No Film School: When you're starting out learning filmmaking, one of the first lessons you need to master is the idea of three-point lighting.
Within that concept comes the idea of a rim light, which can add to that setup and help you use effects that dictate genre, storytelling, and lots of other things on screen.
8 comments:
I found this article really helpful! All the terms for the different lighting positions can get confusing fast, especially because the different areas of entertainment that use them often have different names for the same thing. I find it interesting, however, that the base concept of three point lighting remains the same throughout. I have seen rim lights used in movies and television, of course, but I have also seen the same effect used on stage for theatre, dance, rock concerts, and even choral and instrumental music concerts. This article discusses how on screen rim lights are often used to accentuate dimensionality. However, live stage performances are by definition three dimensional. This makes me wonder about the different schools of thought regarding rim lights. Specifically, do stage uses use if for a different reason and is that reason common amongst all genres of its stage use? Finally, I wonder if there is a common thread across all uses, on both stage and screen?
I love learning about different lighting techniques not only for theatre but in all uses, this article covering a film specific technique. Rim lighting creates an very specific and unique effect. The concept is similar to backlightinga as it is used to separate the subject from the background/dark environment. However, i think a key different is that rim lighting creates a “halo” effect around the subject that adds to the distinctness of their frame and gives them a mysterious and eerie effect. I definitely have seen this kind of effect in horror and mystery movies to isolate a subject and make them seem otherworldly. I think this same kind of effect would be hard to achieve in theatre yet the concept of backlighting an actor is very common. I would like to read more about other film lighting techniques and how they could be applied in a live theatre setting.I think it’s important to learn from other industries and professionals to inspire and enhance your own work.
It definitely does not take a film degree (or any film experience or knowledge) to be watching a movie, see a specific scene, and think “wow that looks really cool.” In many ways, super cool lighting (and the cinematography it goes hand in hand with) can really make a film. I really love when these “learn about this shot or light” articles pop up, since it is super interesting to learn some of the vocabulary that describes what I am seeing in movies. I had never heard the term “rim light” before, and I first I thought the article was talking about “ring lights,” so it was definitely interesting to learn this new term. The general angelic connotations of a rim light surrounding a character definitely make this form of lighting an interesting and useful storytelling tool. As described in the article, I can totally imagine how a rim light could be very useful in framing or describing a character.
Lighting is something that everyone can't notice but they never know how each certain effect was created and the amount of time spent trying to get the shot. In terms of rim lights they create a very simple and effective look to a shot and get many people to believe that loads of time was spent perfecting that particular moment. When in reality it just uses 3 lights set up in a triangle esc pattern. I think that this lighting technique reveals what is really unique about the film industry in comparison to the rest of the entertainment industry and it is their ability to hide how effects are happening. If you're in any Broadway theater you can look around the house and see lines of ellipsoidal used to light the show. Concerts personally use the circles of light as a design choice but a film can hide their ways of creation creating a space for more diverse techniques like what you can do with a rim light.
As a photographer and lighting designer, rim lighting is something that I’m familiar with. One thing this does not mention though, that I think is important to know, is that it’s very easy to overdo rim lighting. Too much can be distracting and also look very unnatural. 3-point lighting is a great technique to start with, and you’ll find that all good lighting design, no matter how complex, will build off the same principles as 3-point lighting. I’m curious how rim lighting works in those other situations without 3-point lighting. Do you use rim lighting outdoors? It’s also something that is used in theater lighting, but it has to be done in a different way because there is not the same control over where the viewer is. I’d like to know more about how to adapt rim lighting to the world of a live audience.
I think that this article was very interesting, kind of different because I feel like as a designer photography and film is very important because you need to be able to capture your work so being able to have an article like this is just very interesting. I really enjoy photography. I just haven't bought a nice camera yet because it's expensive and I'm in college. You know that whole gist but I appreciate having an article teaching about the correct way for filmmaking. I don't know, I just find feeling very interesting so I think it's three points Of lighting can be very interesting and important when it comes to capturing media. In this method, there's back light fill light and key light which is very much like the McCandless method of lighting so very interesting to see how stage lighting can translate to lighting for film and movies.
Lighting creates so many beautiful effects, and can be one of the biggest delineators in making or breaking cinematography or visual composition on stage. The halo effect achieved with rim lighting is one of my favorite lighting effects to see on screen, its so simple but can say so much. Although considering the amount of lights it takes to set it up, I don't think it can be said to be *that* simple. The amount of lights that go into creating film will never cease to impress me. So many different types of lights, as well as their angles and colors and brightness need to be considered when lighting something as simple as a single individual in a bedroom. But this level of control at such a small scale can also lead to some really really cool design opportunities. Rim lighting can be used to artistically contrast objects, to highlight a mysterious presence, or depict someone in an angelic/ethereal light depending on the narrative context and the intensity of the other surrounding lights.
Previously, I knew about three point lighting, but this article did clarify exactly what that means in reality. Rim lighting creates a backlit ‘halo’ effect around a subject. This is something that is very commonly used in live theatre settings for multiple effects, sometimes all at once: to make a character seem evil, angelic, significant, or unseen. Something I find interesting about lighting is that a lot of it is psychological in nature, and it depends on the context in which it is seen - both in time and in space. I believe in live theatre settings, it is technically more common to see a ‘kicker’, or a back light placed at an angle. In film, it is used for similar purposes, though additionally to make a character more three dimensional, as a camera can tend to flatten a picture. The graphic used in the article helped to summarize the visual set up behind three point lighting.
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