The main difference between straight and artistic video lighting is mood. Mood-setting moves beyond technical competence and into lighting design. It's not hard to do if you know how to control three basic lighting components: key, contrast and color.
First, of course, you need to be clear about exactly which...
When you're lighting two subjects in the same shot, the problem isn't how to do it but which approach to choose. Lighting methods are driven by the location you're in, the style you're creating, and the number (and type) of lights you have. With all those variables, there's at...
Who needs colored lighting for your video these days, since your digital post system lets you dial in any hue you want? Digital color filters let you do some amazing things, but they can look, well, digital. There is still no substitute for soft, natural-looking, colored light in digital...
Dear Goldilocks,
You say you don't believe work is keeping me too busy to write and what's a gaffer anyway, some job on a fishing boat? That hurts, Goldy, really hurts. :-( You wanna know what a gaffer does? Lemme tell you about today. All 20+ hours of...
"White" light ranges from the steely blue of outdoor open shade to the rosy orange of a household lamp on a dimmer. Your camcorder can produce a neutral white from any one of these different color temperatures, but only from one at a time. If you're lighting a location...
Whether you're lighting a video with ten kilobucks worth of hi-tech hardware or making do with available light, you have two basic ways to go with each light source: hard or soft - either a high-powered beam with clean edges or else a softer glow that falls...
