Reviewing 3-Point Lighting

What are the three different parts of 3-point lighting? What are three tips that this presenter makes that are different than what you have been taught so far in this class? How can you put this knowledge into use in your future videos?

    The three different parts of 3-point lighting that the video goes over are the key light, motivated light, and back light. The key light is the primary light source that is responsible for exposure and is the first point of 3-point lighting. The next point is motivated light, which should appear to come from some kind of object within the scene: a lamp, a window, a candle, etc. The back light should be the brightest light source and is used to separate the subject from the background. This can come in the form of a rim light, which outlines the subject or a hair light if it highlights just the hair. Three tips that this presenter makes which differ from what I have been taught in class are the purpose of a fill light, backlight, and the emphasis on the sun.

    In this video, he says that good cinematographers don't use a dedicated light as a fill light, but rather use motivated light as the fill light. This differs from what we've learned as we learned that the fill light or the reflector is one of the points, whereas the presenter says that motivated light is a point instead. Regarding back lighting, we've learned to use a back light just to highlight the hair, but he also talked about how it can be used to outline the subject. A major point within his video is the importance of the sun when it comes to lighting. He really emphasizes understanding the way our world is naturally lit by the sun, which we hadn't learned in class.

    I can put this knowledge to use in my future videos by considering 3-point lighting and remembering the purpose of the different points, which can massively improve the quality and artistic appeal of my images.