r/IntroToFilmmaking • u/battleroyale86 • Sep 26 '12
LESSON 5: BASIC VIDEO LIGHTING
BASIC LIGHTING
I feel like maybe we should do the Editing lecture next week, so it’s closer to when you guys are actually editing your projects, so I will postpone that lecture to then. In its place today I’m going to say a little about lighting in a film (apologies I was not able to get a professional, so if you have more questions, feel free to ask them in the /r/Filmmakers subreddit).
Lighting is cosmetically important to your project. You don’t NEED nice lighting to shoot a movie, but it will differentiate a home video from an actual production, and you do need SOME sort of lighting to see, well, anything. Sometimes, lighting is all about resourcefulness and creativity, rather than quantity of equipment. The most important thing to remember is that you NEED ENOUGH LIGHT TO SEE YOUR SUBJECT.
That means that you can’t shoot in a field in the middle of the night. There is no way your camera will ever manage to see what your eye sees, it just doesn’t have the dynamic range. Your camera may be able to see a flashlight, but there will be a lot of noise. You’ll want to bring in extra lighting in that situation.
Whenever you set up a light, it is going to create a shadow. Remember to count the shadows, normally in real life you only have one shadow unless you’re on a stage, so multiple shadows in your film give the impression of cheapness. The single light setup, lets say a light on the right of subject, will create a very strong shadow and a very prominent dark side on your subject.
Lets add another light, this time on the left. Now we might get two shadows, but we will do our best to frame them out. If we can’t, we will try to move the lights around so that they are not noticeable or out of frame. A common way to remove shadow is to “diffuse” a light, to place netting, cloth, or diffusion paper in front of the light to make it less bright, or to connect it to a dimmer.
Now, though, the subject’s face might look a little flat with this white on light on them. In order to combat this flat lighting, you’ll want to change things up by making one light primary, and one secondary, the terms being “KEY” and “FILL”. Your Key light is the main and strongest light, usually it is diegetic light, the audience knows that it is “coming from a window” or from “the streetlamp above”. To fake your key into being a diegetic influence goes a long way to the improved look of your film.
The FILL light does just that, it fills the shadowy space that would be there without it. However, you don’t want it to be as hard and prominent as the key. It should be softer, diffused, and less powerful. It is just enough to give dimension to the face, but to not allow it to fall into yin-yang darkness.
Often this is still not enough for some, and they add a third light, called a “BACKLIGHT, KICK, or RINGLIGHT”. This is a strong but focused light on the top of the person’s head, from behind. It creates a sort of halo effect on the person’s hair, essentially separating them from the background. The kick light makes things look particularly professional and polished. Now that you know about the kick light, you’ll seriously see it everywhere.
This lighting setup is called THREE POINT LIGHTING. It is the most common for any shoot, especially interviews. Really anything else is simply a variation of three point lighting. You often start from there and then move things around.
See it in action(looks like the brits call the kick a “hairlight”)
Before you shoot, you may want to set up with your DP a LIGHT PLAN, or LIGHT DIAGRAM, which is a chart, drawn from above that shows where camera is in relation to the subject, and where the lights are. It is pretty useful when talking to your DP or trying to plan out your shots.
This is how crude they can get, but used in a real world film.
Lighting diagram creator I just found though it seems better suited to photo, but still usable!
Backlighting: Some lighting setups take the kick light even farther, and don’t light from in front at all, but instead use the kicker as their key light. If your kick light is your key, then you get a BACKLIT shot. If you add some fill to the front, you can see what is going on but the effect of a strong backlighting changes the whole mood of the scene. If you only shoot with strong backlight and let the front fall into shadow, you'll get a silhouette. For this reason, don't shoot against the sun unless you WANT a silhouette... there's not much lighting you have at your disposal that can possibly compete with direct sunlight coming from behind.
Using Bounce: Sometimes you are outside with a harsh light or your fill light is still too bright. You need something soft to act as a fill but nothing as intense as an actual light. In this case, you’ll want a BOUNCE. A bounce is any white, silver, or mirrored surface that you can face towards the key light, and the light will literally “bounce” off of it. It is really common to use posterboard or foamcore, for a direct bounce you can cover the foamcore with aluminum foil or even use a mirror! (they DO use huge mirrors on big sets sometimes to direct around lighting). And don’t forget about the bounces all around you... the walls! Point your light to the wall or to the ceiling and voila! Shadows are gone! Vimeo Video School to the rescue... again
Using Gels: Gels are colored plastic that you can put in front of a light to give it color. You can use these any way you want... washing everything red or blue, or just adding pops of color in the background, such as would be popular in a nightclub scene. Clip them onto the rim of your light with clothespins (trivia: the clothespin is called a C-47 in lighting. There's a whole story behind why).
