How to Light an Interview (Without Making It Look Like a Boring Zoom Call)
Lighting is one of the most important — and misunderstood — parts of video production. Especially when it comes to interviews.
If you’re a business owner trying to elevate your brand’s content (or you’re hiring someone to do it), here’s what you need to know about lighting interviews so your subject doesn’t look like they’re trapped in a dentist’s office, a Zoom call, or a kidnapper’s basement.
We’re going to start with a very basic concept called 3-point lighting. It’s just what it sounds like: three different sources of light working together to shape how your on-camera talent looks and feels. Once you understand what each light does, you’ll know when to use it and, more importantly, when not to.
Key — The Main Source
This is your primary light, the one that does most of the work. And how you position it makes a huge difference in the mood of your video.
Direct / straight-on (0-35° from talent-camera eyeline): Lights the entire face evenly. It’s clean, clinical, and makes everything visible. It’s great for a corporate, no-nonsense look where the goal is clarity and professionalism. It’s… not so great for emotion or visual interest. Also: this angle can cause glare in people’s glasses, which means that you might need two key lights on opposite 45° angles to fix this, which is kind of a pain.
Rembrandt Lighting (45°): This is where things start to feel more contrasty and defined. You’ll get shadows around the face, and a little upside-down triangle of light forms under the eye on the shadow side. It adds depth, emotion, and elegance — the face becomes a mini-landscape with highlights and shadows.
Side Lighting (90°): Only one half of the face is lit, and the other half falls into shadow. This setup gives a sense of internal conflict, mystery, or tension. It’s moody, powerful, and has a ton of character. But it’s one of the worst approaches you can take when you need a clean, corporate look.
Reverse Key Lighting (90-180°): It’s a classic Hollywood technique. It puts most of the face in shadow and cranks the mystery factor to 11. There are use cases for it in corporate video, but you need to be careful about how and when you use this technique.
While we had tons of natural light in this studio, our shoot was happening over several hours, and the sun’s position would inevitably change the look and feel as the recording went on. So we used a 600D (camera-left) to control for this.
Fill — The Key’s Counterbalance
The fill light isn’t about brightness, but balance. It usually exists to soften the shadows created by the key light’s angle. However, sometimes you don’t want it. And other times you’ll actually seek to remove light from where you would normally fill in shadow (yes, making it darker!).
A reflector board bounces some of the key light back onto the shadow areas — simple, cheap, effective, and one of the easiest light sources to deploy.
A second low-power light, sometimes set to a different color temperature than they key to avoid an overly flat look, adds color contrast and definition.
Nothing at all. Sometimes the ambient light already in the room is enough!
Regardless of which method of fill light you use, the goal is always the same: controlling the light and shaping a feeling.
For example, we used 99% natural light for this short-form content shoot for David Reiwe’s business, Review Hub Pros. The fill light was an Amaran 200X, bounced off the wall (camera-left), tuned to 4500K, and set to 1%. It may not look like much, but without it, the left side of David’s face would be almost black. You’ll also notice that his face looks brighter in some shots than in others — as the sun moved across the sky while the camera was recording, a spot of direct sunlight on the floor bounced back on his face.
Back — Separation, Definition, Gloss and Shine
Your back light gives your subject a visual outline — helping them stand out from the background. This is the most subtle light, and you often don’t even notice it until you turn it off. But the difference is huge.
180° Behind: creates a soft rim of light around the head and shoulders.
135-170° Behind (opposite your key light): adds more shape to one side of the head, neck, or hair — and gives a nice bit of contrast and polish.
This is the stuff that makes your video look professional instead of homemade.
Do You Always Need 3-Point Lighting?
Nope. Not even close.
Three-point lighting is a framework, not a rule. It’s a place to start when you don’t know what else to do, which will consistently yield great results that your clients will be happy with. You can do incredible work with just one well-placed light. Or just the sun coming through a window, or diffused sunlight through some curtains. Natural light is still a key light; you just don’t control it with a dimmer — you control it with the time of day and window size.
For this content shoot for Local Barber of Fort Worth, the lights in the building were already fantastic and we wanted the look and feel of the video to stay true to the actual space — so this lighting setup (a “nonexistent” one) was the easiest, but it’s only because we got lucky with what was already available.
Here’s the real question you should ask: What story am I trying to tell, and what feelings do I want this person’s face to evoke?
Let that guide your lighting decisions.
If you’re working with a client (or if you are the client), ask to see examples of interview setups or videos they love. Not so you can copy them — but so you can figure out why they loved them. What was it that felt right? What are you wanting to avoid?
Once you know what kind of feeling you’re going for, you can build your own approach. The goal isn’t to mimic someone else’s work, but to emulate the feeling they achieved using your own creative tools.
Great lighting is invisible when done well. It just feels right. But behind every great-looking interview is a series of internal decisions. Hopefully this gave you a few to make your next one better.
