Flat Lighting-The Reality of Lighting

Flat Lighting The Reality of Lighting

Open any book or article on lighting and you'll see a chapter or section on three-point lighting, usually identifying this technique as optimal, if not the be-all and end-all of professional lighting. However, there's one dark secret about three-point lighting that few sources reveal: most television programs don't use it.

Why? The reasons are plentiful. Three-point lighting usually requires high-powered incandescent lamps that consume capacious quantities of electricity, produce massive heat, and are tough on the subject's eyes. Three-point lighting is also very difficult to pull off when you have multiple subjects on screen simultaneously especially if they're moving around.

Plus; with today's high-resolution, large-screen television sets, depth is more apparent, lessening the importance of three-point lighting. Finally, some producers obviously prefer to eliminate (or minimize) the nose carets and other shadows that three-point lighting produces.

So, while you may see three-point lighting in use in dramatic interviews on 60 Minutes, you typically won't on broadcasts from ESPN, CNN, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Golf Channel, and on most local news productions. All these programs use flat lighting, which minimizes shadows but retains the back lighting.

Producing flat lighting is very simple, as shown in Figure 3.3. Rather than using key and fill lights with different intensities, you use two key lights of identical intensity. And, rather than using hard lights that produce shadows, you use soft lights that produce less intense shadows.

Figure 3.3. Flat lighting using two equally powered key lights.

Flat lighting produces the image shown on the left in Figure 3.4, which has even lighting throughout the face and the characteristic shadow beneath the chin. On the right, I placed a bounce card (see Lighting Fundamentals section) on my lap to reflect the light back up to my face, noticeably reducing the chin shadow. Some producers use a fourth light, directly behind the camera, to accomplish this, but this approach places the light directly in the subject's eyes, which is tough going even for the pros.

Figure 3.4. Flat lighting: on the right used with a matte reflecting light under my chin to reduce shadow. Note to self: try some face powder to get rid of the shine.

So, what are the takeaways? Primarily, that flat lighting (casting no or minimal shadows) is certainly an acceptable way to go an important consideration as it may be your only alternative in some indoor shoots. Some may find this contradictory to what we learned from examining three-point lighting, but I consider it supplementary.

While a documentary filmmaker may criticize your video if you use flat lighting, few, if any, nonprofessional viewers will even notice, any more than they notice the use of flat lighting on the evening news or Jay Leno. So when you're making do in the field, if flat lighting is all that's available or the best option for providing good, consistent coverage go with it. If you can implement three-point lighting effectively, go with that too.

Now let's take a quick look at some lighting fundamentals which will help round out our definition of good lighting.