Proper film lighting techniques are essential in creating stylized and natural-looking film scenes. This is why film sets always seem to be overly lit or packed with many different light sources that serve different purposes. This requires technical knowledge in cinematography, which means using the most appropriate cinematic shots and types of film lighting techniques to get your message across perfectly in each and every scene.
If you’re aiming to become a cinematographer, director, writer, or any other person who holds a creative role in a film crew, you’ll need to learn some of the basic lighting techniques and types of lighting used in filmmaking.
What is cinematic lighting?
Cinematic lighting is lighting for film that evokes a feeling and has a style. It’s the lighting we see in the movies we watch, be they big budget or independent. While the term cinematic lighting is not a precise term and is in fact very subjective, there are some lighting techniques that generally lead to this look.
Emulating lighting styles from famous paintings such as Rembrandt or going for a “chiaroscuro” look will give you cinematic lighting. Playing with ratios of lighting within the frame is often the differentiator between cinematic lighting and flat or boring lighting.
Lighting your subject to be slightly or more bright than your background helps draw your eye to the subject. Also, if the subject is a face, lighting the face from behind, opposite the camera (also known as upstage lighting), helps give the subject’s face some more definition as the shadows are falling towards the camera. There are many types of cinematic lighting for film that you can employ to get the mood and shot you want.
12 Film Lighting Techniques
Cinematography and film lighting is closely similar to photography lighting. You’ve probably heard many of these techniques, especially if you’ve done some studio photography in the past, but it helps to learn how they can uniquely benefit filmmakers in creating different moods and atmospheres in every scene.
It’s also important to note that these techniques are not clear-cut, so many of them can actually take the form of several other film lighting techniques. What matters is that you learn what each is good for and are able to make the best use of them for achieving your cinematic goals. The following are all the different types of lighting in film:
- Key Lighting
- Fill Lighting
- Back Lighting
- Side Lighting
- Practical Light
- Hard Lighting
- Soft Lighting
- Bounce Lighting
- High Key
- Low Key
- Motivated Lighting
- Ambient Light
1. Key Lighting
The key light is also known as the main film light of a scene or subject. This means it’s normally the strongest type of light in each scene or photo. Even if your lighting crew is going for a complicated multi-light setup, the key light is usually the first to be set up.
However, just because it’s your “main” light doesn’t mean it always has to be facing your subject. You can place your key light anywhere, even from the side or behind your subject to create a darker mood. Just avoid placing it near or right beside the camera as this will create flat and direct lighting for your subject.
When to Use Key Lighting:
- Use key lighting when you want to draw attention to a subject or make it stand out from the rest of the scene.
2. Fill Lighting
As the name suggests, this technique is used to “fill in” and remove the dark, shadowy areas that your key light creates. It is noticeably less intense and placed in the opposite direction of the key light, so you can add more dimension to your scene.
Because the aim of fill lighting is to eliminate shadows, it’s advisable to place it a little further and/or diffuse it with a reflector (placed around 3/4 opposite to the key light) to create softer light that spreads out evenly. Many scenes do well with just the key and fill studio lighting as they are enough to add noticeable depth and dimension to any object.
When to Use Fill Lighting:
- Use fill lighting to counteract shadows, or to bring up exposure and decrease the contrast in a scene. With fill light, your viewer can see more of the scene clearly.
3. Backlighting
Backlighting is used to create a three-dimensional scene, which is why it is also the last to be added in a three-point lighting setup. This also faces your subject—a little higher from behind so as to separate your subject from the background.
As with fill lighting, you’ll want to also diffuse your backlight so it becomes less intense and covers a wider area of your subject. For example, for subject mid-shots, you’ll want to also light up the shoulders and base of the person’s neck instead of just the top of their head. This technique can also be used on its own, without the key and fill lights if you’re aiming for a silhouette.
When to Use Backlighting:
- Use backlight to accentuate the silhouette of a subject, whether it’s a person or an object. Backlighting creates a halo effect for increased impact.
4. Side Lighting
Needless to say, side lighting is for illuminating your scene from the side, parallel to your subject. It is often used on its own or with just a faint fill light to give your scene a dramatic mood or what’s referred to as “chiaroscuro” lighting. To really achieve this effect, your side light should be strong so as to create strong contrast and low-key lighting that reveals the texture and accentuates the contours of your subject.
