Source and Direction

Source and Direction

In many scenes, there is clearly more involved with light
than matching brightness and contrast channel by channel.

Light direction is fundamental, especially where the quality
of the light is hard (direct) rather than soft (diffuse).
Such a huge variety of light situations are possible in a
shot, and in an infi nite array of combinations, that it
becomes diffi cult to make any broad statements stand up
about lighting. This section, however, tries to pin down
some general guidelines and workfl ows for manipulating
the light situation of your scene.

Location and Quality

You may have specifi c information about the lighting
conditions that existed when source footage was shot. On a
set, you can easily identify the placement and type of each
light, and away from set, this information may be found in a
camera report or on-set photos. For a naturally lit shot, it’s
mostly a question of the position of the sun relative to the
camera and the refl ectivity of the surrounding environment.
Sometimes the location and direction of light is readily
apparent, but not as often as you might think. Hard, direct
light casts clear shadows and raises contrast, and soft, diffuse
light lowers contrast and casts soft shadows (if any).
That much seems clear.
These, however, are broad stereotypes, which do not always
behave as expected in the real world. Hard light aimed
directly at a subject from the same direction as the camera
actually fl attens out detail, effectively decreasing contrast.
And artifi cial lighting is usually multiple sources in a single
scene, which work against one another to diffuse hard
shadows