51 Minutes of Lighting

I hate my voice. I never feel like it’s natural and I think that comes from being in the business. I would love to be one of those people that just speaks like there’s no camera or microphone there. I am constantly editing myself in my head. Lol. Luckily most people put up with my voice and like my content. That keeps me motivated. I do like teaching people things. I try to do it at a level so that beginners can follow. I know that’s sometimes annoying to people who have more knowledge. Maybe one day I will get it right.
 
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very valuable video! thanks for sharing it! btw. your voice is cool, but somehow too slow in this video, for my taste ;)
 
Nice video - the 2021 one. I'm very interested in how 3 point lighting has changed though? My introduction to lighting was via theatre with usually symmetrical lighting around a centre line. Then I started doing TV and a bit of film, and got introduced to 3 point lighting. In every book and training course, the key was the indoor version of the sun - casting deep shadows, but revealing form. The fill was the indoor clouds, filling in these hard shadows to a variable degree. Back light was backlight.

It appears now that the key is not a replacement for the sun, with the hard shadows at all? It's just the brightest. The notion of softening the key has never ever occurred to me. I have favourite key lights and softlights of any kind are just not in that list. When did key lighting change in how it was taught? I missed it totally. and maybe this explains why in some forum topics this year people have been amazed at my quest for LED Fresnel to give the level, but importantly, the 'quality' of light I want, but can't seem to get for less than 6K! Lighting everything with panels or big diffusers is fill to me - and the bigger the diffusion, the softer - exactly the opposite of what I want. Sometimes I have to light with lots of softlight, and I hate that look. Fiddling with levels does not, for me, create key and fill - just fill and less fill.. Everyone's features, skin imperfections, and even stubble tends to soften out.

To my mind - 40 odd years into lighting, the definition of 3 point lighting has changed. TV hard light is actually theatre's soft light - they want even sharper edges and shadows. A 1.2K Arri Fresnel is soft to theatre folk - nicely soft. Their big soft lights - their floods, fell out of favour totally apart from washing drapes and cloths.

Has TV gone soft and bland because in HD and 4K we see things with real hard light that are not 'pretty'?

The movie industry still shoots outdoors with the hardest source ever - the real sun. Indoors we just wash the hell out of everything now. That is still, I suppose, 3 point lighting.

Who changed the rules on what the light sources have to be. The first bit of the video 3 point lighting I expected to fast forward through but I didn't because I could not understand how my 3 point lighting was so different. I guess I'm old and wrong - but that certainly was not what I taught my students up to ten years ago? Clearly it could be a US/UK difference, but it wasn't different before?
 
Paul, we’ve been using soft boxes as long as I’ve been around and way before, but things did change with HD, but I don’t think to the extent you may be thinking. But I do agree that way too much is way too flat today. As far as the difference between theater and TV lighting, it’s probably because y’all are lighting from(generally) much greater distances and for people, without zoom lens eyeballs, viewing at (generally) much farther distances and over a wide viewing area simultaneously. So you need that hard, super contrasty light to make the actors pop and stand out and be, at least somewhat, visible and recognizable to the people sitting in the back row of the house. Plus the control you need for lights from the distances y’all are working from.
 
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No - perhaps I did not explain well. I light quite small spaces - interviews and pieces to camera, and general talking heads and I've always used hard light for key and soft light for fill. Going back 20 years in the studio I worked in, it was always a Fresnel for the key - always. then on the other side to fill the shadows a soft light - and then it was a tubular lamp with asymmetric reflector, with probably diffuser and maybe a crate for spill control. We created shadows and then softened them. In your video, the creation of the hard shadows is sort of a 'special effect', instead of a standard.

I'm really interested when something changed? Was it because everyone jumped on the LED band wagon and instead of spending a lot on a decent glass lensed LED Fresnel, they made do with a small LED panel - and then used distance to fill in the less distinct shadows?

There's an old quiz here
https://moviola.com/courses/3-point-lighting/quizzes/three-point-lighting-quiz/

It seems to be my idea of 3 point lighting - and mentions the word 'hard' as a feature.

Looking at loads of stuff on the net, it appears that photographic 3 point lighting styles have leaked into video, when before TV lighting did not use ANYTHING with a Bowens mount. Now, video people seem to be using these more and more often - but it does seem we now have two different 3 point lighting sets of rules?
 
paulears said:
No - perhaps I did not explain well. I light quite small spaces - interviews and pieces to camera, and general talking heads and I've always used hard light for key and soft light for fill. Going back 20 years in the studio I worked in, it was always a Fresnel for the key - always. then on the other side to fill the shadows a soft light - and then it was a tubular lamp with asymmetric reflector, with probably diffuser and maybe a crate for spill control. We created shadows and then softened them. In your video, the creation of the hard shadows is sort of a 'special effect', instead of a standard.

