Studio & Broadcast Lighting

Introduction

There is a moment every new studio lighting person has. The set looks good. The guest looks good. You are pleased. Then you glance at the programme monitor and the picture is flat, the background is dead, there is a hot patch on a forehead and the two cameras do not match. Nothing in the room changed. The camera simply does not see what you see.

That gap is the whole subject. Studio and broadcast lighting is the craft of lighting for a machine that has less range than your eye, no judgement about colour, and no memory of what the room looked like a minute ago -- and then of holding that picture steady for two hours while a director talks in your ear.

What this book covers

Why the camera sees differently, and what that costs you. Exposure as a number rather than an impression -- foot candles, stops and IRE -- and how to read a waveform and a false-colour picture instead of trusting a monitor. Contrast ratio, and the ceiling a broadcast picture has. Colour temperature, mixed sources and white balance. Colour rendering, what a TLCI score actually tells you, and how to match fixtures to each other. Fixtures and what each one is for, and the diffusion, bounce, flags and nets that do more for a picture than a bigger light. Lighting a face you have not met. The interview setup and its variations. The four standard studio setups. Lighting the background. Green screen, and the LED wall that is now in most corporate studios. Flicker and frame rates. Volts, amps, watts, and where a lighting person's authority over power stops. The studio grid, hoists and pantographs. Heat and electrical safety. The production process and set protocol. Maintaining a picture on air. Location work. And how the career is actually built.

It was measured chapter by chapter against the published contents of Millerson's Lighting for TV and Film, Box's Set Lighting Technician's Handbook, Jackman's Lighting for Digital Video and Television, and EBU R137 with Tech 3355, so that nothing those sources teach a working studio lighting person is missing here.

Who this is for

Anyone who lights for a camera. Corporate studio and webcast crews, broadcast lighting assistants and directors, AV technicians who have been handed a two-camera interview set, and stage lighting people discovering that everything they know about lighting a room is only half of what lighting a picture needs.

This Book Does Not Replace the Manual or Your Code

Two boundaries, and both matter more in this subject than in most.

Fixtures and cameras differ. Colour temperature adjustment, output curves, PWM frequency, white balance behaviour and menu structure are model-specific, and the procedure that matters is the one in the document that came with the unit.

Power is the other boundary, and it is a legal one. Feeder, distro, tie-in and anything on the supply side of a receptacle is licensed electrical work in most jurisdictions. This book teaches you the arithmetic so you can plan a rig and hold a competent conversation about it. It does not authorise you to perform work your local code reserves for a licensed electrician, and no amount of experience substitutes for that licence.

How to Use This Book

Read the first three chapters in order and do not skip them. Everything else in the craft is downstream of understanding what the camera actually does, and of being able to read a picture with a tool rather than an opinion.

Get to a scope

The single fastest thing you can do for your lighting is to work somewhere with a waveform monitor and use it until reading one is automatic. A lighting person who can read a waveform is arguing from evidence. A lighting person who cannot is arguing about a monitor's brightness setting.

Keep a notebook

Write down the levels. Key at a given stop on a given face, at a given distance, with a given diffusion -- those numbers are the beginning of being able to walk into a room and be right in ten minutes rather than an hour.

Write down what each guest needed. Glasses, a bald head, very dark or very pale skin, a white shirt against a dark suit. The same problems recur, and the fix you improvised at 6am is worth more written down than remembered.

Write down the studio's own quirks -- which circuit trips, which fixture drifts warm, which grid position fouls the camera crane. An installed studio accumulates these, and they are institutional knowledge that nobody has recorded.

A note on the words

Key, fill and back are names for three decisions, not a formula. A stop is a doubling or halving of light. IRE is a number on a waveform, not a brightness. Colour temperature is the colour of white, and it is not the same thing as colour rendering -- two fixtures can read identical on one and differ badly on the other. Gain is the camera making up for light you did not provide, and it costs noise.

Gaffer, lighting director and lighting designer mean different things in film, in broadcast and in theatre, and people will use them at you interchangeably. Chapter nineteen sorts them out.

A note on safety

Lighting is the hottest and most heavily loaded department in a studio. Fixtures burn, they hang above people, and the department's normal working day involves both height and mains power.

Three specifics. A tungsten fixture stays hot long after it is off, and gloves are the procedure, not a preference. Anything overhead gets a safety bond as well as a clamp, every time, because the clamp that looks fine is the one that fails. And power beyond the wall socket is somebody else's licensed work -- knowing where your authority ends is a safety skill, not a limitation.

The Camera Is Not the Eye

Everything else in this book follows from one fact. Your eye adapts, compensates and remembers. The camera does none of those things, and it has far less range than you do.

