. Using Back Lighting to Create Silhouettes How to incorporate backlighting into your films Backlighting is exactly how it sounds. It’s lighting from behind the subject. Backlighting can be a filmmaker’s friend and in other cases it can be a filmmaker’s worst enemy. Backlighting usually causes the subject in the foreground to be underexposed, possibly even silhouetted, as the camera adjusts itself to be able to expose the bright background properly. Using Backlighting to Create Silhouettes Creating silhouettes is not hard. All you need to do is ensure there is a wide enough variance in the tonal range of your foreground subject and your background source of light. For instance, if you are shooting a dark object such as a person against a bright sky, all you need to do is set your exposure to capture the sky properly and you’ll effectively underexpose your foreground object, in this case a person. If however your foreground object was only darkened and not fully silhouetted, then you may need to slightly underexpose your background sky to further exaggerate the silhouette and make the foreground object appear entirely black. The more you underexpose your footage the more exaggerated this effect will be. Continue Below... Filmmaking: Lighting tutorial How to create a backlit scene in your film The importance of side lighting in your films Filmmaking techniques: Hard vs. soft lighting Diffusion & light reflection       .

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