Dramatic lighting is fun for both the audience the lighting director, which might explain its extreme popularity in modern television and film production.

Nothing spices up a lackluster show more than dramatic lighting.  Even game shows feature dramatic lighting; it’s not just for horror flicks anymore.

“Dramatic” light is a subjective term of course, but usually, it implies:

• Direct Light
• Deep Shadows
• Strangely Shaped Shadows
• Lots of Contrast between Bright/Dark Areas of Your Shots.
• Unusual Coloring
• Unusual Angles
• “Misty” Atmosphere

Extremely dramatic lighting is probably not something you want if your show is light-hearted, funny and meant to project a friendly atmosphere.    A show like that calls for the exact opposite: bright, diffused light that’s virtually shadow less.

However, just because you don’t need the mood found at Jason’s Screaming Death House doesn’t mean your video can’t benefit from a few dramatic lighting techniques thrown in with your overall, cheerful full illumination.

If you need intense shadows, you need directional light.

As the artist directing the lighting, you’ll no doubt need to control and shape all sources of light.  You do that with tools like barn doors, foil, creative bouncing, stencils, color gels, and reflectors.

Using these video production lighting accessories, you can choose to:

• Block the light’s path
• Bounce the light
• Color the Light
• Shape the beam

When you control the shape, color and intensity of the light, you design the lighting mood you want for your show.  You decide how unusual and extreme to make your dramatic lighting by deciding where and how you situate your lights.

A small bit of dramatic lighting greatly improves all interview lighting.  Shadow less is great for many things, but most interview shots benefit from a few well placed shadows, even if you want your subject to look friendly.  If your key light is significantly brighter than your fill light, you automatically achieve this affect.

Want more dramatic shadows on that face?  Slide your key light further to the side of your subject’s face.   Generally, a key light should be about 20 degrees to either side of your camera.  The fill light should then be about 30 degrees to the opposite side.  This puts subtle shadows on the face, enough to give proper definition but wouldn’t be considered dramatic.

Create dramatic lighting by placing your key light at a 45 degree angle, or even further from the camera.  Side lighting like this will definitely be more dramatic.

Another method to achieve dramatic lighting is to lower your light stands.  Generally, light stands are raised to a “neutral position” of slightly above eye-level.  Deviate from this neutral position and you will begin to add dramatic effect.  Light coming from below eye level is one of the easiest ways to achieve a dramatic effect.   Try lowering the light stands down to their lowest collapsible point and aiming the light upward.

Another way to make your lighting appear dramatic is to put extreme shadows in the background, even if you light the person’s face evenly.  Merely projecting jagged shadows on the background will make the whole shot look spooky, but your subject won’t get offended because of that shadow that makes his nose look like a giant, lumpy potato.

Add some color gels to make the light any shade under the rainbow.  You don’t need to use as much icky fake blood in your horror movie if you’ve got deep cherry color gels on your lights.

Use barn doors to direct the light where it will create the longest and most dramatic shadows.  Barn doors help you shape the light so some part of your shot will be very dark and other parts will be very light.  This contrast is what you want for dramatic effect.   Expose for the brighter sections and let your shadows be intensely dark.  The best shots that give the viewer overall impressions of darkness are actually quite bright in some areas of the shot.  Other parts of the shot are in complete blackness and overall, the viewer sees the shot as dark.  You don’t want 100% of your shot to be dark because then the viewer can’t see anything.

Mist automatically creates a dramatic effect and can easily be achieved with fog machines sold for Halloween.   I wouldn’t recommend messing with dry ice; it’s too hard to handle control and the fog tends to just sink to the floor.  A cheapie fog machine is a lot easier to control, although that smoke also tends to hover on the floor.  (Have someone off camera fanning the fog gently.)   If you ever video tape any fog, smoke, dust, or rain, remember that those must all be backlit to show well on camera.

For an example of the best of the best in dramatic lighting, watch the 1941 movie Citizen Kane.  That made so many lists of “Best Movies Ever Made” mainly because the lighting was brilliant.  Of course, you light like Orson Wells and you can’t let your actors so much as twitch or the lighting is no longer perfect.  The actors are so stiff modern audiences snicker and think only old geezers think a movie like Citizen Kane is worth watching.   Yup, the lighting is exquisite, but modern audiences are used to shows that manage to make the lighting awesome without restricting the movement of actors so much.

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