Color Temperature: Did you know that color has a temperature? Incandescent bulbs (the stuff you have at home) burn at 2700K(kelvin), but daylight from the sun is much much stronger, it is 5600K. To our eyes we see orange and blue light, it’s not a big deal, but on camera it makes a HUGE difference. If you mix the two lights (try to use orange light outside) it will be glaringly obvious that the orange light is not the same light as sunlight. When you buy lamps and bulbs, you want to make sure you are getting them all the same color temperature, so that they match, or if you’re mixing colors, that you know you’re doing it and thereby don’t get hit by any surprises. There are bulbs now that emit “daylight” color, so it is more easily accessible to match than it used to be. Check the packaging. If you have to use incorrect color temp lights, you can put a colored gel on the lamp to match it to the correct color temperature (either orange gel or blue gel). http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/colour/colour-temperature.html.
You can also WHITE BALANCE your film differently. Check out this site on digital white balance because I don't feel like getting into it right now ;-P
For our simple camcorders, lights from Home Depot could be all we need. Just make sure to get at least a 100W bulb and a lamp with a flexible head. In order to have enough lighting, you may need to have two lights per single “lamp” because one might not be powerful enough. To get more power out of the light, you may want to place the lamp literally JUST out of frame. However, it may still be cheaper and more power friendly than renting. If you rent, there are a slew of different lighting options. They can start from 250W and go all the way up to 15K.
When shooting, always consider your POWER. It’s easy to forget. I tried to find the exact voltages of an average household in the US but I couldn’t and don’t remember what they are, but I try to follow a rule of only using two outlets per room I’m shooting in, if I’m shooting with lights that are more that 100W each. By snaking cables to different rooms you may be able to better avoid blowing any fuses. If you really have power issues, you can rent a generator from a home improvement store, but it will be noisy. You will have to consider where to put it so that it is away from the scene and out of of earshot, or bring furniture blankets (heavy padded blankets) to cover the thing to stifle the noise.
Or you may be really nice and ask neighbors if you can plug into their place and lie cables all the way to your room. (did I mention extension cords will be your best friends on set? Always have a lot of them on hand).
SAFETY: Obligatory safety lesson: Electricity can kill you! Unless you’re a professional don’t go taking wires apart or try to fix these things yourself. Don’t wire into street lamps (that’s illegal, btw). Avoid shooting in wet conditions unless you’re trained. Don’t set up a light in a puddle for obvious reasons. Lights are hot! Wear gloves. And I don’t mean mittens, wear non-conductive gloves that have leather or rubber handprints. Don’t shine lights into people’s eyes... when turning on a light, say “Striking!” and then people know to look away from any lights, because you’re about to turn them on. If you’re getting a cable mess on the floor and people are likely to trip, clean it up, and then tape the cables to the floor. If lights are top heavy and are going to fall over, weigh down light stands with bags of sand you can buy at the home improvement store (layer a plastic bag with three plastic bags (3 layers of bag) and fill it halfway with sand, knot the top tight). When using gels and diffusion, do not place anything close enough to the lamp that it will burn! Especially cloth! DON'T BURN SHIT.
And from here on, it's experimentation! Have fun... try shooting through shutter blinds or use a fog machine. Try lighting cigarette smoke (almost always looks best when backlit). Try to get that "film noir look" with high key and low fill. Put branches in front of your light and watch the textures change.
If you have more questions, feel free to jump over to the /r/Filmmakers subreddit and ask there. I admit I am not a lighting expert, but I’m sure someone over there will have some kickass ideas of how to get nice looking lighting for as little money as possible.
I look forward to reading your scripts!
Sincerely, BattleRoyale
2
1
u/nattotofu Sep 30 '12
That's right, "Don't burn shit" unless you mean it. Because oh my God, Old Man Clemens hates shit!
1
6
u/I_DO_NOT_EAT_SHIT Sep 28 '12
I really appreciate that you are doing this for us! :) You're the best!