Avoid the flat look, regardless of

whether you’re shooting an

interview

or an ambitious epic. Avoid lighting

your subject directly from the

front with a single light source.

A popular technique in professional

lighting is to use a soft (diffuse)

light source from the front and a

stronger, more directional light from

the back, so that your subject has a

hot edge. The soft frontal light is

known as the fill light; the strong

light at the back is known,

unsurprisingly, as the backlight.

You can arrange the lights in such a

way as to leave darkness between

the area illuminated by the backlight

and the area illuminated by the

fill light, depending on how moody

you want the shot to be. This tends

to work very well, although even the moodiest films tend to avoid

leaving dark shadows on the faces

of female talent.

For a slightly different look, the

backlight can also be soft, but it

should still be hotter than the fill.

You should light your film or video

shot by shot. This means that when

you relocate the camera to shoot a

different angle, the lights must be

moved as well to ensure the subject

is always lit correctly. This is

partly why films take so long to

shoot.

Setting up lights is the most

time-consuming task in film shoots.

It is

therefore good practice to shoot a

scene in such a way as to minimize

the need to relocate lights – in other

words, shoot in the order of the

lighting set-ups.

Here’s a trick that can save huge

amounts of time: when covering a

scene

with a shot and reverse shot,

instead of moving the camera and

lights

for the reverse shot, simply switch

the actors around and move the

camera to the other side of the

eye-line, in order to maintain the

correct eye-line relationship. This

allows you to use the same lighting

set-up for two or more pairs of

shots. Depending on the situation, it

may help to move some props

around too. It generally works best

when the

backgrounds of the two actors

cannot be distinguished. This

technique is

not always appropriate, but in the

right situation it can be totally

convincing and a huge time-saver.