When used with a fill light, it’s advisable to lessen the fill light’s intensity down to 1/8 of that of the side light to keep the dramatic look and feel of a scene.
When to Use Side Lighting:
- Side lighting brings out the textures or edges in a scene. Using side lighting creates a better sense of depth in a location. It can make subjects seem farther off by accentuating the space between them.
5. Practical Lighting
Practical lighting is the use of regular, working light sources like lamps, candles, or even the TV. These are usually intentionally added in by the set designer or lighting crew to create a cinematic nighttime scene. They may sometimes be used to also give off subtle lighting for your subject.
However, practical lights are not always easy to work with, as candles and lamps are typically not strong enough to light up a subject. A hidden, supplementary motivated light (more on that later) may be used or dimmers can be installed in lamps so the light’s intensity can be adjusted.
When to Use Practical Lighting:
- Use practical lighting when a performer or subject needs to interact with a light source. For example, use a bedside lamp that needs to function within the action of the scene.
6. Bounce Lighting
Bounce lighting is about literally bouncing the light from a strong light source towards your subject or scene using a reflector or any light-colored surface, such as walls and ceilings. Doing so creates a bigger area of light that is more evenly spread out.
If executed properly, bounce lights can be used to create a much softer key, fill, top, side, or backlighting, especially if you don’t have a diffuser or softbox.
When to Use Bounce Lighting:
- Bouncing light off the ceiling creates more diffuse illumination and results in even, soft light. When you need more ambient light across a whole environment, bounce light is a great choice.
7. Soft Lighting
Soft light doesn’t refer to any lighting direction, but it’s a technique nonetheless. Cinematographers make use of soft lighting (even when creating directional lighting with the techniques above) for both aesthetic and situational reasons: to reduce or eliminate harsh shadows, create drama, replicate subtle lighting coming from outside, or all of the above.
When to Use Soft Lighting:
- Soft lighting is more flattering on human subjects. The soft quality of the light minimizes the appearance of shadows, wrinkles, and blemishes. Use soft lighting for beautification.
8. Hard Lighting
Hard light can be sunlight or a strong light source. It’s usually unwanted, but it certainly has cinematic benefits. You can create hard lighting with direct sunlight or a small, powerful light source.
Despite it creating harsh shadows, hard lighting is great for drawing attention to your main subject or to an area of the scene, highlighting your subject’s contour, and creating a strong silhouette.
When to Use Hard Lighting:
- Hard lighting emphasizes changes in contour, shape, and texture. Use hard lighting to create a more intense look.
9. High Key
High key refers to a style of lighting used to create a very bright scene that’s visually shadowless, often close to overexposure. Lighting ratios are ignored so all light sources would have pretty much the same intensity. This technique is used in many movies, TV sitcoms, commercials, and music videos today, but it first became popular during the classic Hollywood period in the 1930s and 40s.
When to Use High Key Lighting:
- Use high key lighting for dreamy sequences, or situations that require overwhelming brightness.
10. Low Key
Being the opposite of high key, low key lighting for a scene would mean a lot of shadows and possibly just one strong key light source. The focus is on the use of shadows and how it creates mystery, suspense, or drama for a scene and character instead of on the use of lighting, which makes it great for horror and thriller films.
When to Use Low Key Lighting:
- Use low key lighting for moody scenes that require a film noir look or for nighttime scenes.
11. Motivated Lighting
Motivated lighting is used to imitate a natural light source, such as sunlight, moonlight, and street lamps at night. It’s also the kind of lighting that enhances practical lights, should the director or cinematographer wish to customize the intensity or coverage of the latter using a separate light source.
To ensure that your motivated lighting looks as natural as possible, several methods are used, such as the use of filters to create window shadows and the use of colored gels to replicate the warm, bright yellow light coming from the sun or the cool, faint bluish light from the moon.
When to Use Motivated Lighting:
- Use motivated lighting when you want to replicate a specific light source’s quality of light. Filters, diffusers, and other modifiers are helpful in these applications.
12. Ambient Lighting
Using artificial light sources is still the best way to create a well-lit scene that’s closely similar to or even better than what we see in real life. However, there’s no reason not to make use of ambient or available lights that already exist in your shooting location, may it be sunlight, moonlight, street lamps, or even electric store signs.
