Soft front light / hot backlight

A popular technique in film lighting is to use a soft (diffuse) light source from the front and a stronger, more directional light from the back, so that your subject has a hot edge. The soft frontal light is known as the fill light; the strong light at the back is known, unsurprisingly, as the backlight.

You can arrange the lights in such a way as to leave darkness between the area illuminated by the backlight and the area illuminated by the fill light, depending on how moody you want the shot to be. This tends to work very well, although even the moodiest films tend to avoid leaving dark shadows on the faces of female talent. The film still shown above is from “Schindler’s List” and is a good example of this technique, but be warned that Janusz Kaminski is an extraordinary cinematographer!

For a slightly different look, the backlight can also be soft, but it should still be hotter than the fill.

You should light your film or video shot by shot. This means that when you relocate the camera to shoot a different angle, the lights must be moved as well to ensure the subject is always lit correctly. This is partly why films take so long to shoot.

Setting up lights is the most time-consuming task in film shoots. It is therefore good practice to shoot a scene in such a way as to minimize the need to relocate lights – in other words, shoot in the order of the lighting set-ups.