What your eye is doing that the camera is not

Your eye adjusts locally and continuously. Look at a window, and the iris closes; look back at the room, and it opens. You never see the whole scene at one exposure, so you never notice that the window is forty times brighter than the far wall.

A camera takes one exposure for the whole frame. It cannot close down for the window and open up for the room. Whatever range it has, it spends all of it at once, on everything in shot.

Your eye also corrects colour. Walk from daylight into a tungsten room and within a minute the white paper looks white again. The camera has one white balance, set once, and holds it.

Dynamic range, and what falls off each end

Range is the distance between the darkest thing that is still detail and the brightest thing that is still detail. Above the top, highlights clip -- they go to flat white with nothing in them, and no amount of correction afterwards brings anything back, because nothing was recorded. Below the bottom, shadows crush to black and fill with noise.

Modern cameras have far more range than broadcast cameras had twenty years ago, which has changed the craft but not the principle. There is still a top and a bottom, they are still closer together than your eye's, and both failures are still permanent.

Gain, and the price of not providing light

When there is not enough light, the camera can amplify. That is gain, and it is the camera doing the lighting department's job badly. Gain buys brightness and pays in noise, in crushed colour and in a picture that looks cheap in a way viewers recognise without being able to name.

A lighting person's real product is a picture the camera can make at its native sensitivity. Every stop of gain the operator has to add is a stop you did not deliver.

Why a monitor lies to you

A picture monitor tells you about the monitor. Its brightness, its contrast, its calibration, the room light falling on it and the angle you are standing at all change what you see, and none of them change the signal.

This is why the craft moved to measurement. A waveform and a false-colour display describe the signal itself, and they agree with each other in every room. That is the next two chapters, and they are the two that change people's work most.

The eye against the camera

How to do it

1. Stand in a room with a window and look around it. Note that you can see detail both outside and in the darkest corner.
2. Point a camera at the same scene and expose for the room.
3. Look at the window in the picture. It is white with nothing in it.
4. Expose for the window instead, and look at the room. It is black.
5. That distance, which your eye crossed without noticing, is the range you now have to design inside.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A camera, a monitor, and a room with a window.

Exposure, and the Numbers You Work To

A lighting decision becomes real when it becomes a number, because a number is the only form the camera department can answer.

Stops, and why lighting is counted in doublings

A stop is a doubling or a halving of light. That is the whole definition, and it is the unit the entire imaging chain is built on. One stop more is twice the light. One stop less is half.

It matters because light does not feel like it behaves. Moving a fixture from ten feet to fourteen is not a small change; it is a full stop. Adding a second layer of diffusion is often a stop. Two stops down looks like a different lighting design, not a slightly dimmer one.

Foot candles, lux, and what a meter tells you

An incident meter measures the light arriving at a point, in foot candles or lux, and converts it to a stop at a given sensitivity and shutter. You hold it at the subject, pointed at the fixture, and you get a number that is true regardless of what anybody's monitor is doing.

Broadcast studios have historically worked to a house level -- a key level everyone builds from, so every set in the building matches and every camera is happy. Ask what it is on your first day. If nobody knows, that tells you something about the studio.

Key, fill and the ratio between them

Measure the key alone at the face. Measure the fill alone. The relationship between those two numbers is the ratio, and it is the single strongest description of a look.

Roughly two to one is soft, flattering, and standard for news and corporate work. Four to one has visible modelling and looks more dramatic. Eight to one is a hard, moody look that most broadcast chains will not carry gracefully. The numbers are the language -- "make it four to one" is an instruction; "make it moodier" is a wish.

IRE, and measuring the signal instead of the light

A meter measures light in the room. IRE measures the signal that came out of the camera, on a scale where zero is black and a hundred is nominal white. They are different measurements of different things, and a lighting person needs both.

The convention worth memorising: skin tone typically sits somewhere around sixty to seventy IRE, and a white shirt should stay below the point where it stops carrying detail. Those two facts will keep you out of most trouble.

The numbers, and what each one measures

Ratios, and what each reads as

How to do it

1. Ask the camera department what sensitivity and shutter they are on.
2. Ask what house level or target stop the studio works to.
3. Put the meter at the subject's face, pointed at the key, with the fill off.
4. Move the fixture or change its output until the meter reads the target -- do not adjust the camera to fix a lighting level.
5. Turn the fill on, measure it alone, and set the ratio you want.
6. Write all three numbers down before anybody sits in the chair.

What goes wrong

Practice it

An incident meter, one fixture, and a subject or a stand-in.

Reading the Picture

Two displays tell you the truth about a picture, and they agree with each other in every room in the world. Learning to read them is the largest single improvement available to a studio lighting person.

