LIGHTS...camera...action...

I think everyone has heard the famous hollywood phrase : Lights, Camera, Action!
Its probably an iconic phrase for Hollywood, with a funny factor that must people outside the industry doesn't realize, the importance of lightning in film.



Lightning in film, and even more, in video is vital in order to create a high quality image, otherwise the shadows will just take over our shot, or the natural light we have in our location will look to white and "burn" our image.

There exist several techniques for lightning in a shot, but it is necessary to understand the basics of lightning in the three point lightning setup, which is ideal to light indoors scenes, like interviews for example and its required to play with lights and shadows that are the one that creates depth and gives the illusion that the object has a dimension, the result is, a high quality image.

The three point lightning setup counts with three lights, the key light, the fill light and the backlight. This are the three basic lightning techniques (you can have several more, but lets just focus on this three for now.)

The Key Light:  Is the main light of the subject. Typically, and because its the strongest and brightest light you have, is the main shadow-caster light of your object, as well as the brightest in front of your object, the key light will basically illuminate one area of the object while shadowing with rough edges  the other side, creating a contrast in the object or person you are illuminating. The key light is located at 15- 40 degrees angle from the right or left of the camera.




The Fill light: As it names tells, it fills the shadows created by the key light, the fill light is never as bright as the key light and is located in the opposite direction of the key light in the same angle, the function of this light is to "kill" the shadows that the key light creates and that you dont want in your shot, you have to be careful when using a fill light, because if the fill light is too bright it will end up casting undesired shadows.

The Back light:  The back light, also known as the hair light, is a rim of light that illuminates the objects head and shoulders from the back with the main purpose of separating the object from the background and enhance the sensation of depth in the image. Without the back light, and as you can see in the images above, you will have a flat non-realistic image, here are 2 shots to see the effect of a backlight in lightning.

That is the basic three point lightning set up required for any indoor shooting, if you still have some questions about how this works or how to do it, check out this tutorial!

Information extracted from:

http://www.stephenschleicher.com/htm/tutorialslighting.html

http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html