then get into guerilla mode!Do you have a white t-shirt? You, my friend, are also the proud possessor of a diffuser.What about a white sheet, got one of those? A very big diffuser!WarningDo not take your mother's table linens without permission, as that will surely draw unnecessary ire upon you and your crew!There are dozens of other possibilities here if you open your mind to them.The Wonders of a Plain White T-shirtIf you stuff a plain white t-shirt into your kit, you will never regret it.Not only is it a handy diffuser, but it can also be used to manually adjust your white balance.You always need something pure white to hold in front of the camera, to 'teach'?your camera what white looks like in your lighting setup -?a white t-shirt does the job splendidly.Finally, if your lens gets dirty, you always have something soft with which to clean it.There is still much more to learn about lighting but these few aspects should get you going.Soon,?you will get to upload a practice exercise with your new lighting skills.?More on that in the near future.Until then, happy lighting!Lighting TutorialsFilmmakerIQ have 20 Lighting tutorials for filmmakers like you.Watch?-?20 Lighting Tutorials?for Film and Video ................
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