Movies for TV - Early Television Foundation

172
FUNDAMENTALS
system is truly compatible. Thus no modifications are required to
permit present-day monochrome sets to continue to receive pictures
if owners do not wish to spend any more money on their
receivers.
Lighting for Color In the television studio, lighting for live
color pictures has not yet been very thoroughly studied since there
has been little or no demand for it. The only large scale use of
color on television so far was the Smith Kline and French medical
usage. In the case of operations demonstrated over this equipment,
normal operating room lighting was used for the telecast. This
means that the precautions required for making color films are
probably not as rigidly imposed.
One reason for this is the fact
that the color balance is under the control of the technician at all
times, and he can see exactly what each color looks like as it is
transmitted. In making movies, the color values are not known
until the developed reel is returned from the laboratory. Of course,
certain precautions are necessary; for instance, the addition of an
incandescent spot can change the color of a face or hair almost
unbelievably. It is just as well not to mix lights of different Kelvins
indiscriminately; otherwise colors may change as an actor walks
across the set. No rules have been made yet for color television
lighting for no one knows which system will be chosen and as a
result it is impossible to make any suggestions which may remain
valid.
Lighting for color film, on the other hand, is now thoroughly
understood and has been reduced to a fairly simple science. Light
is described in degrees Kelvin. This is the standard of comparison,
since color temperature is an exact measure of the light emission
of an illuminant, and the lower the temperature of the source, the
redder the light emitted. It may be defined generally as the num-
ber of degrees measured on the Kelvin scale (which is zero at
273) at which a black element, or body, produces light of the
required color. Black is specified
as the color of the element since
it is assumed to have no light emission or reflection properties.