Stop Motion: Lighting

When preparing to create a video using stop motion, it is very important to plan how you are going to light it; when creating a stop motion film it is key to have effective lighting, to ensure the video looks to a good and professional standard.
However there are many issues surrounding lighting, so it is important that they are acknowledged, and identified.
As Stop Motion is a very time consuming process, it is not a good idea to rely on sunlight as the light source, and using natural lighting will actually cause nothing but problems. It's important to realise that for 1 second of footage, you are required to take 24 seperate photographs, each including character or object movement.
It can sometimes take hours to gain just a few seconds of footage and even oin an overcast or cloudy day the sunlight will change drasically, effecting the lighting during the video. The only way to create and accomplish a good quality Stop motion animation is with complete control over the lighting sources.

I think that the most effective lighting to use is the 3 point lighting system:

The Key Light: 
This is the main light. It is usually the strongest and has the most influence on the look of the scene. It is placed to one side of the camera/subject so that this side is well lit and the other side has some shadow.


The Fill Light:
This is the secondary light and is placed on the opposite side of the key light. It is used to fill the shadows created by the key. The fill will usually be softer and less bright than the key. To acheive this, you could move the light further away or use some spun. You might also want to set the fill light to more of a flood than the key.


The Back Light:
The back light is placed behind the subject and lights it from the rear. Rather than providing direct lighting (like the key and fill), its purpose is to provide definition and subtle highlights around the subject's outlines. This helps separate the subject from the background and provide a three-dimensional look.


By using this idea, it ensures that the overall video will have consistent lighting, and this will also help to establish realism in the video.


http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point/