I'm really interested when something changed? Was it because everyone jumped on the LED band wagon and instead of spending a lot on a decent glass lensed LED Fresnel, they made do with a small LED panel - and then used distance to fill in the less distinct shadows?
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Do you have any work samples you could share Paul?

I don't think I'm the best person to pinpoint the shift you're talking about but will try.

Most of those first generation 1x1 LED panels were pretty unflattering if used bare on talent, but like Run&Gun says, softboxes have been around for a long time in the video world. Kino flo products were hugely popular too e.g. 4 foot 4bank. I could be wrong but I'd say most of their popularity came from the ease of creating a soft source (along with being more efficient, ease of changing colour temp, less heat). We're sort of after a corporate video lighting timeline here, which is probably a bit different to the history of motion picture lighting equipment.

From Chimera's website (https://chimeralighting.com/the-history-of-chimera/):

"While initially designed for, and marketed to, still photographers, in the early 1980’s the late Dean Collins suggested that Chimera adapt its product lines for film and, later, video. Frost followed through by meeting with key players in the Hollywood film industry. This was a major step for the small company as cinematographers began to embrace Chimera lightbanks. Perhaps the tipping point was reached in 1990, when gaffer Mo Flam and DP Geoffrey Simpson used Chimera equipment when filming the breakout movie, “Fried Green Tomatoes.’” Since then, Chimera has played—and continues to maintain—a dominant role in the movie industry."

Kino Flo was also founded in 1987 so I would say the 1990s would be your range for when artificial soft lighting became more accessible and trendy (at the smaller level). I'm sure advances in resolution and/or detail helped cement the trend. Today, it seems like we're at the extreme where the brief is often "big blobs of soft light everywhere".

Maybe you never embraced the style because you've always been satisfied with how things look and didn't have to answer to anyone?
 
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paulears said:
The movie industry still shoots outdoors with the hardest source ever - the real sun.
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In a sense...but most of the time we'll aim to soften that via overhead diffusion, or keep it as a dead backlight when it is low enough not to glance off the nose and forehead. My perfect exterior day has a light but uniform cloud cover.
 
I'm still not quite sure I've explained this very well. It perhaps could be a British thing? I don't know. I'm not talking about anything cinematic I think - I don't do that kind of thing, I'm talking about studio stuff - broadcast or industrial TV. I suppose the largely boring stuff. So things that follow established patterns. As I typed, I was watching the BBC breakfast programme. In HD. Really nice and well defined images, and the set lit with three point lighting. From the shadows the sofa made on the floor, each presenter has a key, and I'd bet it's a Fresnel - perhaps an Arri? L7 or similar from the sharpness of the floor shadow. The nose shadows are mostly filled in from a panel of some kind and of course being the BBC, hair is clearly back lit. The sofa has 4 repeated people positions, so 4 keys, 4 fills and backlights all doing their job. This is the technique delivered in colleges and universities who do media courses. Are these places now teaching a different, more movie based version of what 3 point lighting is. It's a great video but I expected 3 point to be my 3 point, and not need watching - but it was a shock to see a different version promoted as the 'norm'. I happily accept being a dinosaur, but this example did surprise me. My hard key was consigned to an effect.

Looking back to when I was driving all over the place to do talking heads - my 3 point kit often did not include Fresnels - it was a blonde or redhead, and my fill was another redhead, with a huge sheet of diffuser of some kind clipped to the barn doors, with perhaps a scrim and on wide to tame the brightness. Back light would be ... yet another Redhead. Often I'd get a Blonde as key and they were pretty nasty really. With these three lights you did the job. The look was copied over and over. It was taught at colleges and universities and was the staple technique. Video folk did NOT use lights with Bowens mounts - that was the kind of stuff found in photographic studios, not video ones. Photos looked different from video. Now it seems the photo lighting techniques have replaced the old video ones - which I admit could be a good thing for the sought after cinematic look (which isn't for me).

I'm happy with the different looks - my query is when the definition of 3 point lighting changed. Hard and soft for key and fill has become soft and soft, with intensity control more important than beam quality. I wish I could afford a couple of L7s - they are so much better than the cheaper glass lensed Fresnels I have. The price is too steep for me at the moment.

I'm off on a job in Yorkshire this afternoon for a few days, but when I get back I might have time to dig out of the store the old stuff and see if I can shoot some talking heads with the 'old' style, the 'new' style and different bits of historic kit. I'm sure I have the stuff somewhere - so maybe a three point Redhead setup, then Fresnels, through to LED photographic style and panels? Same location, same camera-subject position and just change the lighting. That could be interesting. No set or distractions. My guess is my preference will be different to other people's? I could set it up so the light sources reveal their beams? As in put some objects in the background - like mic stands, that kind of thing so the shadows land on the backdrop? Would that be useful? Normally I'd focus to avoid shadows but in this case the shadows could be revealing? Worth doing for a comparison - Key, fill and back lighting but from a range of different sources?
 
