Are there tips and tricks when lighting video besides the usual getting an exposure, key & fill you can use when you shot? What if you saw the reflection of your light source in the shot? Could you use that to affect your contrast?

Yes, you can, they’re called Hot Kicks and we’ll show you how to use them.

Welcome to Pull my Focus, adventures in the world of digital filmmaking where we give you the inside tips to make great video.

Normally when we discuss lighting a shot we talk about the light illuminating our subject. Our Key, Fill, ambient, and backlights. How we need light to illuminate the set to get an exposure. And how to create and set a mood for the scene with our lighting.

One way we do that is with contrast. How bright one area is compared to another. And that’s were our topic on reflected light comes in.

Reflected Light
What do I mean by reflected light? All light is reflected light. Light has bounced off your subject, objects, the room, and our camera sensors capture it. We also bounce light off of white cards, walls, ceilings, to light our subjects and scenes and well. We’re surrounded by reflected light. But what I’m talking about specifically are actual reflections of the light source itself, off of objects, what we call hot-kicks.

Hot kick reflection of a window on a dinning room table.

Here’s my dining room table. I’m facing my windows and on the table, you can see a hot-kick created by daylight coming in from the window. If I place a mirror on this hot-kick you can see it, the light source, the light from the window. So the table reflects the light source, my window, but because it’s not a shiny mirror, it’s a bit diffuse and therefore becomes a bright spot or area on the table. A hot kick.

Mirror placed on the hot kick shows the light source.

Let’s put a black card there. You can still see the kick. It turns the black card gray, changing its contrast in the shot. Great so how do I use it?

Black card turns gray due to the hot kick of the light source.

Creating Depth with Hot Kicks
Here’s one way. If I put an object in front of it, that kick creates contrast between the object (foreground) and the table (background). It silhouettes the bottle.

A bottle silhouetted by the hot kick. Note it also helps illuminate the liquid in the bottle.

It creates a sense of depth by separating the two areas of the frame. This gives me another tool in my kit to create contrast in my shot. To help me create depth and a mood.

Contrast between the hot kick and the darker brushes and pencils in the foreground help create depth.

Creating Hot Kicks
To place a reflection, we need to talk about angles. That means, angle of incidence and angle of reflectance. It may sound complicated but it’s not.

The direction a light hits a surface, it reflects off of it at the same angle.

Angle of incidence equals angle of reflectance.

If you draw a line perpendicular to the surface at the point of the reflection, you’ll see how the angle of reflectance mirrors the angle of incidence as I move the light.

Now you don’t need to run string lines in midair on set but you can imagine it and then position either the light or the camera to place that hot kick in your shot.

Positioning a light to create a hot kick.

Now because it’s a reflection of the light source, you don’t always need it to be as bright as you would lighting a subject. And you may, depending on the tone of the surface, dim it down a bit.

Edge Lights are Hot Kicks?
So that’s a hot kick on a flat surface. Where else is it useful? Well, edge lights. Also called rim lights, backlights, hair lights.

A light behind me creates a hot kick on my face, an edge light that helps separate me from the background.

Here I have a backlight behind me just out of my frame. Now think of the side of my face like a vertical flat surface that’s well curved a little. That backlight is giving a hot kick off the side of my face.

A softbox used as a more subtle edge light.

Comparison of a soft vs hard edge light. Both create different looks that fit different scenes.

You’ll see this in movies and TV shows all the time. It’s very useful when lighting talent with dark skin tones.

DP Ava Berkofsky used this technique when she shot the HBO series Insecure. She requested the makeup department use a reflective base on the actors which allowed her to light the cast with reflected light.

DP Ava Berkofsky used hot kicks creatively in the series “Insecure.”

Hair can be fairly reflective and a hair light, basically a high backlight for the hair, give’s it reflections, kicks of light.

Reflections off the Street?
Where else can hot-kick reflections be useful? Night exteriors. Ever wondered why it always looks like it just rained? They wet the streets so the black asphalt, which usually sucks up light, now reflects it, giving depth and interest to the street and shot. Works in the daytime as well.