Film Lighting Techniques and Tips: With Pretty Pictures!

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!

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