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Illuminations: Specialty Lighting

It is one of those late September evenings, the air crisp, the threat of snow lingering on every breeze. The fog creeps in on silent feet, filling the valley with its eerie wisps.

The man who appears from the alley is a big man, the kind of big that says "Tread lightly around me." The kind of big that says, "I do what I want." The man looks out over the fog-covered river, his cigarette forgotten, its ash softly glowing with each breezy wisp.

Thus begins another entry into the world of a hard-bitten detective seeking his prey. How do you light it? How do you keep the mystery? Do you use standard three-point lighting, or is this one of those times you can break the rules? In this column, we will look at specialty lighting used to emphasize dramatic moments. We will look at lighting that does not follow the basic three-point lighting scheme, yet is very effective and often used.

When deciding how to light your scene, you have to decide if you want it to be bright and cheery with few shadows or dramatic and full of emotion with plenty of shadows. What you are really deciding is whether to light the scene using high-key or low-key lighting.

The names "high key" and "low key" are a bit confusing, because you do absolutely nothing to the key when creating the type of light you desire. The key light is always set up so that the tonal value of the talent's face is correct, meaning it is neither so bright that it glows nor so dark that it turns an ugly gray color. Using the light meter in your camera or an external meter, set your lights and camera so that the key gives you the best possible exposure for your talent's face. Then adjust the fill light to create the high- or low-key look.

High-key lighting, sometimes called "game show" or "sitcom" lighting, is lighting that has very little shading. The key, fill and background lighting is very even and shows little variation and virtually no shadows. This type of lighting gives the scene a very bright and cheery look - just the type of effect you are looking for when shooting a comedy or game show.

Low-key lighting has a great deal of shadow, depending on the intensity of the scene. The fill light, which usually fills in the shadows, is greatly reduced. The less fill, the more drama. Keep in mind that the fill light also tells the viewer the time of day, the location and the type of ambient light available, as well as the mood. Because of this, you have to be very careful when creating low-key lighting, so that it looks natural and fits the scene. You don't want to create low-key lighting just because you think it looks cool or you want to show off your lighting prowess! Let's take a closer look at this type of lighting.

You can use number of low-key lighting techniques to make your scene look more dramatic. One technique is chiaroscuro lighting. Cinematographers use this type of lighting to create a very dramatic look in a scene. To create this lighting scheme, you will use very little, if any, fill light. The object is to create a very dramatic difference between the light and dark areas of the scene. One of the most dramatic ways to create this type of lighting is to place a hard light directly to the side of your talent at the height of the bridge of the nose. Move the light towards the 8:00 position on the lighting clock, so that it catches the eye on the unlit side of the face. By catching both eyes with the light, you keep your talent from looking like a one-eyed monster. You can then throw a splash of light on a back wall or background object to provide some sense of depth in the shot. You now have a very dramatic lighting scheme with two lights. (See Figure 1.)