soft shadow tricks for character

Hi all,

When lighting a face like seen in the attached render, is there a way to control the edge softness of the nose shadow using dynamic (moveable) Spot or Rect light without using raytraced distance field shadow (as the face will be animated eventually)?
Based on my search, I am not sure if capsule shadow would be applicable for animated face and raytraced distance field shadow seems applicable to static mesh only as well.

Thanks!