Filmmaking 101 - Three Point Lighting Tutorial

hey everybody what's going on Steve de casas here I'm at set studio in New York this studio is right above where I work right now I got a full-time gig and it's pretty awesome and they've been able to grant me access to it which is really awesome it's after-hours right now so there might be a little noise going on but it's fine with me I mean I got the lovely Iran so should be fine now I've gotten a request to do a video about three-point lighting excellent request and now that I'm in this great space I think it's the perfect opportunity for me to show you guys what it is now have you been to film school first thing they teach you in cinematography is three-point lighting what that is is key light bill light hair light and then you know you can light up the back background too now I've got some Kino Flo diva lights in the back here but I think for this demonstration it'd be best to shut them off so you can really see the light that's hitting me the subject so I'm gonna shut them off right now little bit more gray in the background now I got the wide camera set up too so you can see everything that's going on but when I'm talking about 3-point lighting we're talking about for a subject you're lighting a person or an animal or something it's not necessarily the same if you're going to be lighting an environment or if you're going to be lighting a set the different mentality but usually in filmmaking there are people in your shots from the people I've talked to they're always wanting to find out cinematography things now Sinnott are gonna be simple key light the light hair light that's your ground rules now depending on the mood of the story depending on what you want to do you can choose to have all three you can choose to have one you can choose to do just a hair light you can choose to do just this just that you can mess around but but that's sort of your your home base that's where you start from and you can eliminate and do what you want from there just off the top of my head i'd-- the movie Hugo which one for cinematography all the hair light in that movie hair light back here super hot super hot and if you notice in the wide shot it's the only light that I have on that does not have a softbox in front of it I happen to like really bright hair light why do we have a hair light what's the reason for the hair light it's to separate the subject from the background with the hair light hitting the rim of you it makes the edges of your body pop and therefore sticks you out and draw his attention to the face pretty simple now I'm gonna take you step-by-step and show you what each light does what it's there for and how it looks on camera so let's start with the key light here's my key light now a key light is not a particularly there's no light that's called brand-name key it's not a brand name or anything the key light just means the most important light in the scene the strongest light that's hitting your subject you can see with just the key light on and no hair light no fill I might have a dramatic type look I've got I'm dark over here and I might be smoking a cigarette and plotting on how I'm gonna take over the world depending on if you're shooting a model or something you might not want to light them with a strong key light because you want to make them look beautiful and flatter them and you don't want them to be in the dark you also have to worry about light angle I have the light directly next to me it was above me or below me if it's coming up like this it might make me look scary making shadows on my forehead so to fill in these shadows and make it a little more even lighting I'm gonna turn on my fill light a little bit better a little less dramatic if you're just person talking about normal things maybe this would be the lighting for you now these two lights are both 500 watt lights with soft boxes in front of them the key light is the key and the strongest because it's closer to me the fill light is about twice as far away from me maybe a little less than twice light intensity now these lights just go on and off they don't dim so the way to get less intense like push the light further away so now as you can see there's something just missing about the shot I'm not popping at you eyes it's less filmic how can we make this look more like a film the simple answer hair light in my experience if even if there's no key or no fill and you're just using ambient light if you can just get hair light on the subject it makes them pop and it makes it look like a film so let's turn it on ahh I love it I don't know about you but I love it it's just the little difference that makes it from blah blend to popping out at you I can't stress enough if you can get a hair light on them go for it now in this particular situation I'm in an awesome studio we've got a lowboy here which is just a really heavy-duty stand with wheels and then a boom arm that comes out that's counterweighted now I don't expect everyone to have that at home but and then it's a 500 watt light not diffused at all just pointing right at the back of my head and with hair light you got to be careful not to shine it into the camera if you shoot it right at the camera you're gonna get a flare sometimes flares good sometimes flares bad depends on the choice you wanna make it depends on the film you're making depends on the story but in this particular situation this is awesome I wish I owned this but I don't it's the studio but hardest thing about a hair light is just getting it behind the person and on them without getting a stand in the way and that's exactly what this logo is doing in this boom arm it's making a stand way over there and putting the light exactly behind me which is where it's the hardest to get and just to show you what hair light does without seeing the other lights on I'm gonna shut the key and the fill off and just show you the hair light by itself it's own little element dramatic now this might work in a scene if I actually iris up I can go up to 2.8 on here I'll actually no I can't wrong lens I can go up to 4.5 but I'll up the ISO for a second so now I'm at F 4.5 at 1250 ISO it's kind of a dreamy look now I was just using ambient light no light coming at me from the front just only light from the back and you're getting sort of a dreamy look maybe this is where the characters dead ancestor comes and says hello I am you need to you need to take that job or you need to don't don't walk over the don't walk over that little bridge tomorrow stupid so anyway that's what this look looks like fix it back so once again scimitar fee is key Phil hair-oil else fails just fall back on that general rule don't make cinematography more complicated than it needs to be sure there are lots of gadgets out there and lots of ways to move the camera they're very complicated but I've actually worked with a DP who shot 35 millimeter in 60 millimeter and in terms of being a cinematographer in terms of beacon DP director photography it's a lot about just being able to talk to the director figure out what he wants or she wants and translating that into a picture whether it looks beautiful or or not it doesn't really matter don't worry about the look don't put too much pressure on yourself my advice is hair light I love hair light give it some hair light and you've done your job in a studio setting like this you also want to light up the backdrop so I'm gonna turn the key nose back on now I don't have a backdrop I have a minister do with a white wall white seamless in the back and it's always proper to it to light that up my personal thing and I think it's a good tip is you want to make sure that the lights that are hitting the background are not spilling on your subject so these barn doors on the Kino do exactly that if these were open all the way like this completely not flagged at all you might get some spill over here I don't know if it's too noticeable but depending on your situation I'm in a really good situation in a studio that might that might be bad so the best thing you can do is you can actually stand by the light and you can see where the light is being cut by your barn door here and you just kind of want to cut it so that it cuts over here on this far side and the same with this you can see that it's cutting and like that now you might not have Kino Flo diva lights to use to let your background you might have just some lights like this but definitely soft even light from both sides 45-degree angle that works the best so that there's harsh shadows and that one side isn't too bright than the other just a quick little tip right there I know I've actually been doing a lot of green screen stuff recently and I've been trying to key some stuff that that people just did not shot the right way so if that's something guys are interested in if you'd like to see a green screen lighting tutorial be pretty much similar to this I'll give it to you guys just let me know so okay that was my three-point lighting video guys please like subscribe share it around tell me if I could have done anything better give me some more questions send me some messages I'm Steve de casas happy filmmaking peace you

Channel: DiCasaFilm

Views: 1,912,265

Rating: 4.947053 out of 5

Keywords: lighting, 3pl, canon, 5D, 7d, 60d, t2i, cinematography, set, studio, seamless, background, Photography, Canon EOS 5D (Digital Camera), Media, 3 point lighting, director of photography, cyclorama

Id: j_Sov3xmgwg

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 06 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/mjpanzer]

My favorite tutorial for three point lighting. Thought I'd share.