• Lighting Design

  ‘Spot’ lighting – any ideas?

  Posted by Billy Ho on March 1, 2006 at 2:32 pm

  I am trying to light a black and white scene so that only the subject is illuminated and the background is black. Here is an approximation of what I’m going for:

  https://www1.yatego.com/images/40750856891b03.1/L828295.jpg
  https://www.itsablackthang.com/images/JeromeBrown/tupac.jpg

  The shots will be mainly Medium CUs and CUs with some rapid movement and we are shooting on a Canon XL2 (miniDV).

  Does anybody have any idea on how to achieve this effect please? What kind of lighting/setup is required? (The cheaper the better). Any help would be much appreciated.

  Thanks

  Walter Graff replied 20 years, 3 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Tad Newberry

  March 2, 2006 at 1:34 am

  i’m probably telling you something you already know, but just put your subject as far from the BG as possible. even though it (the BG) will be black, it can sometimes pick up some stray light if it is too close to the subject. then, put your lights anywhere you want them for the desired sculpting of light on your subject.

  thanks for helping out a bonehead,

  jtn
• 

  Walter Graff

  March 5, 2006 at 8:45 pm

  And you can add a flag to let the light hit your talent but to keep it from hitting the background. So if your light is to the side of the person, block off the light from hitting the background with an additional card such as foam core, or matte board placed between the fixture and the black background but out of the shot.

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