The misunderstood art of light
Without doubt lighting is the great misunderstood art of cinematic media. Arguably even more so that sound, the power of good light very often drastically under-valued. Whats more, virtually any and all other image problems you may encounter will invaribly be a result of poor or problematic lighting. Bad chromakey? Poor depth of field? Flat imagery? Grain and chromatic noise? Video that looks too much like video? Soft focus? All will have their origin in the lighting - get the light right and the mechanics of lens, camera and computer can do their job properly. get the light wrong and it wont matter what lens, camera or software you've got; these can only use what they are fed and what they are fed is Light!
That tirade now out of my system I came across this series of short articles and rarely has the key concepts of cinematic lighting been expalined and illustrated so clearly and so cleverly. The site is
www.efplighting.com and the articles deal with a range of concepts and techniques; from multicamera interview shoots to
Outdoor lighting, to using
filters and gels and
fabric backdrops and on to the conceptual implimentation of the
Chiaroscuro Principle dervied from Renaissance painting. More than worth a good long read....
Posted at 01:00AM Sep 10, 2007
by Mike Jones in video |
Posted by fuddam on September 10, 2007 at 08:43 AM EST #