The Lighting Director

Before calling for camera and action, the director calls first for lights.

Let there be light.

The first known utterance of Yahweh applies equally to videomaking. Without light the camcorder is an expensive hunk of junk.

Of course, it's possible to record without light. If you're planning adocumentary on life during power failures in coal mines you can get by with total ignorance of lighting technique. If your ambitions lie elsewhere, step this way....

Before calling for camera and action, the director calls first for lights. In filmmaking lighting is the responsibility of the camera operator, who can be the director of photography, director of lighting, or gaffer. As videomaker you'll most likely be all of the above, and director as well.

When you don your lighting guy hat, your first priority is to secure enough light for the video camera to record an acceptable image (unless you're still stuck on that coal mine idea). This often means placement of additional lights, so you'll need to know what lights to put where.

Your lighting also must be consistent with the context of the shot (time of day, location, whereabouts of subjects) and should underscore the "mood" of the scene.

Not an easy job, this one.

Do Not Go Ignorant Into All That Light

There are really only two kinds of light: natural and artificial. Natural light comes courtesy of the sun; electricity generates the artificial. Neither are static.

Sunlight is dominated by red tones at dawn and dusk; high noons are flat and colorless. Late afternoon sun casts long shadows-appropriate (chasing Harry Lime) or inappropriate (prancing down the Yellow Brick Road).

Changes in and effects of artificial lighting are even more startling.