Lighting for Compositing
With the power of today’s postproduction
software, compositing is used increasingly.
Compositing is the process of video recording
subjects against flat, single-color backgrounds,
and then digitally replacing the background with
other visuals during postproduction.
The more even the background color,
the more perfectly it can be replaced. So, the
challenge is to keep the background lighting
absolutely uniform. To do this, you try to light
background and subjects separately, Figure 16-43.
Lighting the Background
You can achieve very even background
lighting with a pair of softlights (or spots with
Figure 16-39 Moving the interviewer farther away from the interviewee allows a better camera position for her
closeup.
Subjects are close together
in the two-shot
Closeup of interviewer with
different background Interviewer is moved farther away
Figure 16-40 Two-person news teams are typical.
Figure 16-41 In this setup for a daytime report, the sun provides the rim light and a reflector fills from the left. An
on-camera key light can be used to better highlight the reporter’s face.
Sunlight and reflector On-camera key light
356 Video Digital Communication & Production