The waveform monitor

A waveform plots brightness against horizontal position. The picture's left edge is the display's left edge, and the height of the trace at any point is how bright that part of the frame is, from zero at the bottom to a hundred IRE near the top.

Once that clicks, a waveform is faster to read than a picture. A face appears as a band; the band's height is the exposure. A blown window is a flat line pinned at the top. A crushed shadow is a flat line pinned at the bottom. Flat lines at either extreme are the two things you are looking for, because both mean information has been destroyed.

What to look for, in order

First, is anything clipping at the top? Second, is anything you need crushed at the bottom? Third, where is the skin sitting? Fourth, is the background separated from the subject, or are they at the same height?

That is four questions, answered in about five seconds, and they cover most of what can be wrong with a picture's lighting.

False colour, and why it is easier

False colour maps brightness ranges onto flat colours and paints them over the picture. Instead of a graph you get the frame itself, with clipping in one colour, correct skin in another, and the bottom of the range in a third.

It is less precise than a waveform and far quicker to act on, because it shows you where in the frame the problem is. Most people use false colour to find a problem and a waveform to measure it.

Zebras, and the tool you always have

Zebras are the camera's own overexposure warning -- diagonal stripes over anything above a threshold you set. They are cruder than the other two and they are in every camera, including the one you are handed at short notice.

Set them to warn just below clipping and treat them as a stop sign rather than a measurement. A picture with no zebras anywhere is usually underexposed.

Contrast ratio, and the ceiling the chain has

A look that survives the room can still fall apart downstream. A transmission chain, a compressed stream or a projector has less range than your camera does, and detail that existed in the recording can vanish in delivery.

This is why broadcast has always been more conservative about contrast than film. If the show is going out live over a compressed path, keep the range modest and keep detail away from both extremes. Ask what the delivery path is; it is a lighting constraint, not a technical footnote.

The three tools, compared

What a waveform shape is telling you

How to do it

1. Look at the top of the waveform. Anything flat and pinned is clipped.
2. Look at the bottom. Anything flat and pinned is crushed.
3. Find the skin band and check its height against your target.
4. Check that the background sits at a different height from the subject.
5. Only now look at the picture monitor, and only to judge taste.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A camera with a waveform and false colour, and a lit subject.

Colour Temperature

White is not one colour, the camera has one idea of it at a time, and most studio colour problems are two sources disagreeing about which white they are.

What colour temperature actually is

Colour temperature describes the colour of a white light source in kelvin. Lower numbers are warmer and more orange; higher numbers are cooler and more blue. Tungsten is about 3200K, daylight is nominally 5600K, and an overcast sky can run far higher.

The scale is counter-intuitive on purpose -- it comes from the physics of heated metal, so the hotter the theoretical radiator, the bluer the light. It is worth knowing the numbers rather than the words, because "warm" is a description and 3200K is an instruction.

White balance, and what the camera is doing

White balance is the camera being told what colour the light is, so it can make white look white. Tell it 3200 under a tungsten key and skin looks right. Tell it 5600 under the same key and everything goes orange.

The camera has one white balance for the whole frame, which is the same limitation as exposure and causes the same class of problem. It cannot be 3200 for the left of frame and 5600 for the right.

Mixed sources, and the three ways out

A window and a tungsten key are the classic case. You have three options and the choice is a craft judgement, not a rule. They are the next three sections.

What you cannot do is ignore it. A face half-lit by two different whites is the single most common amateur studio picture, and it reads as wrong to viewers who could not say why.

Convert the daylight

Gel the window to tungsten, with a large sheet of colour correction across the glass, and the whole room becomes one colour of white.

It is the best-looking answer when the window is small and the show is tungsten-balanced, and it costs time, material and usually a ladder. On a long shoot it is worth all three, because a gelled window stops changing on you in the way an ungelled one does not.

Convert the fixtures

Bring your own lights up to daylight instead -- gel the lamps with correction, or simply set LED units to 5600K, which is one menu press and the reason this is now the usual answer.

Choose this when daylight dominates, or when the window is too large to gel. The cost is output: correcting a tungsten fixture to daylight throws away a great deal of light, which is another argument for tuneable LED units over gel.

Balance for the face, and let the window read cool

White balance to the key on the face, and allow the daylight to read blue in frame deliberately.

This is a look rather than a mistake when it is chosen, and a mistake when it is not. The test is whether you can say why the window is blue. Interior-warm against exterior-cool is a convention every viewer reads instantly as indoors at dusk, and it is free.

Practical fixtures and the lights you did not hang

Table lamps, monitor glow, exit signs, a lit logo on the set wall and light spilling off a coloured wall are all sources you did not choose. Every one has a colour temperature, and most of them are wrong.

