ACADEMY ULTIMATE GUIDE TO LIGHTING
The possibilities may seem endless. But armed with a few basic lighting set-ups, it’s easy to get good results pretty quickly. And you can modify them from there, and experiment to create your own unique lighting patterns. The soft light from large light sources is often flattering. On the other hand, harder and more contrasty light is often far more dramatic or moody. And it can give you far greater control – using the light to sculpt and highlight key areas of the shot rather than just washing everything in a wall of light. It also helps you stop light spilling into areas where you don’t want it, such as onto the background. Focusing fresnel lights are ideal for this, as they can be adjusted to give a different effect. An LED light can be made punchy, too, by moving it further away from the subject and controlling the spill with barn doors. One of the premier manufacturers of focusing fresnel lights is Fiilex, which has a range of well-made and powerful lights packed with features. The Q8 Travel LED Fresnel is typical of the breed; it’s powerful and very controllable, with the light beam adjustable from 12-60°. You can tune the white balance temperature and hue, and it also works on 48V battery power for location use as well as mains. If you want full control of colours, the Matrix II RGBW lets you select any colour you like. Really, the light is just a bright, punchy LED hard light, but a fresnel adapter lens clips on the front to make the beam even more controllable. In all cases, the size of the light source relative to the subject – and how diffuse its output is – controls how soft the quality of light is. A large and diffuse source such as a big LED panel right near your subject gives much softer light that just magically seems to fill in any imperfections and wrap around your subject. In contrast, a physically smaller or more distant source, with little or no diffusion, gives a harder output and makes hard-edged shadows. Both light qualities provide different effects.
THREE-POINT LIGHTING
point lighting, there are a whole array of variables for you to consider. For example, the ratio of how bright the fill light is compared to the main light. Too strong, and the lighting will look flat. Too dim, and there may be too much contrast. There’s the exact direction to consider, too. The most popular technique involves starting with one main light at 45° to your model and a fill at 45° on the other side, usually at a lower power setting. Then there’s also the light quality of your light sources. This can be hard – like a hard-edged focusing light that looks like sun on a bright day. Or soft, like a light in a huge softbox, bounced into a big reflector or shot through a large scrim. Or light quality somewhere in-between, such as a small softbox. The relative size of the light modifier, the softbox’s interior surface, the diffusing material and more can all have a significant effect.
The legendary three-point lighting technique has always been the mainstay of the majority of films ever since Hollywood moviemakers pretty much invented studio lighting techniques. It refers to lighting from three places, and is typically composed of a main or key light, a second light to fill in some of the shadows caused by the main light, and a final harder light coming from behind the subject as a backlight or hair light. This kind of lighting is designed to stop the subject disappearing into the background and also to give some real three- dimensionality to the subject. Controlling lighting is all about making a three-dimensional object look like a real object when shown on a flat screen. Using lights from different directions helps to sculpt the subject and make it look real. This may all sound very easy to do. But once you start getting into three-
IMAGES The Fiilex Q8 (left) is a fresnel light with adjustable colour temperature. The firm’s
Matrix II (above) has a fresnel adapter and is an RGB light
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PRO MOVIEMAKER AUTUMN 2019
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