Give me some tips on Soap Opera style cinematography?

MatthewC

MatthewC

Well-known member
I've got an upcoming short that I'm DPing, its supposed to be soap opera style. I'm doing some research online and watching some videos, what defines the style? Heavy backlighting, truck/pan in, shot on video (look at least)? Lots of close ups? Actors both having a conversation facing the same direction (the 180 turn), lots of CU/ECU, ending scenes on dramatic shots/sentences. Lots of fades? I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.

Cheers!
 
Last edited:
MatthewC said:
I've got an upcoming short that I'm DPing, its supposed to be soap opera style. I'm doing some research online and watching some videos, what defines the style? Heavy backlighting, truck/pan in, shot on video (look at least)? Lots of close ups? Actors both having a conversation facing the same direction (the 180 turn), lots of CU/ECU, ending scenes on dramatic shots/sentences. Lots of fades? I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.

Cheers!
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Since Soaps are a TV style, flat lighting in terms of 'depth' of the scene, that is no significant shadow/dark or extremely bright areas. Actors lit flat, although a bit of 'hair' light seems to be used. Also, think of what you have to do to get multiple cameras to have essentially the same lighting on their respective actors.
 
All lights are rigged from above. The only lights on the floor are an obie light walked around here and there.
 
I actually had a "Soap Opera" class back in college, and learned to light the set for that style. The idea is of course that the set basically has three walls, with the phantom "fourth wall" being where the cameras are. It is lit for basically three or four cameras to shoot the scene live. The lights hanging from above are mostly fresnels hanging in a cross-key pattern on the off-camera side of the actors. A heavy backlight hits the actors as well. All the fresnels are "hard light" sources maybe softened with diffusion pinned to the barndoors. The frontal light is "soft" fill. In my day they used scoop lights for fill, but my guess is they use Kino-Flo lights these days. So, imagine all the light coming from the rear and sides of the set being hard fresnel light, and the light hitting the set from the camera side (frontal lighting) being soft Kino Flo light. Also, certain set pieces like paintings or flowers can be hit with accent lights from above...either fresnels or maybe ellipsoidal lights. Don't be afraid to use colored gels on these. The total effect is theatrical and artificial...which is perfect soap opera lighting!
 
Oh...and one signature thing about soap opera style is that the frame rate is NOT 24p. It is old school 29.97 interlaced video. Don't forget the slow, smooth zooms into close-up at the end of every scene!
 
Always have a hair light even if it doesn't make sense. Also take liberties in terms of your key, a lot of times when I happen to find a soap on, their source in the scene doesn't match their key light at all.
 
Talk to dude that did that "Tangled Web" movie. He knows how to do it real good.

-Nate
 
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