Hey guys it's dave here from Creative Path Films and in today's video
i'm going to teach you about hatchet or split lighting
hatchet lighting is a lighting technique where one entire side of your subject's face is completely
plunged into shadow this results in a very distinct shadow that runs down the center
of the face splitting the face in two hence the name hatchet or split lighting this is
a fantastic technique that you can employ when lighting a character that's morally ambiguous
a bit shady or two-faced by plunging an entire side of the face into shadow in particular one of
the eyes it makes us feel as an audience that the character has something to hide and isn't entirely
trustworthy this is because psychologically the eyes are critical to non-verbal communication
and by obscuring them even partially it makes the character so much more difficult to read and
therefore we have trouble trusting them this is why we have tropes such as eye patches or
sunglasses for characters that we want to appear shady today i'm going to show you how to recreate
this technique as well as a few variations that you can use to spice things up a bit
so make sure you stick around all the way to the end i've also created a pdf breakdown of
this technique so check that out down in the description all right let's get into the setup
in today's setup i'm using an aperture amaran 100d with a reflector dish for my hard light source and
i've swapped out the included hyper reflector for a standard reflector by godox and this is because
the hyper reflector creates a rather nasty hotspot that i'm not a big fan of for my soft
light examples i'm using the same light source but i've attached a light dome mini 2 softbox
this technique can be achieved by positioning your key light almost directly off to the side
of your character at either 80 or 90 degrees to the nose and both of those positions will give
slightly different looks so here's an example of what that looks like when you position your light
at 90 degrees here we have a hard light source and here's another version using a soft light source
but what happens when you do this is you'll start to notice a few unusual shadows
particularly around the eye sockets to remedy this i prefer to bring the light
ever so slightly forward to about the 80 degree mark this will give you that nice even split
directly down the middle of the face here's that example at 80 degrees with a hard light source
but here it is again this time with a soft light source now let's have a look at a few variations
and this time i've adjusted the height of the light so you can see what impact that has over
your image instead of having our light source at eye height this is what it looks like when
we raise the light up and angle it downwards here's the hard light version and here's the
diffused version here's another variation so you can see what it looks like when we position that
light down below eye height aiming upwards here's the hard light version and here is
the diffused version what if you like the drama of this technique but you don't want to have one side
of the face completely plunged in a shadow what if you still want to see a little bit of detail well
that's where a fill light comes into play you can add a little bit of fill to this technique
by either bouncing some light back using something like a poly board or a piece of white core flute
or you can add in a small fill light such as an aperture f7 which is what we're using today
another variation i'd like to show is what i've come to call the double hatchet setup sometimes
this two light setup is also called hatchet lighting so it can be a little bit confusing
this is a really cool look and it can be achieved by positioning two matching hatchet lights on
either side of the subject's face the result is a narrow shadow that runs down the very center line
of the face you can make this shadow area wider and even more prominent if you pull your lights
further around behind your subject past 90 degrees this produces a very cool and very dramatic look
and you see it used a lot in things such as thrillers sci-fi and horror films one final note
on our specific setup is in these examples i have got a backlight in play which is just there to
provide some separation between my subject and the background and this goes a long way in completing
the look well guys that's it for hatchet lighting if you learned something today and enjoyed this
video make sure to let me know by leaving it a thumbs up and don't forget that breakdown
down in the description thanks for watching guys and i look forward to seeing you in the next video