Cinematic Lighting 101 | How to Light Faces

Stay tuned to the end for a chance to win a prize!

The ability to light people's faces is one of the fundamentals skills needed in cinematography. Unless you have shot animals or inanimate objects your entire life, at one point or another, you'll have to understand how to light a human face cinematically. Each story and person will require slightly different lighting to achieve the desired effect. So understanding how to accomplish some fundamental methods for lighting faces will put you on the path to becoming a better cinematographer. Today, director of photography William Hellmuth teaches us 3 different ways to light a face, in both flattering and unflattering ways, to achieve different effects.

In this video, William shows us three different methods for lighting and shaping an actor's face. In our first setup, he mimics the sun, which is motivated by the window that the two actors are sitting next to, using a far side key to create more cinematic depth. In our second setup, William tackles the conventional wisdom that both near side key lighting and lighting from below inherently produce unflattering results, by using both of them together, with a practical lamp as the motivation. In the third and last setup, we are using the new Aputure Spotlight Mount to show off the different effects created when using hard top light versus soft top light.

The main techniques that we will be discussing today are far side key lighting, near side and bottom lighting, and top lighting. Far side key is when the key light is lighting the side of the talent's face facing away from the camera. This is a common method used for creating cinematic depth. Near side, lighting is not typically associated with dramatic visuals, but rather beauty lighting, duet it's lack of shadows. Bottom lighting or underlighting is however associated with unnatural or scary visuals, due to shadows being cast in the opposite direction that we're used to seeing them. Top lighting is the act of lighting subjects from above and can have very different effects depending on whether the top light is an obvious hard source, or a subtle, sourceless ambient glow.

Ultimately, as most filmmakers try to tell human stories, learning how to light human faces is very important. Different lighting styles and directions will create different feelings and emotions. It is also important to be able to embrace different sources or motivations for your key lights, as they might lead you to lighting designs that you would never have thought of. There is almost always a way to make the light falling on someone's face more flattering, and now you know how to do that. But it is also essential to be able to embrace the type of lighting that will complement the talent's face and best tell the story.

🎥How to Light the Cinematic Film Look!

🎥Free Cinematography Lessons From Experts!

🎥Subscribe to Aputure:

🎥Connect with the A-Team!

🎥GET APUTURE GEAR:

🎥MUSIC:

🎥GRAPHICS:

Summary:
Aputure's YouTube channel provides free high-quality cinematography, lighting, and filmmaking educational content to help you take your film projects to the next level.

[aputurelighting]

What's your favorite unqiue way to light a face?

[thomasjbrablec]

To the point of motivated lighting, I love how you can light a subject with a car. Use taillights to get a red light, headlights for the harsh beams of light, or reflect light off of the car mirrors into someone's face. Mirrors create a very harsh reflection, but also a very directional beam that can act sort of like a gridded light. You can get a very noir look with a few cheap mirrors.

[yaomung]

insane how much thought and detail goes into something we take for granted.

[DIYCameraGuy]

My favorite way to light a face is a far side key with a key side fill and a kicker to separate and shape the shadow side of the face. Mixing the temp on the Key, fill and kicker is just icing on the cake.

[TylerEdwards]

Using an iPad/tablet with the screen on a blank white page with screen brightness all the way up is a great way to use that practical light as a key light when the talent is reading something from it in the scene!

[NatesFilmTutorials]

Needed this! A unique way to light a face is flat lighting filling every shadow. Great example is from Arrival when Amy Adams is in the ship with the aliens.

Bonus! A high noon western feel for outdoors is to place the sun as a backlight, 3/4 light to cast shadow on the face. And using fill if needed

[jonbowen]

I love it when a face is lit by reflected or refracted light, or at least given the illusion that it is. Like a mirror, window, or prism. It can evoke a lot of feeling.

[MrOmniscience]

I love the two-face lighting when the light is directly beside the subject. When only one half of the face is lit; but, even better when you put two lights on both sides and the colors compliment each other, like orange on one side and blue on the other. I think it really fits in urban settings with lighting from storefronts, neon and street lights. Also, green and magenta looks amazing.

[marcusnaugler]

I shot a scene once using a small flashlight to light a two person scene with a taped on gel of CTB for a "moonlight" look. Had one of our grips hold it just out of frame while we shot the scene. Lol! Surprisingly enough, it looked very convincing!

[Bryce.Padovan]

I'm not even mad that 4min film school is like 10mins now lol woohoo!

[Jonas_æ]

A happy accident from a short film for me was when shooting a low-key setup with the actor reading at his desk, and the practical used as his desk lamp was bouncing off of his notebook onto his face with a warm, soft yellowy light as if the book was emitting a glow onto his face. Which contrasted well with the cooler fill light.

[alexj]

Not too sure if this counts as an interesting way to light someone. But I love have a harsh spotlight from behind and a little to the left or right then use a bounce in front. Gives a silhouette look while still keeping an ambience on your talent illuminated. (I also just really like a harsh rim light) (:

[jessepamintuan]

Simplest and most interesting way I found out this year was to simulate window light by doing soft light and a hard kicker from the same far side. Definitely a must-try!

[hiskishow]

Coolest way to light a face with nice hair is setting up a 2kw far away from behind the subject and then from the front filling in with an LED panel or even a reflector to just come back a little bit. It lights up the hair almost clipping and also accents the weather if there is fog or rain. Great for a detective show's shootout scene with the bad guy at the end! :)

[flyguy]

The lighting at 8:45 pretty much reminds me of what most movies look like, he was right on with the “ rich source-less ambient lighting” type commentary about it. How far above the talent was the 300d when it was in the elevator shaft?

[NitroColaSSC]

I think a really cool way to light a face is to completely silhouette it, but still have it recognizable by setting up the blocking so the actor’s profile or body is clearly distinguishable. I get so excited whenever I see a shot like that :p

[DennisMaynard]

I'm not an expert by any means, but I shoot in small spaces with limited equipment, Amaran AL-MX and a Amaran HR 672. There isn't a lot of space to create depth with the lighting, so I will bounce the HR off the white walls at an angle for a little drama and use the AL as a fill. Then if I want to use a bounce to counter I can, or add gels for a look.

[hugocincala]

My favourite way to light a talents face is to set up a harsh side light key, with some soft light next to it beeing it more in front. of the talent. This makes a nice light to shadow progression throughout the face. You can also upgrade this look with back light from the other side.

[millenniumstories]

For shooting a scene involved hitmen preparing for his first mission in front of a bike, we used real light from bikes headlamp, which helped to create the edgy faces. This was enhancing the intensity of the scene. Also, during they checking out the weapons, the shades fell on their faces which showed the transformation of a normal person into a bad guy. We also used a reflector for fill.

[grad-ddzj]

another interesting way to light a face would be in a scene during golden hour, having the actor sit at a lake. you can bounce light of water and produce a little movement to the water so that you get that glimmer effect onto a face. the same would be possible with a night scene by a illuminated pool. here of course it's not tungsten light like during golden hour but more of a colder, lightly bluer light.