From the course: Learning Video Lighting
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Utilizing hard vs. soft light
- In the golden age of Hollywood it took a lot of light just to expose the film. Many scenes were lit with hard light by necessity. It could look beautiful but it was very unforgiving. It had to be coming from exactly the right angle. The hard shadows needed to be filled and the actors had to hit their marks perfectly. But if we light a face with soft light, the larger source wraps around more, filling in the shadows and hiding the imperfections. Here Mariana is lit with a hard key light from a fresnel light. Normally we'd have it up higher but it's fine for our demonstration. It's pretty harsh but at least it's coming from a pretty flattering angle. It's in the direction she's facing from a bit above her eyeline. As we move the light around to her side, you can see how it changes. Crossing her face like this it ends up missing a lot of her face and making a pretty dramatic shadow. Let's bring it back to the front. Alright, now we can soften this light by clipping some diffusion…
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