Basic Training: Three-Point Lighting 101

Kyle Cassidy
May 2008

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When looking at lighting kits, you will find there are literally hundreds of lights and accessories to choose from. It can be extremely daunting, but having some idea of how to light is essential and, luckily, there is a place to start.

Three-pointing lighting is the workhorse of interview-style lighting, and you'll see many of the key principles of more complex lighting from it. It looks complicated at first, but when you see how easily it comes together, not only will you be surprised, but people who look at your videos will think you've done something pretty clever.

The three different "points" in this type of lighting are the key, the fill and the backlight. Each performs a separate task, and the whole would suffer without any of them.

In Videomaker seminars, setting up three-point lighting is always one of the things that attendees enjoy the most, because it gives everybody an opportunity to see exactly what each light is doing and how moving the light changes the scene. We're going to do that on paper here, but experiment at home - find a volunteer to model, and watch your results on a monitor as you move lights in real time.

Before we look at each of the lights and what it does, let's talk a little bit about the space requirements. The bigger and more powerful your lights, the more space you're going to need to set them up. Three-point lighting requires some space behind the model, too. Today's video cameras are much more sensitive to light than models of even a few years ago, and, as a result, lighting kits have become smaller.

The key is, as the name suggests, the most important light - it's the primary light source that provides most of the illumination on your subject. You place this light about 45 degrees to the model's right or left and about 45 degrees above, aimed straight at the face. The 45-degree angle isn't written in stone - it's simply a starting point. Feel free to adjust it later if necessary.

Also, don't think that because it's providing most of the light, it needs to be extremely bright. Check to make sure that you haven't burned out your whites. You should get strong shadows and a good tonal range. If your key light is too bright, you need to move it back, cut down on the amount of light it's emitting or stop down your camera's aperture.

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