The basics of 3 point lighting

I often neglected on the lighting technique used in film making. Lighting techniques are very important either in film making or photography session. Poor lighting and incorrect technique could lead to failure in giving the effect that a director wants for his or her movie.

To be honest, at times when i watched the movies especially those that were produced in Hollywood or even the Malaysian Industry or local telemovie, I am quite disappointed with the lighting. I could understand if they dun have enough money but still all this can be overcome thanks to Indymogul. The best online resource for indie movie directors.

Now, let me explain about the basics of 3 point lighting.

In 3 point lightings, there are the key light, fill light and back light. The key light is the primary source of light. It is the main actor or role in lighting. Next the fill light. Fill light is the secondary light which is placed at the opposite of the key light. Fill light should only be 50% powerful than the key light. Lastly is the backlight. Backlight is very important. It will separate the subject or the object from the background.

The positioning of the lights can be seen from the picture below:-

The Key light and the Fill light should be placed to the side's of the Camera at 15 - 45% angle.

Tips on lighting for skin tone:

Darker skin requires large soft light. It is used to lit up the features of the subject.
Lighter skin requires the same but not too large on the lighting amount. Both skin tone when shooting should avoid wearing dark clothing and background.

Vertigo Effect

This vertigo effect was first used in Alfred Hitchcock movie vertigo 1958. It is also known as dolly zoom, back zoom travelling, jaws shot or contra zoom. Believe me, I have been wanting to know what sort of shot this is and finally I got to know the name of this shot. It is very effective in expressing shots that are dramatic. The diagram below shows how it's done.


Still trying to perfect this with my Sony. Hmm...i wonder who will be the victim for pulling and pushing the dolly..hehheheheh

First trial run

Yesterday my wife asked me if I would like to go to see a football match final between SM La Salle, Kota Kinabalu and SM. St. Martin, Tambunan. I was excited because of the fact that my wife was an ex SMART (St. Martin) student and I was an ex La Sallian. Apart from that, it is the opportunity where I can try out my new SONY HDD HandyCam. I took the whole match with it unfortunately the battery only last for about 135 minutes.

The zoom, focus and stabilizer were great and I just loved it. I am beginning to get the hang of it. My only regrets I didn't bring along my tripod. Nevermind about that, the shots were all stable with minimal shaking. The autofocus takes about 3 seconds when I moved the camera trying to capture the movement of the ball that was kicked from one end to the other end. Overall for starter I am quite satisfied with it. I will share some of the clips here later once I have transfered it into my laptop.

I met up with Ashley Daniel Koh, my friend just now. I asked him how was his wedding photoshoot session yesterday. He said it was great. I wanted to see his work later . For those of you who are interested, you can view his blog at http://shotsbyashley.blogspot.com/. This guy is really talented.

He was asking what did I do and whether or not I am interested in photography. I told him that I am in a different field. I am more into videos. So he said "what a coincidence." In fact he told me that he was looking for someone who can do videos for weddings. I said I can. He suggested that we should work together and come up with a package. I am interested in it. I think I should go into this as well. But of course my major field of specialties will be in music video now and movie production in a long run.

Well I hope I can do it well and gotta put something here in my blog for the sample of my work..so I gotta work on the video that I took just now during the match and make it into something impressive.

My thoughts

It has been quite a while since I have done some music video shooting works. The last time I did on Saldivianna Wences. She is an artist from Tambunan who have released her album few years back. Since then, the work just stop there due to reasons such lack of equipments and insufficient budget.

However, I am trying to revive this again project again to make sure that this time around it will be finish. I will slowly find ways to DIY the equipments for shooting purpose and hopefully. I am doing this for the sake of love and wanting to express what i feel by putting my personal touch in the final production of the shooting. Of course I know there are many talented people out there and I am not competing with them. I want to learn from them so therefore in the context of competing with them, it never existed in my mind and I will not set a benchmark for competition purposes. But I am setting benchmark of my work in terms of quality and expression.

I have recently get my hand on this SONY HDR SR10.

It is not as big or as grand as you might expect. I know some people will have have this thought that says "is this guy for real? making & producing a music video by using that?"...well i just don't care. Like i said before, the very reason why I stopped shooting last time because of equipment and budget. I feel proud of myself because previously i was using only a mere BENQ digital camera with a 2 Gig memory card to shoot 5 music videos. So you can imagine how bad it was before. Now I am stepping up another level and when I have enough, I can slowly get my hands on a more serious set of equipments. It is only a matter of time as to when I will be able to get it. But right now, I just wanted to sharpen my skills and techniques also learn from the best and pros in this industry.