The Aims of Lighting

Lighting is certainly elusive! if you walk round a studio setting, the skills that have gone into its creation are obvious. But you can only judge the effectiveness of lighting treatment when you see the specific shots for which it was designed, on the screen!

Technically speaking

The intensities, contrasts and directions of the lighting must suit the electronic camera’s characteristics, and be appropriate for each camera angle. The light’s color temperature, too, must be consistent throughout, or color quality will vary.

However ambitious the lighting design, it must always work within the various practical limitations of power, equipment availability, time, labor, etc.

Artistically speaking

You can use light to emphasize or suppress shape and texture; to create illusions of space and distance. Through light and shade, you can build up an atmospheric effect or set a mood. You can draw attention to specific areas, making some prominent while others recede. Through the way you light a subject, you can alter its entire appearance, giving harsh, unsympathetic lighting treatment, or enhancing attractive effects at the touch of a button.

Basic lighting approaches

Certain fundamentals underlie all lighting techniques:

• The general character of light varies from hard light that casts strong shadows and reveals texture and modeling, to soft light that is diffused, producing shadowless illumination, and generally suppressing texture and modeling. Effective lighting is a blend of both kinds.

• The directions of light sources you use, their relative intensities (balance), and the character of their illumination (hard/soft), will determine what the subject and the scene look like.

• Each subject should have a key light;the main luminant that creates its modeling, reveals its shape and texture,and establishes the light direction.

• A fill light (filler) is added opposite the key, to provide diffused light which illuminates shadows and reduces contrast.

• A back lightbehind the subject outlines it with light, helping to add depth and solidity.

• A basic lighting setup uses three light sources (key—fill—back) arranged in a triangular layout.

• In addition to subject lighting, set lights are used selectively, to reveal and model the setting, and create an appropriate atmospheric illusion.

The effect of lighting changes with the light’s direction relative to a camera’s viewpoint, and with the position of the subject So lighting treatment is designed to suit subject movement and camera angles. It must also allow for camera and sound boom maneuvers, and avoid spurious camera or boom shadows. Clearly, successful lighting can only come from imaginative, anticipatory and systematic planning.

Three-point lighting

The main key light, the diffused fill light (that illuminates and softens the shadows), and the back light that outlines the subject, form the basis of most lighting treatment.

Complex lighting setups

Even a complicated lighting setup can be analyzed into its component parts. Here the respective lights for each person are K—key, F —fill, B—back. Additional lamps may light the background.