THOMAS HUTCHINSO - Early Television Foundation

8 HERE IS TELEVISIONlight.There will be special spots to cover any location or artistand to highlight his face or hair. We find special facilities forback lighting and all of the lights on the picture setmay beshifted for each scene so that illumination always comes from themost advantageous position for proper photography.Television lightingTelevision presents a problem which in many ways combinesthe lighting techniques of both the stage and the motion picturestudio plus some demands peculiar only to itself. First and mostimportantis the fact that there must be a definite amount ofthe telelight, evenly spread all over the set to be picked up byvision camera; or the pickup tube in the camera, will not respondto the images focused upon it. Photographic light levels, that is,the amount of light in each square foot of space to be photographed, are measured in "foot candles." Roughly speaking,some one thousand foot candles of light were required, spreadfairly evenly all over the set, to get a readable response from thepre-war iconoscope. But today in general, good motion picturelighting is the standard in television, with especial emphasisplaced on the average results obtained as performers move aboutthe set.Early lighting requirements are a thing of the past. Improved pick-up tubes in the cameras have dropped the requiredlight level down to below three hundred foot candles. Still television presents a lighting problem peculiar only to itself in thatevery light must be so placed that the overall picture results aregood no matter from what angle the scene is "shot." In an opencenter but the next "take"ing scene the camera may be directlymay be made from the left or right of the set and in some casesfrom a camera position on the set itself. This means that motionpicture technique "per se" can not always be followed. Everytelevision lighting engineer constantly strives to obtain highlightson the actors wherever possible to heighten the beauty of awoman's hair, to get natural shadows as the characters in theplay move about the set, and above all to give naturalness toeveryone who is to be picked up by the camera. He must avoiddark shadows under the eyes and especially under the chin. Thisrequirement is in itself a problem. Low lights on the floor of the