Walk the set looking for them before you light. Replacing one bulb in a practical is often a bigger improvement than any fixture you could add.

Gels, and what they are for on a camera set

Correction gels shift colour temperature -- CTB towards daylight, CTO towards tungsten, in fractions so you can shift partway. Colour gels change the colour outright, and on a broadcast set they are almost always for the background rather than the face.

LED fixtures have made correction gel much less common, because the fixture just does it. They have not made it obsolete, because you will still be gelling windows, practicals and other people's tungsten units for a long time yet.

Colour temperatures worth knowing

Mixed lighting -- the three ways out

How to do it

1. Turn everything off that you control and look at what is left.
2. Identify every remaining source and its approximate colour temperature.
3. Decide which white the picture is going to be balanced to.
4. Bring the sources you can change to that white -- gel, replace or reset them.
5. White balance the camera on a white card in the subject's position.
6. Look at the background separately; a cool background against a warm face is often the intended answer rather than a fault.

What goes wrong

Practice it

One tungsten or 3200K fixture, one daylight or 5600K source, and a white card.

Colour Rendering, and Matching Fixtures

Two fixtures can agree perfectly about colour temperature and still render a face differently. This is the part of studio lighting that broadcasters had to build a measurement for, because eyes could not settle the argument.

Temperature against rendering

Colour temperature says what colour the white is. Colour rendering says how honestly the source reproduces every other colour -- whether red reads as red, whether skin reads as skin.

They are independent. A cheap LED panel can hit 5600K exactly and still make skin look grey and a red tie look brown, because its spectrum has holes in it where those colours needed energy. The camera reports what it was given.

Where the holes come from

Tungsten is a heated filament, so its spectrum is continuous -- every wavelength is present in some amount, which is why tungsten renders almost everything well and became the reference.

An LED makes light from a handful of narrow emitters plus a phosphor, so its spectrum is lumpy. A good one has been designed to fill the gaps and costs accordingly. A cheap one has a large dip in the reds, which is precisely where skin lives.

CRI, and why broadcast stopped trusting it

CRI was the general lighting industry's rendering measure, averaged over eight pastel samples and judged against a human observer. It was not designed for cameras, it averages away exactly the deep-red failure that matters most, and a fixture can score well on CRI and look poor on television.

That is not an opinion; it is why the broadcast industry commissioned its own measurement.

TLCI, and what a score means

The EBU's Television Lighting Consistency Index, specified in Tech 3355 and recommended in R137, calculates rendering against a model of a standard television camera rather than against a human eye. It answers the question a broadcaster actually has: how much correction will this fixture cost me downstream?

The score runs to 100, where 100 means a colourist would have nothing to do. High eighties and above is generally taken as good for broadcast; low scores mean real correction work, and correction work is a cost that recurs on every programme the fixture is used for.

That cost comparison is explicitly what R137 is for -- weighing the price of correcting colour in post against the price of buying better luminaires once. It is the argument to make when asking for a fixture budget, and it is more persuasive than saying the cheap ones look bad.

TLMF, and matching fixtures to each other

A second measurement, the Television Luminaire Matching Factor, asks a different question -- not how good is this fixture, but how well does it agree with that one.

This is the studio problem rather than the purchasing problem. A studio is a set of fixtures that have to behave as one system. A single odd unit in a wash of eight is invisible standing in the room and obvious on camera, because the camera compares everything in the frame at once and you do not.

How rendering is actually measured

Behind the index is a spectroradiometer -- an instrument that measures how much energy a source emits at each wavelength, which is the raw data every colour metric is calculated from. Tech 3355's supplement includes a primer on the technique for exactly this audience.

You are unlikely to own one. You are quite likely to be handed a spec sheet quoting numbers from one, and knowing where those numbers come from is the difference between reading a spec and believing a brochure.

Matching in practice, without an instrument

Put the fixtures side by side at the same colour temperature and output, on the same white card, and look at the card on camera -- not by eye. Any difference the camera shows is a difference your audience will see.

Then keep the studio's fixtures as a set. Buy in batches, keep them together, keep firmware consistent, and log which unit went out for repair -- because a repaired or replaced LED engine is frequently a different batch, and batch is where matching goes wrong.

The colour measurements, and what each answers

Reading a fixture's spec sheet honestly

How to do it

1. Ask for a TLCI figure, and ask at what colour temperature it was measured.
2. Ask for the deep red performance specifically, not the averaged figure.
3. Get one on demonstration and put it beside the fixtures you already own.
4. Light the same white card and the same face with each, at matched temperature and level.
5. Look at both on the studio's own camera, on a waveform and in the picture.
6. Price the correction work the worse option would cost per programme, and put that number in the request.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Two different models of white LED fixture, a white card, a colour chart or a red object, and a camera.

