What is the importance of lighting in film and television production?

Nowadays cameras are getting better and better at low illumination, and can even shoot better pictures under weak candlelight, so you may think that film and television lighting has already played a vital role in film and television production. It’s dispensable.

However: when shooting interiors, the highlights and shadows caused by natural daylight can affect the image. (Problem: The light contrast on objects under high light is too strong. Solution: Push the light into the shadows).

In interior shots, when people move around, the different lighting makes the skin look weird. (Problem: caused by different color temperatures. Solution: filter color to make the color temperature consistent).

When shooting on location, you will definitely have trouble with shadows. (Problem: Strong contrast between sunlight and shadow. Solution: Turn on the lights to light up the shadow).

Therefore, lighting is still very important in film and television production, because without enough light, the exposure will be insufficient. Another reason why film and television lighting is needed is that cameras do not have the advanced brightness and color temperature balancing functions of the human eye. In many cases, without the assistance of film and television lighting, unnatural picture effects will result.

Several situations where film and television lighting is needed:

When the aperture cannot be opened to the maximum to obtain the correct exposure.

If you don’t have enough depth of field, this requires adjusting the focus in advance. It is especially difficult to follow the focus when the object is moving. Film and television lighting can help increase the depth of field and help solve the problem of fast focusing lights.

The contrast of the on-site light source is too great, causing the picture to have overly bright spots and overly dark shadows. Film and television lighting can reduce this contrast to obtain more details.

If the on-site light sources have different color temperatures, film and television lighting can also help overcome this.