The Bowens mount in video is 100% a new thing(last ~5 years or so) and has come about from the inexpensive/lower tier light manufacturers borrowing/adapting from the stills side coupled with the influx of new people into the industry buying said inexpensive lights and that became the “norm” for them and it’s gone from there. As a side note, Hive, which is not lower tier or inexpensive, chose to go with the ProFoto mount for most of their modifiers/accessories.

One of my best friends, who is roughly five years in front of me in this business and was in the last graduating class of a film program at a large university(in the 90’s), said one time that the way he was taught and came up through the business, you never pointed a light directly at talent. It was either being bounced off something, going through something or both.
 
paulears said:
I'm happy with the different looks - my query is when the definition of 3 point lighting changed. Hard and soft for key and fill has become soft and soft, with intensity control more important than beam quality. I wish I could afford a couple of L7s - they are so much better than the cheaper glass lensed Fresnels I have. The price is too steep for me at the moment.
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You might go crazy trying to find the when. I'm not sure the definition has changed. Only one box needs to be ticked to for a set up to be three point lighting and that's having three light sources. The quality, position or ratios of the lights are all subjective details.

Unless it's three point lighting where the point refers to a point source!
 
Run&Gun said:
The Bowens mount in video is 100% a new thing(last ~5 years or so) and has come about from the inexpensive/lower tier light manufacturers borrowing/adapting from the stills side coupled with the influx of new people into the industry buying said inexpensive lights and that became the “norm” for them and it’s gone from there.
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I sort of thought it was a heat thing and a budget thing. It seems to me like if you're using relatively low-powered LEDs, you can get away with equipment that isn't designed to withstand and dissipate heat as much. Strobe modifiers don't have to handle the heat of tungsten film lights (although modeling lights can get hot, but are such a lower wattage than real film lights).

So, you can use cheap, Chinese-manufactured modifiers that are made for this universal standard (bowens) which means you can sell huge volume of a single product, lowering the price even further.

I have a bowens mount 60" umbrella-open softbox from Glow with a beauty dish, 2 layers of diffusion, and an egg crate. It cost around $100. It's so easy and fast to set up and I love the quality of the light. I just don't expect it to last forever (and therefore I assemble and disassemble it somewhat gingerly, which might be unacceptable to some users).

A certain amount of lighting style is purely fashion and what's in vogue, which is partly inspired by new possibilities. Super shallow DOF was everywhere once videographers could finally use it. (And perhaps the same thing has happened with the Alexa LF in TV.) When higher lighting levels were required for slower cameras and lenses, and tungsten lights were the norm or the only option available, it behooved one to use less modification for your key to simply get more output, no? But now people don't have to.

Then, of course, you can generally light someone more sloppily and with less skill/experience using soft light without making them look hideous. And the democratization of video production has lowered the average skill/experience level
 
I thought the lower power(heat) of the LED’s was kind of implied/understood, but yes, that’s one of the reasons that made the bowens modifiers practical for video use, too.

I have a 600d and a few modifiers for it, including the fresnel, the ~3’ lantern and the ~3’ “octobank” and I wonder about the mid-to-long term reliability and sturdiness of the bowens mount with some of the larger and heavier accessories. Especially the 10” fresnel. There is a fair amount of play in it in the mount, at least in my opinion, when you adjust it(spot/flood). I don’t have any real concerns with the smaller and lighter things, but I definitely don’t think it was designed with something like a huge glass fresnel hanging off of it, in mind.

And as I said in an earlier post, we were using Chimera’s(soft boxes) many years ago(back in the 90’s) with our Betacam’s, that were no where close to the sensitivity of even today’s mediocre cameras. Chimera’s and eggcrates were most definitely “en vogue” in the 90’s and early 00’s. You weren’t a big boy, especially at the network level, if you weren’t lighting with Chimera’s. Some of it’s kind of comical, looking back on it. We even had little Barbie Doll sized Chimera’s and speed rings to slap on Arri 150’s. Hell, I even had a Chimera for my Frezzi top light. Honestly, I kind of miss those days, because the reason we did that stuff was because we all cared about how everything looked(and so did the people we were working for). Even the “pedestrian” things like off-the-shoulder interviews post game in the locker room…
 
Everyone is a critic, but when the subject is bald / shaved headed I avoid backlighting that makes a hot-spot on top of their head and instead go with more of an edge light, edging the fill-side. Right out of the gate your video had an example that made me cringe a bit.

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