Making Better Movies with Your Camcorder

Photography is painting with light: you start with a subject, and then add or subtract light to achieve the look you want. The goal of lighting is not to fill in all the shadows so that everything is lit evenly. The lights are your instruments for creating an effect or mood.

Today's camcorders enable you to create an infinite variety of lighting effects. If all you do is use just the available light, you will probably get useable pictures. However, if you take the time to control the light in a scene, you can produce great pictures that work well with your story.

In professional moviemaking, producers can't afford to worry about the time of day or the weather. They defy nature by bringing lighting gear to create their own time and weather. If it's overcast, they can add sunlight. You probably won't have that kind of flexibility and budget. In most cases, you won't be building a set and lighting it from scratch, but using real locations and adjusting the available light.

Lighting a Scene

Imagine that you are shooting a scene in a real executive office. You are aiming to create a scene that is dark and suspenseful. The room is lit, but the light is not quite right for the story you want to tell. Here are things to think about as you work to light the shot:

Look at the shot

With the camera set up and actors or stand-ins in position, study the lighting and notice how it works with the actors and the background. Does it accentuate the primary subjects? In the composition of the shot, is anything highlighted so that it competes with the subject for the viewer's attention? Does the lighting make sense with the story? Will the lighting in the shot match the lighting in other shots when they are edited together?

Suppose that in the office you are using, there is only one artificial light, which sits on a desk behind the camera, plus strong, direct sunlight filtering through blinds on the other side of the room.

Make decisions

Does the existing light work? In this example, you'd probably decide to eliminate the sunlight. It is so strong that the room light is too low for the given contrast ratio of the camera. In other words, everything that is not lit by sunlight is almost black. The sunlight also competes with the story. You want the scene to feel foreboding, not sunny.

There are two other reasons why the sunlight doesn't work. First, it is not motivated. If your scene includes heavily filtered sunlight, the viewer is going to want to know why. If it doesn't relate to the story, then you've added an element of confusion.

In addition the sun will move. If it takes more than a few minutes to complete the shoot, the shots won't match when it comes time to edit the scene together.

With the sun gone, the room will be fairly dark. You can take advantage of additional lighting in the room, or use some of the lights you brought.

Set up lighting

So far you've made two lighting changes: you reduced the sunlight by closing the blinds, and added additional overhead room light. The room light adds a low, warm, diffused light from above that covers the whole scene. You can turn the exposure up on the camera to compensate.

Even though the actors' faces are now lit, they seem undefined, and blend too much with the wood walls in the background. Definition is created by adding and controlling shadows. You can add lighting to the actors' faces by bouncing a photoflood off a white wall that is out of frame to the right of the camera. This adds a soft, diffused light to the sides of their faces and provides some definition.

To add some color and warmth to the shot, you could also move the floor lamp into the background and turn it on.

Figure 6: The lighting for the Frank and Johnny scene.

Last check

Now you ask the actors to walk through the shot one last time. As they move, you watch every move carefully and look for areas where the lighting can be improved further. You notice that one actor passes through a shadow as he enters the room, so you add a light in the hallway outside.

Everything looks good

The adjusted lighting now adds just the right amount of contrast and definition to objects in the shot—it complements the composition. It also matches the other shots in the scene. Most importantly, it helps set the mood for the scene. And by doing this, it fits with the story you are telling.

If you have little or no control over your subjects, you must block and set up shots as you go. When you study a location, think about how you are going to get the shots. If you can, adjust the lighting before you start. If not, and the location is fairly dark, you can try using a very diffused camera light or turning the gain up on the camcorder. In situations where you have little or no control over lighting and the subject, you have to be very creative. The pictures may not be pretty, but if they fit with the story you are telling, the shots will work.

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