guide: lighting a cinematic on-location interview
Let’s demystify the techniques behind getting cinematic-looking on-location interviews!
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What’s up my fellow light lover!? Whether it’s your first interview or your hundredth, every location brings it’s own set of challenges. In this blog post, I’ll cover 7 areas that I consider when working with a DP to light an on-location interview!
place the subject properly
Before we touch any lights, the first decision should be where we want to place our subject. We’ll base everything else around the framing that results from decision, so it’s important that we try to get this correct to save time.
While every location is different and brings its own set of challenges, there are some guidelines that I see DP’s follow when placing a subject to guarantee a “cinematic framing”.
The first rule of thumb is to pull the subject away from the wall and move them toward center of the room. Distancing the subject from the wall does two things: first, there’s a natural softening to the background in-camera because our talent and the background are now on different focal planes.
Secondly, this separation helps the lighting tech control the intensity over different areas of the frame more easily.The key light will now provide light to just our talent, rather than affect them and the wall with the same intensity. This is due to a rule called the “inverse-square law”, which I’ll cover later in the video.
Now that we’ve placed our subject, where should we put the camera? For the most depth, try shooting towards a corner, rather than flat into a wall. Shooting at an angle like this can also be a good way to add leading lines to the subject. Use a counter, shelving unit, or some other on-location item to draw the viewers eyes from the edge of the frame towards the subject.
Our last consideration is if the subject will be speaking to camera or looking off-camera. If they’re speaking to camera, place the subject in the middle of the frame. If they’re going to be speaking off-camera, place them on a third line, so that they have a little extra space in front of where they’re looking. This feels more natural than if you have significant negative space behind them instead.
use both hard & soft lighting
Before I describe when to use hard or soft lighting, let’s define what hard and soft light even means.
The softness of a light refers to how distinct the transition from light to shadow areas is. A “hard” light casts shadows with a distinct cut between the lit and shadow areas. The more gradual this transition, the softer the light.
In theory, there is really only one variable that affects the softness of a light – that light’s size relative to the object it’s lighting. The larger a source compared to the subject, the softer the light will appear. One important note is that when a light from any type of source comes into contact with diffusion, that diffusion becomes the new “source”. This is why filmmakers put things like softboxes and larger square rags in front of their lights!
A loose rule of thumb I like to use for determining when to use soft or hard light during an interview is that soft light is for faces, hard light is for spaces.
Soft lighting on our talent flatters their skin by reducing the appearance of imperfections like bumps, blemishes, pores, etc.
As for hard lighting, I’ll mention towards the end of the episode how I use it to keep viewers interested and watching.
place the key light
Alright, it’s finally time to place a light! First up is the key light, or the main light we’re going to use to light the subject. This is also the light that will provide the most shape to our subject’s appearance, impacting how our audience emotionally connects with them.
There’s four things to consider when placing this one:
First, height matters. Light coming from below a subject gives a campfire, spooky, tales from the crypt keeper vibe. And while this works for some narrative projects, it definitely won’t work for pretty much all of your interview setups. If we raise the light a little and point it directly at our subject, we get a deer caught in the headlights look.
But, what light are we trying to mimic with our key light? The one that’s been with us our whole lives, the sun! And where is the sun? Usually above us, except you Australians, which is why a key light placed above our talent looking down at them from a slight angle is the most natural feeling placement. Usually somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees is a good angle to aim for.
When the subject will be speaking to camera, like I am now, then there’s only one more thing to consider when placing the key light. And that’s where it will be placed around the subject.
Let’s start with the key directly in front of our talent, in what’s called “frontal lighting”. The advantage of frontal lighting is that it evenly lights the subject and fills in blemishes and skin imperfections, but we also get a pretty flat look on our talent because of the lack of any shadows.
By rotating the light around our talent, we begin to cast shadow patterns, helping to add shape to the face. Stopping at a 3/4 angle, 45 degree angle, however you’d like to refer to it, we now get a very classic look, what’s known as “Rembrandt lighting”. Look for the little triangle of light underneath the shadow side eye, that’s how you’ll know you’ve dialed this look in.
