Cinematography: Lighting as focus

A lot can be said about the art of lighting but some times the simplest lighting can often make the best lighting. A wise cinematographer once said "good lighting is the lights you don't turn on." I paraphrased that from a cinematography documentary. The quote is almost like saying "keep it simple stupid." I'd have to say my best lighting is when I used a lamp in the house and 2 hooligan lights I found out side.


I think there is a lot to be said about lighting when it is used as a means to give levels of focus on subjects of importance within a frame. These levels of focus can be designed in stops. The key element is at key and every thing else is dropped or raised a stop according to the look of the image. Say you are advertising coke and you want your audience to notice it. Keep the can at key and the subject one stop under the third object of focus should be 3 stops under and so on.

I remember doing a video brochure for a client with little to no exterior lighting or at least proper lighting and I was having the darndest time trying to focusing my eyes on the subject in the frame who was speaking. So I used a Vignette filter on the video.  The filter helped isolate the subject  from the back ground and helped the audience see the brightest object which was the subject.

The effect was so affective I used it throughout the whole piece.  Normally as a professional video person I would never stick on one effect, but this situation proved it needed the effect to tell the story.  Telling a story threw light can be an art in it self.  Often times good lighting goes unnoticed by the audience, but bad lighting can be a glaring mistake and often distract the audience from the actual story.     

How we focus lighting within the image is the key to how the audience responds to what they see first to last.  It is a scientific fact that people will inherently go for the brightest part of the image first to the darkest part then on the most visually pleasing like a pretty woman or a fluid "S" shape.  The term "visually pleasing" can be talked about another time.  

One of the bigest mysteries I have come across is that humans naturally emit light and energy.  If one where to meter an object vs a human under the same lighting situations then he would find that the human is one stop more in exposure.  I am not saying you should rely on this in any means but it is a nice fact that humans have sort of a natural glow.  so it does not mater whether you are black or white. the effects are still the same.  Even in our natural world humans stand out because they are in a sense light and energy.  This is all not new information and I am sure one could find this information readily available.  

So the next time you are out lighting a scene, ask your self what is the most visually important for your audience to see first and what is the least important for the audience to see.  If you can answer this question you can light almost any scene.  

By 

Robert Sawin