Lights Film School Blog

How to Audition Actors + Casting Schedule Template

If you’re currently holding casting sessions / auditions for your next film, you’ll want to be as organized as possible. This blog post will help you organize your casting sessions by using our casting schedule template, and we’ll also go through important casting techniques use by professional casting directors and filmmakers. When you bring actors into your casting space you’ll want to ensure you use a casting schedule to organize your days. When you’re auditioning actors your days will lik...

How to Light a Documentary Interview

If you’re shooting an interview for your documentary you will be using either natural light sources or studio lighting. This blog post will outline how to properly use indoor or studio lighting to optimize the production value of your documentary. If you’re shooting indoors or in a studio, the basic 3 point lighting technique is a favorite amongst filmmakers. It fully exposes the facial expression and emotions of your subject as well as isolates them from the background and hides unwanted sha...

Filmmaking: Using Silk Diffusers and Modifiers

In this blog post we’ll discuss different types of lighting diffusion. Lighting diffusers and modifiers come in a variety of different models and have different lighting objectives. For example, silks are a common lighting diffuser and are used to soften harsh light, while a gobo is a hard material with a pattern or design cut out of it to add lighting texture to a set. Scrims on the other hand are small metal objects that are placed inside a light which allows filmmakers to slightly reduce the ...

How to Film a Documentary Interview

Interviewing a documentary subject can be challenging enough. Thinking about technical or editing opportunities while filmmaking can kill the creative spirit of the shoot. However, the technical elements of filming an interview are incredibly important if you want to create a high production look to your documentary. We’ll publish another blog post about how to light a documentary interview, but this blog post will tackle the subject of properly capturing enough “cutaway shots” for editing pu...