Light Source: Hard Light, Soft Light
Whether you're lighting a video with ten kilobucks worth of hi-tech hardware or making do with available light, you have two basic ways to go with each light source: hard or soft - either a high-powered beam with clean edges or else a softer glow that falls off gradually. How do you create hard or soft light? How do you control it? When do you use it and why? Before we attack these questions, we need to start by expanding our definitions of hard and soft light.
You create hard lighting primarily with a spot, which is a small light source with a reflector to bounce all the light forward, a moveable lamp to change its spread and intensity and often a lens to further tame and direct the output. The resulting light is highly directional and the light rays are almost parallel (though they do spread somewhat, like the light from a projector). It is that directionality that creates the hard effect. Because the light rays are somewhat parallel, they can be cleanly interrupted by a mask like a barn door or a flag (a large black rectangle held in place by a stand). This creates a relatively sharp, straight shadow where the light path is interrupted.
Hard light is distinctive from the center of the beam all the way to the edge. Since no civilian lights are as precise and punchy as these movie instruments, spotlights paint subjects with a heightened, dramatic look that's exciting and possibly glamorous. For the same reason, spotlighting can also look artif…
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