Fixtures, and What Each One Is For

The fixture is the look. A dimmer makes a hard light dimmer; it does not make it soft. Choosing wrong at the start is not something you correct later.

The one thing that decides softness

Softness is the apparent size of the source as seen from the subject, and nothing else. A big source close up is soft. The same source across the room is hard, because from the subject's point of view it has become small.

This is why a four-foot softbox at three feet wraps around a face and the same box at fifteen feet does not. Move a soft light away and you have made a hard light. There is no setting that changes this.

Fresnels, and controllable hard light

A fresnel is a lamp behind a stepped lens that can be moved towards or away from it, spotting the beam down or flooding it out. It gives a defined edge, it throws a long way, and barn doors on the front let you cut light off a wall.

It is the classic studio back light and the classic hard key. What it is not is flattering on its own, because a small source renders every texture on a face.

Soft boxes and soft panels

A soft box is a source firing into a large diffused surface. A panel is an array of emitters behind diffusion. Both are soft because they are large, and both fall off fast, which means the distance you place them at is a real exposure decision.

Soft sources are the default studio key for talking heads, because faces you did not cast and cannot light twice survive soft light far better than hard.

Open-face and PAR sources

An open-face unit has no lens -- just a lamp and a reflector. It is efficient, punchy, cheap and hard to control, and it is what gets used to punch light through diffusion or to hit a background from a distance.

A PAR is a sealed or lensed unit with a defined beam angle. In a studio they show up as background units, set accents and anywhere a wide even wash is wanted from a short throw.

Cyc lights and background units

A cyc light is asymmetric on purpose. Its reflector throws more light upward than down, so a unit sitting on the floor at the base of a cyclorama or a wall lights the whole height of it evenly instead of producing a bright band at the bottom.

Anybody who has tried to light a cyc with ordinary fixtures knows why these exist. This is the clearest case in the trade of a specialist fixture doing in one unit what general-purpose gear does badly with six.

LED fixtures, and what changed

LED units took over studio lighting for four reasons, only one of which is the electricity bill. They run cool, which matters enormously in a small room with people in it. They are tuneable, so mixed sources are a menu setting. They dim without shifting colour, which tungsten does not. And they are light enough to hang where tungsten needed engineering.

What they cost you is rendering risk, flicker risk at high frame rates, and a colour behaviour that has to be checked rather than assumed -- which is why the two preceding chapters exist.

Ring lights, on-camera lights and the rest

A ring light produces the flat, shadowless, circular-catchlight look that is now instantly readable as a webcam picture, for better or worse. On-camera panels exist for news gathering where there is no time to rig anything.

Both are tools for a situation, not general-purpose lights. Knowing what their look reads as is part of choosing them on purpose rather than by default.

Fixtures, and what each is for

What actually makes light soft

How to do it

1. Decide how soft you want it, which is a decision about the face and the programme, not about the fixture on the shelf.
2. Pick the largest source you can place at the distance you need.
3. Place it, then measure -- softness first, level second.
4. If the level is wrong, change the source or its diffusion before you change its distance, because distance changes the quality too.
5. Check the shadow edge on the wall behind. That edge is your softness, and it is the thing you actually chose.

What goes wrong

Practice it

One hard fixture, one soft source, a subject and a wall behind them.

Shaping the Light You Have

Diffusion, bounce, flags and nets do more for a picture than a bigger fixture, and they are cheaper, quieter and cooler than one.

Diffusion, and what each weight costs

Diffusion scatters light so the source becomes bigger and softer, and it always costs output. A light grid cloth or a quarter-weight takes the edge off and costs a fraction of a stop. A heavy diffusion makes a genuinely soft source and can cost a stop or more.

The distance from source to diffusion matters as much as the material. Diffusion right on the fixture barely enlarges the source. The same material three feet in front makes a large soft source, because the whole lit area of the material becomes the light.

Bounce

Bouncing a hard light off a white card, a wall or a ceiling makes the biggest, softest source available to you, and it costs the most light -- frequently two stops or more.

It is also the fastest fix for a room with no space for stands. And it carries one warning: whatever you bounce off contributes its colour, so a bounce off a cream wall is a warm source and a bounce off a blue-grey one is a problem.

Flags, cutters and negative fill

A flag is an opaque panel that takes light away from somewhere. Most of the difference between a competent picture and a good one is subtraction -- light kept off a wall, off a shoulder, off a lens.

Negative fill is the same idea used deliberately: a black panel placed to absorb ambient light on one side of a face, which increases the ratio without adding a single fixture. In a small white studio it is often the only way to get any modelling at all.

