Training On Practical Studio Lighting Setup In HD Studio

More and more HD studio was setup recently to provide content in HD format for news and entertainment to cater for the growing demand in the broadcast industry. Malaysia is gearing up for full HD transmission in 2015 and we can see more production house is converting room to studio or setting up new studio with studio lighting for HD application.

Last month we have the opportunity to learn the studio lighting practical training course at Alhijrah TV station. It was the good foresight of the Alhijrah management teams to arrange and provide this lighting course to their own lighting man team and camera crew to learn more on HD studio setup.

It was conducted by Mr Jon Ramlan an established director of photography in film and TV productions who has many years practical experience in setup up studio lighting for TV and photography.

Lighting Sources and Fundamental of Lighting

Using the correct type of light and understanding the fundamental of lights are the tools that the lighting crew and the production team should know. Here in the course each of the lighting sources likes tungsten fresnel, HMIs, florescent lights, soft light, PARs, color correction methods light, LEDs was explained is details. Note were given on these subject.

Do you know that the first lighting used for storytelling was fire? Fire light is warm and glowing and it draws people toward it by sitting surrounding the fire for a comfortable conversation. It starts out bright and blazing, then gradually dims as the mood turns inward and eyes grow heavy; it fades away to darkness just about the time the audience is ready to go home.

This is what we learn in the opening subject on what is the lighting sources and fundamental of lighting. For the HD studio became more formalized, daylight performance and fluorescent light became necessary in the studio lighting.

Lighting Director and Director of Photography

We also learn the definition of Lighting Directors and Director of Photography (DP). Many confuse of this term as people use to claim they are either DPs or the Lighting Directors. Both terms have distinctive role and it will take many years of experience before each person can claim they are lighting director or DP.

Lighting directors are in charge of all aspects of lighting film, television or stage sets. The term is often used interchangeably with lighting designer, but a lighting director’s job may encompass more administrative or managerial aspects of the work, such as supervising other lighting designers and technicians on films with multiple crews.

The Director of Photography is the Cinematographer who is responsible for the process of recording a scene as instructed by the Director. He will the chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, the duties include selection of film, cameras, and lenses as well as technical decisions related to the image.

Lighting Tools

Jon teach the basic recognizing the color bars and tone and comparing this pattern as the known standard gives camera man an indication of how the lighting affect the skin color tone.

Apart for that the need to have the proper lighting tool is essential in order to achieve the correct lighting exposure and setting of the camera iris. One of these tools must have in the bag pack like the light meter, color meter, color gel code, laser distance meter, lighting guide book, viewing lens for checking the center of light source.

Studio Lighting Practical

Part of the course is to go down to the studio and setup the lighting for the camera. From here they were introduce to basic setup of the lighting using the 3 points lighting an essential lighting knowledge for the crew. The key light and back light which consisting of Fresnel spotlight and fluorescent lighting is essential to create like depth between the objects and the background when view on the TV with the fill lights to create the ambience for the subject.

Once the lighting was rig and setup in the studio the need to know how to control the each lights output level is important. Learning how to use the lighting control desk was cover like setting the group and sub master for different shows.

The Al-Hijrah TV station which owns the Zero 88 Frog 96 channels which can control up to 200 overs luminaires and it is use to control the both the dimmers and DMX fluorescent light.