Art of Lighting for Film - Course Outline

"Art of Lighting for Film" provides a fundamental knowledge of lighting types, principles, techniques, and applications used to produce a desired "look".

You will learn:

Introducing Lighting

• Overview 
• Describe the factors that influence lighting style.
• Define naturalism and pictorialism.
• Describe motivated lighting and lighting planes.

• The Quality of Light 
• Describe and illustrate soft and hard lighting sources.

• The Direction of Light 
• Describe and illustrate how a lighting source and it's direction can impact "look".
• Define and illustrate Key light, fill light, backlight, and background light.
• Define and illustrate top light, eye light, and accent light.

• The Color of Light 
• Describe a range of light sources.
• Describe and illustrate the affect of various light sources on an object.
• Describe the value of the film datasheet and use of filters.
• Describe and illustrate warming filter, soft-focus filter, color grad filter, and special effects filters.

        Self-Check exercise

Controlling Light

• Objectives 
• Identify principle light sources.
• Describe how accessories control light.
• Describe how to control light by positioning.
• Describe lighting ratio in low key and high key shots.

• Overview 
• Define the lighting crew on the set.

• Making Light Lights 
• Describe and illustrate the principle light sources used by the lighting crew including open face tungsten, tungsten Fresnel spotlights, tungsten PAR, HMI Fresnel, HMI PAR, Soft, Kino Flo, Ellipsoidal, carbon arc lights and practical lamps.

• Controlling Light Accessories 
• Describe accessories that are used to control light creatively including diffusion materials, reflector board, scrims, barndoors, flags, dots, and cookies and gelatin filters.
• Describe and illustrate positioning of key lights (low angle key, side light key, high angle key, far side key, ear side key, backlight key, and butterfly lighting).
• Describe and illustrate effect of backlight positioning (rim light, kicker, liner, and glow light).
• Define and illustrate high-key lighting and low-key lighting.
• Define and illustrate window light, back cross key lighting, checkerboard lighting, and "Godfather light".

• Lighting Ratios 
• Define lighting ratio.
• Illustrate 'Fill to Key' lighting ratio in low key and high key shots.

        Self-Check exercise

Lighting the Scene

• Objectives 
• Identify the key, back and fill lights for a low-key scene.
• Identify the key, back and fill lights for a high-key scene.
• Identify the key, back and fill lights for a mixed light scene.

• Introduction 
• Identify light source position used to illustrate illumination in a low-key scene.
• Identify light source position used to illustrate illumination in a high-key scene.
• Identify light source position used to illustrate illumination in a mixed lighting scene.

        Self-Check exercise

Determining Exposure

• Objectives 
• Identify the results of over-exposure and under-exposure.
• Explain how to use light meters to determine normal exposure.
• Describe the value of using the Gary Card Plus in various lighting conditions.
• Explain how to adjust exposure when using filters on the camera lens.

• Exposure 
• Define normal exposure.
• Describe consequences for over-exposing and under-exposing.

• Light Meters 
• Describe an incident light meter.
• Describe a spot meter.
• Provide an example of each.

• Gray Cards 
• Discuss the value of the Gray Card
• Describe optimum placement of the Gray Card in a scene.

• Camera Lens Filters 
• Describe the impact of using a camera lens correction filter on film exposure.

        Self-Check exercise