Low-key lighting
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Low-key lighting is a style of lighting for film or television. It attempts to create a chiaroscuro effect. In traditional lighting design for black and white photography, also called three-point lighting, there are a key light, a fill light, and a back light.
The key light shows the contours of an object by throwing areas into light or shadow while the fill light provides partial illumination in the shadow areas to prevent a distracting contrast between bright and dark. For dramatic effects, one may wish the contrast to be high — to emphasize the brightness of the sun in a desert scene, to make a face look rugged, seamed, and old, or to isolate details in a mass of surrounding shadow. A variety of methods can be used to create these effects.
Low-key lighting consists of lowering the height of the key light (which is conventionally 30 to 45 degrees above the subject's eyeline). When a key light is high, shadows are cast downward, often out of the camera's view. A low key light throws shadows on visible walls and so forth. More important, it tends to throw large parts of the face and body into shadow.
It is perfectly possible to use fill light in these large areas of shadow, reducing the contrast. Generally the term 'low key' refers to cases in which no such care is taken.
Low key is also used in cinematography to refer to any scene with a high contrast ratio, especially if there is more dark area than light. Compare with high-key lighting.