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Principles and standards for stage and television studio lighting

Some people say that the main purpose of stage and TV studio lighting is to illuminate the actors so that the audience can see them clearly. This is an oversimplification of a problem that is far from simple. Whether it is stage or TV studio lighting, it is not enough to make the audience see it, but it must require the picture to produce an effect that attracts the audience.

We know that direct frontal light is not suitable for buildings, mainly because the frontal light makes its appearance ugly. Similarly, attention must be paid to the direction and quality of light on the stage and studio, but because the lighting objects of the stage and studio are moving objects, it will add some difficulties.

In addition to the requirement of highly dramatic effects, in general, the main frontal light must be irradiated from both sides above the object, so that the light is 34° to 45° in the horizontal and vertical directions, and the light irradiated on each side does not have to have the same light intensity and light quality. For example, in television, the "main light" irradiated from one side is often strongly directional, while the "secondary light" irradiated from the other side is softer and often needs the background light to set off. If the lighting is required to be more than just enough to see clearly, in addition to the light from both sides, sometimes the light directly from the front is also required. It should be noted that the appearance of the actor cannot change due to the change of the actor's position, so the entire lighting method must be properly arranged to have a series of overlapping beams.

In addition, it is also required to illuminate the scenery. The amount of light depends on the style of the stage scenery. At the same time, it must be noted that the light illuminating the scenery cannot conflict with the light illuminating the actor.

Therefore, the final lighting design of the stage effect must be a compromise between the effect that the designer wants to achieve, the limitations of the stage scenery position, and some fixed lighting rules. This is a frequent and almost certain situation.

The effect requirements of each scene on the stage are different, so the illumination value required for each scene also varies greatly. Professional lighting designers finally have to use slide rules or photometers. They need to make more efforts for the effect, balance, light intensity, and color of the light than any other lighting technicians.

In a TV studio, the illumination value is very important, especially for color TV programs, the color temperature and illumination value of the light source are equally important. Generally speaking, it is very difficult to achieve the illumination value of outdoor TV broadcasting in the studio. Although modern cameras can produce decent quality pictures at lower illumination, in order to shoot indoor color TV performances, the studio must have an illumination of 1500 lux to 2000 lux. As for the average color temperature, it is usually 3000K, and the allowable range of up and down changes is ±150K, so that the balance of the image can be maintained through reasonable dimming. However, it must be noted that the ratio of the number of black and white TV and color TV receivers is about 10:1, and the visual requirements of both must be taken into account during broadcasting.

For the stage, the color light using color filters is very important and needs to be used in almost every scene. In a television studio, color light is used mainly for entertainment performances, because the stage often requires showing different tones and climates within an evening schedule: it could be June or December, it could be Manchester or central Sahara.

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