Motion Picture and Video Lighting, Second Edition, is your indispensable guide to film and video lighting. Written by the author of the industry bible Cinematography, this book explores technical, aesthetic, and practical aspects of lighting for film and video. It will show you not only how to light, but why. Written by a professional in the field, this comprehensive book explores light and color theory; equipment; and techniques to make every scene look its best.

Now in full color, Motion Picture and Video Lighting is heavily illustrated with photos and diagrams throughout.

This new edition also includes the ultimate 'behind the scenes' DVD that takes you directly on a professional shoot and demonstrates technical procedures and equipment. In addition, 20 video clips include: lighting demonstrations, technical tests, fundamentals of lighting demos, and short scenes illustrating different styles of lighting.

This book starts with an interesting quote from C DeMille: "Lighting is to film what music is to opera". Whether this statement is entirely justified remains open to debate, but none the less it does have a lot of merit as lighting really does dictate the emotions in a film or video - arguable more than stage performances. Accordingly this ethos has been used as a bit of a guiding hand as far as the content of the book goes as it is very practically orientated guiding the reader to create good lighting techniques for most typical scenarios. It is fairly comprehensive too as it also describes the operation of various types of lighting equipment and typical uses and like most books these days has the obligatory history section, although this one is mercifully short and readable at nine pages.

After the history Brown starts off by investigating different lighting fixtures and their applications covering tungsten and HMI fresnels and open face lights as well as xenon's and the older Brute Arcs, the traditional carbon arc lights commonplace in the old days but which still having occasional outings. Fluorescent units are covered along with some more unusual fixtures such as Chinese lights, dedo lights, spacelights, bargers and sunguns. Some of the brief explanations of terminology is quite interesting, for example did you know that the 64 in Par 64 stands for 64/8ths of an inch? Or the FAY in Molefay is the ANSI designation for a 650W Par 36 dichroic daylight bulb with ferrule contacts?

Brown in the next chapter guides the reader through the basic fundamentals of lighting techniques such as colour control, depth and dimension and fixture positioning to achieve balanced shots, especially with reference to individual people or objects. From here the direction turns to scene lighting where all manner of scenes are covered from exterior night time camp-fires to sitcoms and film noirs. At this point Brown turns his attentions to the electronics and physics of lighting and the integration with video. These chapters are lacking in many similar books in that Brown guides the reader through the equipment used to set camera and monitor systems up such as vectorscopes as well as guidance on setting up monitors, exposure theory and lighting for digital video as well as the control and use of colour. The technical side continues with guidance on electricity distribution (although this is an American book so doesn't necessarily apply in the UK), gripology, lamps and sockets, practical on-site issues and effects.

In all the book is an interesting read and is copiously illustrated with pictures exampling nearly every topic discussed in the text, although some are quite small and the detail is lost a little. It is a good beginner's guide and students of film lighting would benefit greatly.