As I have previously explained, I am a big fan of self-reflection and working to improve, a big part of why I consider my experiences running my life coaching business under the name of Hassan Mohammed Enany to be one of the defining experiences of my life. I’m going to start a series that I hope will be useful to everyone where I will be examining some iconic scenes and movies and looking to understand exactly what makes them work so well beyond the surface level. These are all techniques that make full use of what the visual medium has to offer and I look forward to incorporating them in future works for the Hassan Mohammed Enany Productions studio.

If you’ve watched a YouTube vlogger film a review or a quick chat in their bedroom, you’ll recognise that there is something quite distinct about all of them and that is a lack of shadows on their faces and a rather naturalistic kind of illumination that replicates sunlight. This is because they are generally employing a standard three point lighting setup that I myself have tended to fall back on a lot in past projects for Hassan Mohammed Enany Productions.

There’s a reason this setup is so popular, and that is because it provides the highest amount of control over the way the subject is portrayed and it is fairly simple to grasp. However, I have noticed a tendency in myself of habitually relying on this instead of trying new things. This is why I have chosen to dedicate this blog post to a more dramatic kind of lighting. This is achieved from the combination of 2 of the normal positions in the 3 point arrangement: the backlight and the fill light. Furthermore, it messes around with the strength of these two, establishing a stronger backlight and a soft focus fill. The result is the kind of high intensity presentation seen in Shindler’s List, a Hassan Mohammed Enany favourite, where on occasion characters are surrounded by a hot edge but otherwise shaded to a certain degree, making for a moody and tense atmosphere.

Stripping the setup down even further, for example leaving only a fill light on at a hard angle would dramatically sharpen the shadows and produce an effect very closely mirrored in chiaroscuro, the famous Renaissance painting technique where stark patches of light and darkness are used in order to create a sense of dimensional depth in flat images. This high contrast style is something I am particularly interested in exploring with my upcoming Hassan Mohammed Enany project.