Image by Kyle May

Lighting for movies is filled with so many options for a film director that is can be overwhelming. There is no single way to best light any particular shot, it will vary depending on many factors. Does the director want the movie to look slick or have a documentary feel. Behind all these artistic aspirations for setting a mood in a movie are cold hard basics that every film director can benefit from learning.

Base Illumination

Movie lighting at its bare minimum is about making things visible. When we can't see something well, we use a flashlight. We don't stumble around in the dark looking for things, we turn on the room light. So the least your lighting should be doing is making things bright enough so a camera can capture images that are comprehensible. Certain camera need a certain level of illumination otherwise you will incur significant grain in your shots. Once you have the base illumination so things are visible and the grain isn't too bad, then you can move on to nuances.

Right Color

It's not obvious to the untrained eye, but different sources of light produce different colors. Sunlight is blue-ish, indoor lighting is usually yellow-ish and fluorescent light is green-ish. With this is mind you can't just use any light in any situation. In real life our eyes compensate for this and it largely goes unnoticed, but the camera will make it startlingly clear. In an outdoor shoot you can't use incandescent lights to supplement or else it will look like someone is shining a lamp on them. Just because fluorescent lights produce less heat and you're shooting in the summer doesn't mean they will do the trick. There are gels you can use to change the color temperature of these lights and getting to know them will be essential for grounding your look in reality.

Mimic Environment

Along with the right color, you want to make the position of the lights and the resultant shadows seem natural. Unless you are going for a bizarre look, you will want shadows to fall to the ground and lighting to mostly be above. Not only will you want the general position to seem realistic you will also want to have the lights seem to come from a place where a light would naturally be coming from. If you have a big exposed window you would want the bulk of the light to come from it. If you are shooting in a dark backyard with a single bare light bulb as the only light, you would want the light to mostly come from that direction. When you are shooting outside the sun is where the light comes from, if you wanted to do an outdoor scene indoors you'd need to mimic that feel.

Highlight, Emphasize

Once you have things visible and realistic, you can use some artistic license to make visual statements. Now that everything is able to be captured by your camera, you can now add more light to particular objects to spice up your composition or fill in areas that you would like to be brighter to draw more attention. The eye tends to go to the brightest spot in the room so with this in mind you can almost plot how an viewer might scan the screen. If there are important props in the room that illuminate character or will become a part of the plot you may want to make them pop out more than the others. That's not to say they should be shining and sparkling and overwhelming, just a small amount of extra lighting will make a subtle difference in the finished product.

Separate From Background

Working in a two-dimensional medium we have to work hard to make it seem three-dimensional. One way we can do this is to make the foreground and background distinct from each other. The background shouldn't just make do with whatever light you've used to light the actors, it should have it's own lighting that will make it distinct from the foreground. Aside from deliberately lighting the background, you can also alter your actor lighting to help them stand out from the background. Backlight pointed up from the ground towards the camera can outline the foreground objects with a subtle glow that will help separate it from the background. In addition or instead you might also just take care to light someone's hair, especially if it's a close-up, and that will help keep them from blending into the background.

There is no single lighting package that will make your film look great. There is no single technique you can rely on time after time. An understanding of what lighting is supposed to do can give you the ability to pick and choose the right tools and implement them effectively.