When shooting during the day, you could always do it outdoors and make use of natural sunlight (with or without a diffuser) and supplement the scene with a secondary light for your subject (bounced or using a separate light source). Early in the morning and late in the afternoon or early evening are great times for shooting outdoors if you want soft lighting. The only downside is that the intensity and color of sunlight are not constant, so remember to plan for the weather and sun placement.
When to Use Ambient Lighting:
- Use ambient lighting when you want to illuminate your subjects without worrying about a specific style or quality of light. Ambient lighting is a relatively universal light source that evenly illuminates whole environments or scenes.
What are the three principles of light?
The three principles of lighting are direction, intensity, and softness or hardness.
Direction
Direction refers to where the light or lights are coming from in relation to the camera. Some common terms that refer to direction of light is back light, top light, frontal, and profile. There are often several different directions of light working together to make up the totality of the lighting direction. If the light is hard enough, you can often tell from which direction the light is coming.
Intensity
The intensity of the light is how much light is hitting any part of your scene. The intensity can and often does vary from one part of the frame to another. It also varies from one subject to another. When working on set you will often hear that there should be a 4-to-1 ratio from one side of the face to the other. Alternatively, you can have a 3-to-1 ratio from the subject to the background. This means the intensity of the light should be four times greater on one side of the face in reference to the other and three times greater on the subject than the background.
Softness or hardness
Unlike direction or intensity, the softness or hardness of the light is a more subjective quality. Hard light is often used to create more mystery and drama (think: Apocalypse Now). Soft light is often used when the drama is not quite so intense or for more of a naturalistic look (for example, 500 Days of Summer).
Famous directors’ use of cinematic lighting
Casablanca (1942) – Cinematographer: Arthur Edeson
Since the film was shot in black and white, Casablanca, one of the greatest films of all time, had to use lighting to greater effect. The masterful use of light and shadow and hard and soft light by the cinematographer Arthur Edeson can be seen in the film where Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) is brightly lit and Rick (Humphrey Bogart) sits in the shadows. Ilsa is lit softly and bright in comparison to Rick, who is mostly in shadow and lit relatively harshly with harder light.
Blade Runner (1982) – Cinematographer: Jordan Cronenweth
Jordan Cronenweth did amazing work on the original Blade Runner and together with Ridley Scott, revolutionized the sci-fi genre. He used very hard lights, massive amounts of haze, people walking through lights, and moving lights. All these combined to make the atmosphere of this film a cinematic masterpiece that is a study on matching lighting to the film.
The Revenant (2015) – Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki
![The Revenant | Official Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LoebZZ8K5N0/0.jpg)
Considered extremely bold, the contentious decision to not use any artificial lighting for this epic movie gave this film its signature look. That was because the production ran much longer than expected and the winter conditions were very hard on the crew. However, the end result is outstandingly beautiful with sweeping vistas, backlit runs through frost-covered forest, and almost entirely wide angle lenses. This film set a new bar for making an epic Hollywood films that is not likely to be repeated very soon.
Sicario (2015) — Cinematographer: Roger Deakins
There aren’t many cinematographers that are known by most film fans. Roger Deakins is one of, if not the best currently working cinematographers. He makes the lighting perfectly fit the subject and doesn’t make the imagery pretty when that doesn’t fit the theme of the work. In Sicario, he uses heavy lighting from windows, dark and heavy contrast, and unflattering fluorescent lighting for the CIA office building. If it makes sense and adds to the feel, he uses it. And his choices always work exceptionally well.
Film Lighting, Shots & More Cinematography Rules to Know:
Having a good storyline, a capable film crew, well-cast actors, and an amazing set design may all be essential components to creating a successful film—but it also has to look visually compelling if you want it to have a meaningful impact on the viewers. This requires technical knowledge in cinematography, which means using the most appropriate cinematic shots and film lighting techniques to get your message across perfectly in each and every scene.
Proper lighting techniques are essential in creating stylized and natural-looking film scenes that look much closer to real life as digital sensors and film don’t react as well to light as our eyes do. This is why film sets always seem to be overly lit or packed with many different light sources that serve different purposes.
If you’re aiming to become a cinematographer, director, writer, or any other person who holds a creative role in a film crew, you’ll need to learn some of the basic lighting techniques typically used in filmmaking.
