Chapter 16 Lighting Applications 345
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Lighting Problems
All lighting situations have problems, but
some are especially common. One of these
is subjects who are hard to light pleasingly;
another involves specialized light sources.
Subject Problems
Unless you are lighting characters in story
videos, you generally want to make your
subjects look as good as possible. The following
are five of the most common subject problems, fi
with suggestions for solving them.
Heavy Faces
You can use lighting to make heavy faces
look slimmer. The trick is to highlight the
center of the face and leave the sides in semi-
shadow, Figure 16-21.
To do this, key the lighting with a spotlight
and use vertical barn doors (or fl ags, if necessary) fl
to restrict the light to the center of the face. The light
should be placed at or near the six o’clock position.
To complete the setup, place soft fi ll lights at both fi
the three o’clock and nine o’clock positions, moving
them away from the subject until they deliver just
enough light to reveal details in the shadows.
Thin Faces
The technique for lighting thin faces is just
the opposite. Use soft key lights at or near the
three o’clock and nine o’clock positions. Often,
you may be able to omit front lighting entirely,
as in Figure 16-22.
For easier comparison,
Figure 16-21
and
Figure 16-22
use wide and narrow renderings of the same face.
Darker Complexions
Darker facial tones are beautiful when
well lit, but they can offer contrast problems—
especially in wedding cinematography, when the
bride’s skin tones are contrasted with a brilliant
white wedding dress. The trick here is to get more
light on the face than the dress, Figure 16-23.
Many on-camera lights can be fitted with fi
barn doors that partially block light from the
white wedding dress. With stand-mounted
lights, half screens can be added to the barn
doors to further moderate the lower part of the
light beam.
If your camera light will accept filters, you can use
a graduated filter to reduce the bottom part of the
light beam.
Bald Subjects
Balding heads are best handled by the
makeup department—a little neutral powder
will kill refl and be quite invisible to the flections
camera. If the subject refuses powder (as men
sometimes do), try moving the lights up and
then, if necessary, farther to one side to reduce
the refl flections.
Figure 16-21. A heavy face appears narrower when its
sides are darker than its center.
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Figure 16-22. A thin face appears broader when its
sides are lighter thaan its center. s des a e gh te t ts ce te
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