Take-Home Question: Chapter 3: Lighting Director

The suggestion by the novice lighting director to use fast falloff in the face cream commercial is exactly what we don’t want to do. I would definitely disagree with their suggestion. The very idea of achieving falloff would give us something we do not want: shadows. This is a face cream commercial, not a moody drama. There is no need for intentional shadows, or any noticeable darkness for that matter. We want bright, clear visibility for the commercial, regardless of how good the model’s bone structure may be.

Watch any number of commercials for face creams or acne solutions, or any product for the face, and you’ll see that there’s close to a total elimination of falloff. The focus in the commercial is on the model’s face. The studio is brightly-lit, emanating an upbeat, mood-setting sense of positivity. Falloff works with shadow and the contrast between light and darkness, but commercials like the one we’re shooting primarily use flat lighting. With flat lighting, light seems to be coming from all around, allowing for very little or no falloff whatsoever. This would be what we want.

With flat lighting, we achieve optimal visibility. For a face cream commercial, this is a must have. We don’t want shadows obscuring parts of the face when we expect to see the whole face. Viewers shouldn’t literally be left in the dark. With the flat lighting, illuminating everything equally, we also give off a feeling of cleanliness. This is more than appropriate for a face cream commercial. There should be a very sanitized feel to what viewers see. The cream does serve a hygienic purpose after all.

We want the model to be surrounded by light. This means fill, key, and back light. If the commercial were to be shot inside a typical bathroom setting for example, any shadows that might occur in the background would serve us fine to add some warmth and personality to the scene. But come time for the extreme close-up in question, we want to see a brightly-lit face. The focus is the overall face and the cream, not the specific bone structure of the model. So I would definitely disagree with my lighting director’s suggestion to use fast falloff.