Basic cinematography lighting techniques and how to make the most of them

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Hard vs Soft Light

HMI vs Tungsten vs LED

HMI

Tungsten

LED

Types of Light

Key Light

Fill Light

Backlighting

Practical Lighting

Lighting is a vital narrative tool in filmmaking. It sets a mood and directs attention; good lighting tells a story all on its own.

But even so, why is so much effort put into lighting a scene? Why can't we just use ambient lighting (also known as practical lighting)?

This is because cameras don't pick up light in the same way our eyes do, so you're not able to just use the available light on your set. But using just a few simple cinematography lighting techniques will help you achieve that perfect balance between your highlights and shadows.

After mastering a few cinematography lighting techniques, you'll also be able to go one step further and take creative control of your environment by adding coloured gels and creating effects that wouldn't be possible using just the ambient light.

LED lighting and coloured gels in use on the set of indie film Stairs', directed by Tom Paton

Here are some basic tips on how you can create your own versatile cinematic lighting setup to achieve impactful results every time.

Hard vs Soft Light

Before learning any cinematography lighting techniques, you'll need to get familiar with the light you're working with. The first decision you need to make when deciding which lights will work the best, is whether you need the light to be hard or soft. We covered this in our beginner's tips for portrait lighting, and many of the same principals apply here.

Hard light is perfect for techniques that involve harsh backlights because of the strong shadows they cast. Created by smaller or distant light sources, hard light is great for replicating light sources like the sun or moon. The shadows they create are a useful tool in storytelling, particularly in dramatic horror films like The Night of the Hunter, shown below.

Using hard light as a backlight can create an element of mystery in Night of the Hunter

For any other application, they'll need to be diffused using reflectors, diffusion gels or softboxes to make the light useable enough to be shone on actors' faces. Adding this much diffusion to a hard light may be more hassle than it's worth, and that's where soft light sources come in.

Soft light is flattering for on-screen talent, and more often than not integrates much more seamlessly with the environment to give the illusion there's no artificial light at play at all. While usually less powerful, soft light wraps around the subject making it great for providing a romantic or dreamy feel to a scene.

HMI vs Tungsten vs LED

So, once you've decided which type of light you need, you have a few options for the types of bulb you can use.

Here are a few of options that you have when building your kit, that will all offer you a different type and quality of light.

HMI

HMIs are extremely powerful - the most powerful of your lighting options. Operated by creating an arc between two electrodes, they could make a night scene look like day with very little effort at all - pretty convenient considering their colour temperature is balanced around the daylight mark (5600K).

Fixed at daylight (5600K), HMIs can even overpower the sun!

The light they emit is extremely hard, so HMIs are great for use in cinematography lighting techniques that require a light source that replicates sun or moonlight. The issue is that for any other purpose, the light can be far too hard and powerful. Which could make it both unflattering and uncomfortable when directed at an actor.

It's also worth considering that in the first few hours, a new HMI bulb's colour temperature will be about 15,000K, so you need to wait for it to reach 5600K - daylight. After this, the bulb will decay by about one kelvin for every hour it's on and it's advised that HMIs shouldn't be used for much more than half of their lifetime. So, take this into account when planning your shoots.

Whilst an HMI offers all the power you could possibly ever need, it comes along with a hefty price tag and a number of limitations.

Due to the nature of the way the light is created, HMIs can cause flickering depending on the frame rate you're shooting at and require an electrical ballast to constantly regulate their current and voltage.

Whilst many ballasts do offer a flicker-free' mode this can produce a fair amount of noise as the ballast exerts itself to stop the arc from extinguishing, making it difficult to record audio. Although you can try and combat this using a ballast's silent mode', this means that the light is only flicker-free at standard framerates and makes it unsuitable for slow-motion filming.

You'll want to be careful too: if the bulbs blow or they're dropped, they'll also explode mercury vapour, so if you decide to risk it make sure your gaffer knows what they're doing!

With a short lifespan and steep price, HMIs are not for the inexperienced.

Overall, there are very few basic lighting techniques nowadays that require HMIs due to the expertise needed to operate them, so we won't be talking much more about them here.

Tungsten

You probably already know what a tungsten bulb looks like and the type of light it produces, because a lot of us use them every day in our homes.

Tungsten isn't commonly used in modern cinematography lighting techniques anymore because of their numerous drawbacks, but they can act as great practical lights - more on that later.

Only about 5% of the energy produced by a tungsten bulb is actually light output - the rest is all heat.

As you can imagine, tungsten bulbs guzzle energy like it's going out of fashion. The heat emitted can become dangerous on any set, with gaffers needing to wear gloves, wait ag

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