Let There Be Light, But First Throw Me A Line

So in the beginning it was all about light. That sort of makes it an optical universe doesn’t it? Kind of a what you see is what you get world and what you see really is what gets lit; thereby allowing you to see, or rather, more bluntly, to force you to see what we (filmmakers or gods, remember) want you to see. No, no, look over here, now over there. Movies are all about controlling our vision – in the service of telling the story. We point you to the images to follow, to think about, by lighting them well. We make them pop out from the background to catch and hold our attention.

OK, so how does that happen really? It starts with placing the subject(s), and then placing the camera in relationship to the line. Once we have the line we can start. Line? What’s the line? Oh, that’s the line we make in the air between one subject and another subject, you know, describing the line of action. The line that connects those two elements is important in the decision of where to place the camera. We’re always going to be on one side or the other of that line. Once we pick a side, that’s the side we’re on. We can’t really cross it and make the shots work. We stay on one side or the other. Sometimes in life it’s like that also, you have to pick a side and stay with it. (OK, that’s just silly metaphysics.)

If you have two people in a scene you place them in the set and draw an imaginary line between them, then place the camera on one side of that line. That’s so we can cut back and forth between  shots of the two people and still have them look like they’re talking with each other. No matter where we place the camera, if we’re on the correct side of the line, they still look like they’re talking to each other. We can sell the shot. It works. If we cross to the other side of the line and back again it all falls apart. Now the directions they’re facing when they speak no longer makes sense – we’re crossing the line.

The reality, however, is that line is often quite dynamic. It moves. If it moves we have to move the camera with it (or before it) to stay on the correct side of the line. The two people can circle around each other or walk to different parts of the set, but they’re always connected by the line.

If we watch them change position, we’ve also changed the side of the line we’re on, but once it’s changed we still can’t cross it. We can watch it change (that’s OK and useful), but we can’t hop over it and come back. We can watch the guy on the left walk past the woman on the right and he then becomes the person on the right and she becomes the person on the left. The line has changed (sort of), but we’re still only on one side of it.

With a standard interview often the subject (talent) talks to a person sitting just next to the camera and the camera never actually moves, just zooms in or out a little. This is the easiest setup, and for what I do, the most common. Once you have that subject to subject axis and where the camera is placed in respect to that line, then we can start to light. I usually place the key light (the main source) to shine on the side of the face that's turned away from the camera – the short side. A back light goes on the other side of the talent (opposite side to the key) and hits the back of the head and shoulders, popping the talent out from the darker background. Depending on how much contrast you want you can add a fill light or use a reflector, again on the opposite side from the key, to fill in the shadows and control the contrast range.


It’s easy with two people and harder and harder with more, but more people (more lines) also allows options for selecting different lines – between different people – meaning we could be in different places and have it all work. Here’s our shot, now cut to a different line, on a different side. Wow. This is what a director does, figure out where the lines of action are and where the camera(s) should be placed. (What do we see in the foreground, what do we see in the background?) Again and again. And, yes, directing the actors, let’s not forget that.

Most of the people – audio, lighting, camera operator, and a lot of others – can do their jobs without a director, but placing the camera and directing the talent are all the obligation of the director. You always have to remember everyone on the set can make a movie without you, that’s why other people may have really valuable contributions, if you have time (and the wisdom) to listen to them.

gunther (3)