Different Ways to Light a Character

Different ways to light Bruce Willis

Recently I have been practicing lighting, specifically character lighting. First big question: How many ways should I light the character?

After a little research, I decided to cover 7 ways that I thought were large enough a variety. In addition, 7 cases should be enough opportunity to develop an understanding of what is important in lighting.

The more I researched for reference, though, the more interesting lighting schemes I came across. This gave me the one extra case to make a total of 8 schemes above.

Next big questions:

• Should I vary the camera angle to maximize impact?
• Should I employ compositing, again, to maximize impact?

Well, I am hoping to use these as material for a short course on lighting. The course goal is to give students chance to experience lighting as much as possible. This means the class is simply lighting, lighting, and lighting.

With this in mind, I decided to keep one camera angle so that comparisons between lighting schemes will be more objective. I also decided to forego compositing to keep the focus on lighting.

This does not mean that I am not planning to polish these :)