Lighting

[purplehaze]

I found this article to be an interesting history of the evolution of TV lighting, with examples ranging from I Love Lucy to Game of Thrones, and a lesson or two for still photography.

An excerpt:

Back when Albert worked on the last two seasons of The Wonder Years, “the general approach was backlight, backlight, backlight—even when it wasn’t really motivated,” he said. “Where that came from was black and white, where the only way often to separate a character who was gray, and a background that was gray, was to give them a hot backlight that made them not just melt into the background. And it carried over when the push to color was made. It was just the way it was done in Hollywood.”

[Manfred M]

Janis - I've taken professional level video and photography lighting courses.

The main difference is that TV / Film / Video lights are continuous lights are are traditionally very high wattage and they get very hot. That means they can only use very, very basic light modifiers (metal barn doors), as the ones we normally use in photography would melt. We could gel the lights and used flags and gobos, just like in still photography.

Another key difference is that the lights tend to be positioned fairly far from the subject so as to provide room on the set for the actors to move around in. In photography work, we tend to have the lights just out of range of the frame, to produce nice soft light.

The final difference is in photographic lighting, we tend to light a relatively small area, whereas in cinematography, the lighting is part of the scene and the whole set will be lit.

[IzzieK]

Interesting study, Janis...

[rpcrowe]

Early television (I am talking about the 50's through the early 60's) required extremely flat lighting. The camera's couldn't handle contrast very well either so no one could wear a white shirt on the set.

[Manfred M]

Early television (I am talking about the 50's through the early 60's) required extremely flat lighting. The camera's couldn't handle contrast very well either so no one could wear a white shirt on the set.

I was also told by people that worked in the industry in that period, makeup was formulated to "look good" under those lighting conditions and with that camera technology. They almost had to re-invent how makeup was done when colour came along.

I also understand that the earliest B&W motion picture film was orthochromatic, i.e. not sensitive to red and into the yellow colours, so makeup had to be formulated to overcome this shortcoming of the film stock. The same went for anything that was used on the sets. When the "talkies" came along, the film stock went to a panchromatic film (i.e. one that is sensitive to the full spectrum of visible light) and the set designers, costume designers and makeup artists had to re-invent themselves again.

[purplehaze]

I was intrigued about the make-up thing, Manfred, and dug a little further... Found this article, with some helpful illustrations, including Eastman Kodak charts showing how various colours registered on blue-sensitive, or orthochromatic film. I also found this illustration of make-up guidelines for early b&w and colour film and these images of a young woman who applied the old-style makeup for b&w to herself. I imagine the b&w is not necessarily representative of the old b&w film stock, as it is digital, but the colour photo is fun.

[Manfred M]

Thanks Janis - that was a good read and confirms what I knew. That article also has a link to panchromatic films and makeup.



http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/cdc/panchromatic.php


A makeup artist I worked with three or four years ago told me that the industry was starting to churn again. With the high definition and ultra-high definition cameras and digital feature films coming out, every pore, blemish and wrinkle would be captured if the makeup artist could not hide them. The problem of course was that poorly applied, heavy makeup would also stand out in the recording.