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Lighting Techniques

The art of lighting is often described as a form of painting. With both the use of light and dark as well as color, you can add to the mood, create excitement or tension, or even romance. Despite the fact that an amateur filmmaker doesn't have access to extensive equipment, you can still accomplish a quality lighting job with very little.

I often get this comment: "I can't afford to light it like you did. I don't have that many lights!" The truth of the matter is that you can make something look great with one or two lights. It's WHERE you put the lights. Here are a few tips:

Cheap and Basic

Go to a hardware store and buy those little lights in the silver scoops, often called photofloods or video lights. These work perfectly because you can change the light bulb to anything you can find in the store, including colors, and it usually has a clamp on it to attach to most stuff! For a few dollars, you can have a simple but effective lighting setup. Can't afford that? What about a lamp from home and a shade? It's not as tough as you might think.

Lighting Areas

The biggest difference between the big boys with tons of equipment and lots of money, and you, is space. All those big lights allow them to light much larger areas, such as concert halls, football fields or huge crowd scenes. When writing your project, just be careful you avoid anything like this, if you expect it to be lit up, or set it during the day! With some consideration, you can limit your lighting areas to something more manageable, and then avoid massive compromises on set.

Soft Light

Got a light handy? Hold it up to the side of a person facing you, so that the light just reaches over the nose, lighting both eyes but leaving some shadow on the opposite side of the face. Look at how the line of shadow to light looks. Now throw a thin bed sheet, or a single layer of silk blouse over the light. Notice how the line of light to dark is wider now? This is the difference between soft and hard light. The biggest advantage a professional fashion photographer has over your home still camera and built in flash is soft light. By shooting the light through a material, the light is diffused, spread out and softened. Soft light ALWAYS looks better on faces, and can add a lot of production value to your simple lighting setup. Go to www.studiodepot.com, select Gels & Lighting Filters from the menu on the left, then select Roscoe Filters, then Roscoe Filter Sheets - Diffusion an browse through the many selections. If you're in Los Angeles, you can pay them a visit! You can use items around the house as well, but note that Roscoe filters are non-flammable, unlike most of those things you have at home, and those lights get hot!

Note that diffusion lowers the amount of light. Avoid super thick diffusion if you're using photofloods or home lights.

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