How to Light a Person for Video

When I taught television production, I used to tell my students to visit local art museums to study lighting and framing. Painters, photographers and videographers share the same basic problem, translating a three-dimensional image onto a two-dimensional surface. The solution is three-point lighting.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Band at Work. c.1980 Checkmate Pictures Set a Key Light. A key light is the first light to set on a person. Classically, as in the Mona Lisa, it’s at about a 45-degree angle up and to one side of the nose. It is used primarily to shape and define the face. Before setting it, study the face of the person you’re about to shoot. If your subject has a round face, you can slim some of her roundness, by setting the key on the opposite side of the camera. (See the example of fill lighting below.) Conversely, if the key is set on the camera side or the viewer’s side as in the Mona Lisa the key accentuates the fullness of a face.
   
   Generally a key is a hard light that produces shadows, like a fresnel with a lens. In the last few years, I’ve used a softer light for my keys such as an open-faced focusing spot at flood. Softer lights show fewer wrinkles than hard lights.
2. Califrornia Girl c.1981 Checkmate Pictures Set a Fill Light. A fill light is a soft light, frequently one with diffusion that offsets some of the shadows created by the key. In this photo, I slimmed the model’s face by placing the key away from the camera. Here the key was the sun. The fill is really a reflection from a photo umbrella which the model balances on her shoulder. This is an important point to remember for video: Light for the camera, not your eye. Your eye is constantly doing auto white balance and auto iris. It can handle a huge range of detail in contrasting light. Consider its contrast ratio to be in the neighborhood of 1000:1. Film, depending on slide or negative, black and white or color, is about 100:1. Standard definition NTSC video is only 10:1. That means if you hope to have any detail in the shadow side of a person, you’ll need fill, probably more than you suspect at first glance. Be sure to check your lighting on either a well adjusted monitor or camera view finder set up properly to color bars.
3. Uncommon in Boston c. 1971 Checkmate Pictures Set a Back Light. A backlight is used to separate a subject from the background, adding three-dimensionality to a shot. Backlights are hard lights which add a corona to fair haired people. I also use it a lot when shooting flowers in the wild, because it causes the blooms to glow. Sometimes, just backlight alone can make a shot. In this one, I was wandering through downtown Boston when I saw this boy playing with pigeons. With one shot, I walked away with a prize winning photo. Note that if this had been in video, I would have needed fill light because there would have been no detail on the boy’s face.
4. Bobby c.1982 Checkmate Pictures Put it Together. Combine key, fill and backlight to capture the mood that you want. In this headshot, you can plainly see the two catch lights in the eye created by the key and fill. This is a formal portrait. Simply using far less fill, creating more shadow would produce a more menacing effect. Since he’s dark haired the backlight isn’t very evident, but closer positioning of the light would have added a subtle halo to his head, making him appear more saintly.

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