Continuing to rotate the light around our subject, we end at side lighting, which is a very moody look that adds a lot of drama to the interview subject.
All three of these looks have their time and place. Maybe we’re lighting a soft, airy, high-key piece using talent with a lot of wrinkles or texture to their face – well then frontal lighting actually wouldn’t be too bad so we don’t exaggerate their age or complexion with shadows. But maybe the piece is a candid bio about all the trials and hardships this same person went through. In this case, maybe frontal lighting isn’t the best and a 3/4 light that helps to highlight their facial texture would add to this story. Maybe this subject is the villain in our documentary and we want to mimic their duplicitous character with some side lighting.
Direct to camera’s aren’t the only way we interview subjects though, often we’ll have our subjects looking off-camera. In this case, there’s one more thing to consider when placing our key light – and that’s whether we’ll use a NEAR or a FAR side key.
Near vs. far refers to where a key light is in relation to both the line of sight of the subject and the placement of the camera. A near side key is placed on the same side of the line of sight as the camera, a far side key is placed across the line of sight from the camera. Pretty much every shot in every film you’ve ever watched uses a far side key because the created shadows add dimension and shape to the image, and a near side key gives a much flatter, washed out image. So it comes as no surprise that I recommend using a far side key whenever the location allows for your interview setups.
There’s one final consideration for key light placement – let’s talk about how to reduce a “sourcey” looking key light. (Insert definition of sourcey here: a sourcey light is one where there’s visible intensity difference across the subject or part of the image.) Sourciness happens because of a thing called the inverse-square law, which states that as the distance between the light and the subject is doubled, the intensity of the light hitting the subject is reduced by one fourth.
Here’s what this looks like in graph form. If we zoom into the first few feet in this graph, we can see that the graph slopes quickly downward. What this means for us filmmakers is that the difference in brightness between these first few feet is rather dramatic, up to about 6 to 8 feet or so. This is the area that really emphasizes “sourciness”, which means that for a non-sourcey look, it’s best to have our lights at least a few feet away from the subject they’re lighting.
For the uber nerds out there, here’s the corresponding graphs for a 6×6, 12×12, and 20×20 as comparison. As we can see, the falloff from a softer source is less dramatic at the start compared to a hard light, but the inverse square law still applies after you’ve reached a distance equal to the greatest diagonal of the source. (TIM KANG REFERENCE)
Equally identifiable on both the point source and the 6×6 graph, the key part of them both is this area, around the 6-8’ space. From roughly 6 feet on, the amount of light falloff per feet of separation begins to flatten out. If we position our subject’s about 6’ or so from our key light, you can see that the light hitting across their whole body is more equivalent than if I position the key light just out of frame.
Of course, if you remember from earlier in the video, backing the key light up also reduces its apparent size to the subject, which also reduces its softness. In order to have the same softness at 6’ that I did at 3’ from my subject, I’ll need to use a bigger softbox, which is one of the reason so many different diffusion options exist.
I know I just covered a lot, so let’s recap what to consider for a key light:
- Verticality matters! Try to have the light coming from above your subject rather than straight at your subject, and definitely not from below!
- Start with Rembrandt angle, adjust from there depending on the mood or subject
- Use a far side key when possible (always)
- Reduce sourciness by increasing distance between diffusion and subject
control the shadow side
Traditional three-point lighting setups would put a light here, but I almost never do that. How do I get away with it?
I’ve found that a much easier way to control the contrast between the light and shadow side of a subject’s face is by using some form of bounce. Depending on your budget level, this can be anything from a white sheet from Wal-mart, to a 5-in-1 reflector, a bead-board, or a larger rag setup.
What the bounce does is re-direct light from the key light toward the subject’s face. In order to control the amount of light hitting their shadow side, I can position the bounce closer to them for more light, or further away for less.
Once I’ve achieved the proper ratio between the light and shadow side of my subject’s face, I can freely adjust the intensity of the key light without affecting this ratio, saving a bit of time during setup!
subject separation
Of course no three-point lighting setup is complete without some light providing separation to the subject from the background!
