Re: Lighting a white background

You light the talent separate from the backdrop for most control. To me the issue is that you have to leave some headroom in your levels to go up from; if everything is at 100 IRE on the scopes you're throwing away visual information in the burned areas. So what looks under-lit to the eye may be more than fine to the lens.

Some folks fake the white in post from greenscreen, I've tried it both ways, and I think they can both be valid methods, depending on your needs, but if you can shoot on real white, you should, to save some post time.