Nets, scrims and taking light down

A net or a scrim reduces output without changing colour or quality -- a single takes off roughly a third of a stop to a half, a double roughly a stop, depending on the material.

They exist because the alternatives are worse. Moving the fixture changes the quality. Dimming a tungsten fixture changes its colour. A net changes the level and nothing else, which is precisely what you often want.

Barn doors, snoots and the tools on the fixture

Barn doors on a hard fixture are the first and crudest cut, and they only work on a source with an edge. A snoot narrows a beam into a tight circle, which is how a set accent or a small pool on a logo gets made.

A gobo arm or a flag on a stand, further from the source, cuts far more cleanly than anything mounted on the fixture, because the further a cutter is from a source the harder its edge becomes.

Where the shaping goes, and why

Close to the source, everything is soft and gradual. Far from the source, everything is precise. That single relationship governs every shaping decision you will make.

So diffusion goes well forward of the fixture when you want size, and a flag goes well forward of the fixture when you want a crisp cut. Tools clamped to the front of a light are the convenient option, not the effective one.

The shaping tools, and what each costs

Distance from the source decides the result

How to do it

1. Place the hard fixture where its throw suits the shot.
2. Put the diffusion frame between it and the subject, as far forward as the space allows.
3. Measure at the face, and expect to have lost a stop or more.
4. Flag the spill off the background before you judge anything.
5. Add negative fill on the fill side and measure the ratio again.
6. Only now decide whether you actually need another fixture.

What goes wrong

Practice it

One hard fixture, a diffusion frame, a flag, a black panel and a white wall behind a subject.

Lighting a Face

Key, fill and back is not a rule. It is a way of naming three separate decisions, each answering a different question, and the value of the naming is that you can get one of them wrong on purpose.

The three questions

The key answers "where is the light coming from, and what shape does it make on this face?" It sets the exposure and it does all the modelling. Everything else in the setup is a reaction to it.

The fill answers "how dark are the shadows the key made?" Not "how bright is the other side" -- the fill's only job is deciding how much of the key's shadow the camera keeps.

The back light answers "is this person separate from the wall behind them?" It contributes almost nothing to exposure and it is the single most-omitted fixture in amateur studio lighting.

Where the key actually goes

Somewhere off the camera axis, and somewhere above eye level. Roughly thirty to forty-five degrees to one side and a similar amount above is the conventional starting point, and there is a reason it is conventional: it puts a small triangle of light on the shadow-side cheek, and that triangle is what makes a face look three-dimensional on a flat screen.

Too far round and you get a hard line down the centre of the face. Too far above and the eyes go into shadow, which is the fastest way to make somebody look untrustworthy. Too close to the lens and the face flattens out completely.

Catchlights, and why the eyes matter most

A catchlight is the reflection of your source in the eye. Eyes without one read as dead, and a viewer registers that immediately without knowing what they are responding to.

This is the strongest argument for a soft key placed reasonably close. A large near source puts a large soft catchlight in the eye and puts light into the socket. If the eyes are in shadow, nothing else you fix will rescue the picture.

Skin, and the range you have to serve

Different skin reflects very different amounts of light, and a lighting approach set up for one person will not automatically serve another. Very dark skin needs more light on it, and it particularly needs a source with good rendering, because that is where cheap fixtures fail visibly. Very pale skin clips sooner and often needs the key brought down rather than the fill brought up.

Two people with very different skin in the same two-shot is a real problem and it has a real answer: light them separately. One key at one level for both, with a separate adjustment for each, is routine professional practice, not special treatment.

An industry that has historically lit for one range of skin and treated the rest as a problem is an industry that produced worse pictures than it needed to. Metering both faces and lighting each correctly is competence.

Glasses

Glasses reflect your key straight back into the lens. Two fixes, in order: raise the key until the reflection falls below the frame of the lens, or move it further to the side until the reflection goes off the edge of the glass.

Raising it is usually better, because moving round changes the modelling. If neither works, a small tilt of the glasses -- ask the guest to push them very slightly down at the back -- will clear it, and takes four seconds.

Bald heads, foreheads and shiny skin

A bald head or a high forehead is a specular surface pointed at the ceiling, so overhead light produces a hot patch that will clip before anything else in frame does.

Bring the key lower and further forward, get the top light off the head, and ask for powder. Powder is makeup's job and it is the actual fix; lighting can only reduce the problem.

Hair, and the back light people get wrong

Back light on dark hair against a dark background is what stops a head becoming a silhouette. Back light on blonde hair at the same level is a halo that clips.

So the back light is set per person, by looking, every time. It is the fixture most often left at whatever it was yesterday, and hair is the thing that changed.

