NOTES ON LIGHTING
Lighting
Lighting means to control light and shadows for three principal reasons:
1. To provide the television camera with adequate illumination so that it can see well, i.e. produce technically acceptable pictures;
2. To help the viewer recognize what things and people look like and where they are in relation to one another and to their immediate environment; and
3. To establish a general feeling and mood of the event.
Television lighting must please the television camera and fulfill certain aesthetic functions, such as stimulating outdoor or indoor lighting or creating a happy or a sinister mood.
Studio lighting requires lighting instruments that can stimulate bright sunlight, a street lamp that illuminates a lonely bus stop, the efficiency of a hospital operating room, or the horror of a medieval dungeon. It must also reflect the objectivity and credibility of a news anchor, the high energy of a game show, or the romantic mood in a soap operaWhen in the field you need, you need lighting instruments that are easy to transport and set and flexible enough to work in a great variety of environments for a multitude of lighting tasks.Lighting Instruments & Lighting ControlsSpotlights. Produce directional, well-defined light whose beam can be adjusted from a sharp light beam like the one from a focused flashlight or car head light to a softer beam that is still highly directional but that lights up a larger area. Most studio lighting uses two basic types of spotlights:• The Fresnel spotlight. It is relatively lightweight and flexible and has a high output. Its light beam can be made narrow or wide by a spot-focusing device.• Ellipsoidal spotlight. Produces a sharp, highly defined beam. Are generally used when specific, precise lighting tasks are necessary.Floodlights. Are designed to produce great amounts of highly diffused light. They are often used principal sources of light (key lights) in situations where shadows are to be kept at a minimum, such as news sets and product displays; to slow down falloff (reduce contrast between light and shadow areas); and to prodide baselight. There are five basic types of floodlights: • The scoop. • The soft and broad. • The fluorescent floodlight bank• The strip, or cyc, lightMost portable floodlights are open-faced, which means that they have no lens. Small fluorescent banks are also used as portable floodlights. Diffuses can turn a spotlight into a floodlight. ENG light is often done with small, versatile lights that are mounted on the camera or handheld. With a dimmer you can easily manipulate a light, or a group of lights, to burn at a given intensity. The patchboard or patchbay, makes it possible to connect each lighting instrument to a specific dimmer. Techniques of Television LightingThe techniques of television lighting tell you what instruments to use in a particular position and how to adjust it for a desired lighting effect.Lighting in the StudioLighting means the control of light and shadows. Both are necessary to show the shape and texture of a face or object, suggest a particular environment, and, like music, create a specific mood. Quality of LightWhatever your lighting objective, you’ll be working with two types of light:• Directional. Light, produced by spotlights, illuminates a relatively small area with a distinct light beam and produces dense, well-defined shadows. The sun on a cloudless day acts like a giant spotlight, producing dense and distinct shadows.• Diffused light illuminates a relatively large area with a wide, indistinct beam. It is produced by floodlights and creates soft, transparent shadows. The sun on a cloudy or foggy day acts like an ideal floodlight, because the overcast transforms the harsh light beams of the sun into highly diffused light. Lighting Functions (Terminology)• The key light is the apparent principal source of directional illumination falling upon a subject or an area; it reveals the basic shape of the object.• The back light produces illumination from behind the subject and opposite the camera; it distinguishes the shadow of the object from the background and emphasizes the object outline.• The fill light provides generally diffused illumination to reduce shadow or contrast range (to slow falloff). It can be directional if the area to be “filled in” is rather limited. • The background light, or set light, is used specifically to illuminate the background or the set and is separate from the light provided for the performers or performance area.• The side light is placed directly to the side of the subject, usually to the opposite side of the camera from the key light. Sometimes two side lights are used opposite each other, acting as two keys for special effects lighting of a face.• The kicker light is a directional illumination from the back, off to one side of the subject, usually from a low angle opposite the key light. Whereas the back light merely highlight the back of the head and the shoulders, the kicker light highlights and defines the entire side of the talent, separating him or her from the background.Specific Lighting Techniques• Flat Lighting means that you light from optimal visibility with a minimum of shadows. Most flat-lighting setups use floodlights (softlights or fluorescent banks). This setup is the favourite lighting techniques for more or less permanently installed news sets and interview areas.• Continuous-Action Lighting. When watching drama or soap operas on television, you probably notice that many of them have low-key lighting, which means prominent shadows and relatively dark backgrounds. In such multicamera productions, the cameras look at a scene from different points of view, and people and cameras are always on the move.• Large-Area Lighting. For lighting a large area, partially overlap one triangle on another until you have adequately covered the entire area. Instead of key-lighting from just one side of the camera and fill-lighting from the other, however, key-light from both sides of the camera with Fresnel spots in the flood position. The key lights from one side act as fill for the other side.• Cameo Lighting. Certain television shows, especially those of a dramatic nature, are staged in the middle of an empty studio against unlighted background.• Silhouette Lighting. This is exactly opposite of cameo lighting. In silhouette lighting you light the background but leave the figures in front unlighted. This way you see only the contour objects and people, but not their volume and texture. You can use silhouette lighting to conceal the identity of a person appearing on-camera.• Chroma-Key Area Lighting. The chroma-key set area consists normally of a blue (and occasionally a green) background. It is used to provide a variety of backgrounds that are electronically generated, replacing the blue or green areas during the key. This process is called chroma keying. e.g. weather report.