My favorite way to do this is with two lights. I’ll boom one light in horizontally behind my talent as a hair light, and then set up the other one on the opposite side of my subject as my key for a kicker.
There’s two things that I pay attention to when positioning the hair light: the first is I want to make sure the subject doesn’t shine anywhere on their forehead, particularly the widows peak area. If this happens, I’ll either pull the light back until the light isn’t hitting that spot of their head, or reduce the intensity of the light to reduce the apparent shininess if they don’t have a lot of hair in general. The other thing I want to achieve with the positioning of my hair light is to have both the subject’s head and shoulders at approximately the same distance away from the hair light. I do this because of the inverse square law – I want to reduce the apparent sourciness of the light, so that their hair isn’t noticably brighter than their shoulders.
The second light I like to set up adds separation to my subject on their shadow side, and is what’s known as a kicker light. This light provides a highlight on the shadow side cheek and extra separation on the shoulder, both of which help to keep the subject from falling off into darkness on the shadow side of their body. At a conceptual level, this light also helps to provide alternating lines of light and dark on the image, a composition which helps retain viewer interest longer than a flatly lit image.
controlling spill
Once we start to get a few lights up in a space, they’ll often start bouncing around and interacting with our scene in unwanted ways, like visible reflections, increasing our background intensity, weird shadows, etc.
The easiest way to control most of this unwanted spill is to place a modifier called a grid onto our lights. Grids reduce the beam angle of a light, or modifier, from a wide open spread to usually around 50 degrees. (TIP USE TAPE ON TUBES TO ACHIEVE THE SAME THING) By placing these on our lights, we can control the directionality of them while still retaining the same soft quality.
Sometimes though, a grid still doesn’t keep enough light from spilling on the background. In this case, I’ll need to pair using a grid with a technique called “feathering” to really get the control I want.
In order to feather a key light, I’ll first place that light where I want it to be, that far-side, Rembrandt angle. Initially, it’ll point directly at the talent, but, and here’s where the magic happens, then I’ll slowly begin to rotate the light away from the background of my frame. I’ll rotate until either I’ve isolated my talent from the background, or I’ve started to lose exposure on my talent. Using this technique helps me control separate parts of the frame with individual lights, giving me the ability to brighten or darken areas at will.
The other tools that I keep handy to control the spill of light when grids won’t do the job are multiple sizes of flags, from 18×24 to 2×3 to 4×4, to even just a giant sheet of duvetyne. These control light by literally just blocking it, and are always useful to have around.
One of the most common ways I’ll use these is when I’m spotlighting or fresneling towards talent or into set somehow, like off a ceiling or rear bounce card. Oftentimes, these modifiers aren’t perfectly aligned lensing systems, so there’s a bit of spill outside their normal throw area. I’ll put a flag underneath the light to block this spill from affecting any part of the scene, and it’s also nice for the talent so they aren’t looking at a super bright light.
fill the frame
Finally, to retain viewer interest as long as possible, remember to light the whole frame, not just the subject!
If you have the extra lighting available and your background is a little dark, you can control the intensity of the background by bouncing a light off the ceiling, into a wall, or just aiming it directly at the background. Yes, if the room is small enough I can just take the grid off my key light to have more light spill into the background, but by placing the background and subject on different lights, I’m able to control the ratio between them to more easily achieve the mood I’m going for.
Another way I like to add interest is by using hard light in the scene. I’ll add this as some form of scratch across the background, usually with a point source and a spotlight, but the same look can be achieved more inexpensively with a point source, fresnel, and some intentional placing.
Lastly, don’t forget to add practicals to the frame! Practicals are lights that are visible in the frame, like table lamps, wall fixtures, or other existing lighting in the environment. These can make the frame more interesting by adding multiple color temperatures, enhance the alternating pattern of light and dark in frame, and they add motivation to your hair and kicker lights.
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– Tyler Trepod is a freelance owner/operator gaffer of a Grip & Electric truck based in Denver, Colorado and serves the Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, & Fort Collins markets