The process of creating professional video starts in the studio with a technique known as three-point lighting. This is a technique that involves three different sources of light. And applying them makes your subject look a lot more flattering. The first thing we’re going to look at is the key light or the main source of your illumination. The next thing we’re going to take a look at is the fill light which is going to clean up all the dark areas on the face, and the last thing we’re going to look at is the backlight which is going to separate our subject from the background. I’m Tom Skowronski and this is three-point lighting.
Standing to my left are two photo flex silver dome soft box lights. These lights are very even in their intensities so we’re going to use them for our backlight and out fill light. Now, the light we want to use first is going to be a little bit more intense and that is known as our spotlight. This is going to be our key light and it’s going to be the most powerful of all the lights we’re going to use.
The best way to setup the key light is to raise it about three or four feet above the subject’s eye level which will them recreate the same natural environment you get outdoors with the sun. Now, spotlights are very intense powerful light. So we want to keep this at about four to five feet away from our subject at least at all times so thus implying them.
Now, the best way to setup those shadows, once you have your key light in place is to have one of these soft boxes and begin to set that up again, at about f45 degrees from the camera’s positioning just like the key light. Only this time, it’s the lights of the same intensity or either going to back it up or we’re going to bring in a less powerful light. At this point on our video, our subject is going to look very natural and look very flattering. But they’re not going to be separated from the background. And that’s what the third part of this process comes in, the backlight.
When we setup this light, we’re going to raise it once again about a foot or two feet above Julius’s head which is going to add that nice rim of light that shines down and doesn’t spill over into our camera.
Now, that we’ve gone over this process, let’s take a look at all the individual lights one more time. The key light’s main function is to create the most amount of illumination on to the subject. The second process we went over is adding the fill light. Now, the fill light is going to clear up all those shadows that are created by the harsh light that comes from the key. And the last step to this process was adding our backlight which is generally the key in separating our subject from the background.
Now, that we’ve learned about each individual step, the key light, the fill light and the backlight, all of you can go out and create professional looking video with your own three-point lighting setup.
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