Clothing you did not choose

A white shirt under a dark jacket is the hardest common wardrobe problem in broadcast, because the two are several stops apart and both are in frame. A pure white shirt will clip at an exposure that leaves the face correct.

Flag light off the shirt, bring the key round so it hits the face more than the chest, and if there is a wardrobe person, ask for an off-white or a pale blue instead. Asking early is a lighting skill.

What each light is deciding

Faces, and what each needs

How to do it

1. Put the key roughly thirty to forty-five degrees off axis and above, and look at the triangle on the shadow cheek.
2. Check the eyes. If there is no catchlight or the sockets are dark, the key is too high or too far away. Fix that before anything else.
3. Meter the key at the face and set your level.
4. Add fill and set the ratio by measurement, not by eye.
5. Set the back light by looking at this person's hair against this background.
6. Look for glasses reflections, forehead hot spots and a clipping shirt, in that order.
7. Check the waveform before you tell anyone you are ready.

What goes wrong

Practice it

One subject, three fixtures, and a wall behind them. Ideally a second subject with noticeably different skin or hair.

The Interview Setup

It is the most-shot thing in corporate and broadcast video, and it is what a new studio lighting person will be asked for first. Learn it as a sequence so that it survives being done badly.

The single-camera sit-down

One subject, one camera, an interviewer just off the lens on the side you want the subject looking. Key on the same side as the interviewer, so the subject's eyeline goes into their own key light rather than away from it. Fill on the camera side. Back light. Something behind them.

That order is not arbitrary -- keying towards the eyeline puts the light on the side of the face the audience mostly sees, and leaves the shadow on the side turned away.

Leaving room for nose and chin

A key placed too far round throws a nose shadow across the far cheek, and a key placed too high throws a chin shadow down the neck. Both are ugly, both are common, and both are cured by small moves rather than more light.

The check is quick. Look at the nose shadow -- it should fall towards the corner of the mouth, not across the cheek. Look at the neck -- it should not have a hard band on it.

The two-shot

Two people facing each other, one camera on each, both in the wide. Now every fixture has to work for two shots at once, and a back light for one person is frequently a lens flare for the other camera.

The discipline is to walk to each camera position and look through it before you commit. A two-shot that was lit from one standing position is a two-shot that will surprise you.

Over-the-shoulder and the reverse

When the camera shoots past one person onto the other, the near person's shoulder and the back of their head are in frame and unlit, and they read as a black shape unless something is put on them.

An edge on the near shoulder solves it. It is a small fixture doing a small job and it is the thing most often missing from an otherwise competent reverse.

Cross-keying

For two people facing each other, one classical solution is to use each person's key as the other's back light. It is efficient, it looks good, and it means two fixtures do the work of four.

It also means every adjustment affects two people, so the setup is faster to rig and slower to change. Know that trade before you choose it under time pressure.

The standing interview

Standing subjects move, and they move out of a soft key's usable area quickly because soft sources fall off fast. A standing interview needs either a larger source further back or a mark on the floor.

Give them the mark. It is not rude; it is what everybody in the business does, and the alternative is a subject who drifts a stop darker over four minutes.

Three people and a table

The moment there are three, individual keys start fighting and the honest answer is usually a soft overhead wash plus individual back lights, accepting slightly less modelling in exchange for a setup that works whoever leans forward.

Broadcast panel shows are lit this way for exactly this reason. The look is less sculpted than a single interview on purpose.

The interview variants, and what each adds

The shadows to check every time

How to do it

1. Establish where the subject sits and how far they are off the background. Further is better; three feet minimum if you can get it.
2. Place the interviewer, so you know which side the eyeline goes.
3. Key on the eyeline side, off axis and above. Check the triangle, the catchlight, the nose shadow and the chin.
4. Meter the key at the face and set the level.
5. Fill from the camera side, measured to your ratio.
6. Back light, set for this person's hair against this background.
7. Light the background separately. It is a different decision.
8. Walk to every camera position and look through it.
9. Check the waveform, then sit in the chair yourself and look for anything in your eyes.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A subject, a chair, a background, and at least three fixtures.

Studio Setups

A studio is a room that is lit once and then run for years. Four standard shapes cover most of what is shot in one, and each has a different problem.

The installed grid, and what it means for you

An installed studio has fixtures already in the ceiling, on a grid, often on hoists or pantographs, and pointed roughly where the last show needed them. You are not designing from nothing; you are adapting an installation.

That changes the craft. The question is rarely "what would I hang here" and usually "what do I already have, where is it, and what is the smallest change that gets this show right". A lighting person who knows their own grid position by position works four times faster than one who does not.

