How to Shoot Action Scenes | Dynamic Lighting 101

Stay tuned to the end for a chance to win a prize! Shooting sequences with action and fast-moving parts requires you to think differently about camera and lighting. Instead of making your light as soft as possible, you may want your key light to be harsh. You may not even want a key light at all, and opt for a strong backlight to silhouette your characters instead. You may even want to change up your camera settings and camera movement. If you want to light for action, here are the things you need to know. In this boxing scene, we play up the action with handheld camera movement and little to no fill light. Valentina walks us through her ideas of recreating sunlight for continuity and using haze to see strong beams of light that add to the dynamic quality of the scene. We also talk about different diffusion fabrics and what works best for our scene. Because we wanted a very soft and even bounce light, we went with China silk diffusion - even though it’s meant for diffusing light. The