The presenter desk

Someone seated behind a desk, looking at a camera. The specific problems are the desk surface bouncing light up under the chin, the monitor or laptop in front of them contributing its own colour, and a wide shot that reveals far more of the room than the tight one.

Kill the bounce off the desk -- a matte surface, or flag the light that is hitting it. Check what the screens are doing to the face. And light for the wide shot, because the tight one is easier.

The standup

Someone standing, usually in front of a screen, a wall or a window, often gesturing and moving. The problem is coverage: a soft key serves a seated subject for hours and loses a standing one in thirty seconds.

Bigger source, further back, and a floor mark. And more attention to the background, because a standing shot shows much more of it.

The panel

Three or more people, usually around a table, all of whom will lean forward and sit back unpredictably. Individual keys fight; the standard answer is a soft overhead wash with individual back lights.

The specific trap is the person at the end of the table, who is furthest from the middle of the wash and will be darker than the rest. Meter every seat, not the middle one.

The demo or product table

An object rather than a face, and the rules invert. Objects want hard light for texture and edges, and they want the light from directions that reveal shape rather than flatten it. A product lit like a face looks like nothing.

Watch specular reflections. Anything glossy will show the fixture in it, and the fix is moving the fixture rather than the object, because the object is the shot.

What is common to all four

Every one of them wants the subject well off the background, a background lit as its own decision, no clipping, measured levels, and a camera that has not been asked to add gain.

Every one of them also wants the wide shot checked. A studio setup that works only in the tight shot is a setup that will fail the moment the director cuts wide, which they will.

The house look, and why it exists

An installed studio usually has a documented house look -- key level, ratio, colour temperature, grid positions, and a plot. Its purpose is that any lighting person can walk in and reproduce yesterday's picture.

If it exists, learn it before you improve it. If it does not, writing it down is the most valuable thing you will do in that building.

The four studio setups

What to learn about a studio on your first day

How to do it

1. Get the house plot, or walk the grid and draw one.
2. Find out what the show actually needs -- how many people, seated or standing, how many cameras, how wide.
3. Identify the smallest set of changes to the existing rig that gets there. Refocusing beats rehanging; rehanging beats adding.
4. Check the wide shot for anything now in frame that was not before.
5. Meter every position anybody will occupy.
6. Record what you changed, so the next show starts from a known state.

What goes wrong

Practice it

An installed studio, or any room you can rig as one.

The Background and the Set

A face lit perfectly against a dead grey wall still looks like nothing. The background is half the picture and it is where most of the difference between competent and good actually lives.

Separation comes first

Before anything decorative, the background has one job: to be a different brightness from the subject, so the subject is legible. A dark head against a dark wall merges. A pale head against a pale wall merges. Either failure ruins the shot.

You get separation three ways -- back light on the subject, light on the background, or a different background. All three are legitimate, and the cheapest is usually moving the subject further forward so the background falls off naturally.

Distance, and the free gradient

Move a subject away from a wall and two good things happen at once. Their shadow stops landing on it, and the wall gets darker because light falls off with distance. You have bought separation and lost a problem, for nothing.

Three feet is a workable minimum. Six is better. In a small room this single move does more than any fixture you could add, and it is the first thing to try.

Lighting a wall evenly, and lighting it on purpose

A flat wall lit from one side has a bright end and a dark end, which reads as a mistake. Lit from several positions it is even, which reads as a wall.

Neither is interesting. A wall with a deliberate gradient, or a pool of light, or a shadow pattern across it, gives the eye something to read as depth. The decision is what you want the wall to say, and then you build it.

The cyclorama

A cyc is a large seamless surface, usually white or grey, lit to whatever colour the show wants. Lit well it is a limitless background. Lit badly it is a grubby wall with a bright stripe at the bottom.

Cyc lights on the floor plus units from the grid, both, is how even coverage over the full height is normally achieved. And the cyc's own cleanliness matters -- a scuff you cannot see standing next to it is visible on camera.

Practicals, and the lights that are in the picture

A table lamp, a neon sign, a lit shelf, a logo on a wall. These are set dressing that emits light, and they do three things: they look good, they give the eye depth, and they motivate your lighting -- the audience believes the key because there is apparently a lamp there.

They also need controlling. A practical in shot will usually clip at the exposure the face needs, so it wants a lower-wattage bulb or a dimmer than anybody expects. Get one that is on a dimmer.

Motivated lighting, and why it reads

Motivated lighting means the light appears to come from something the audience can see -- a window, a lamp, a screen. It is a stronger technique than it sounds, because a viewer accepts a lighting choice they can explain and questions one they cannot.

In a studio there is often nothing to motivate from, which is why a practical in frame is worth more than its light output.

Atmosphere -- haze, colour and time of day

Once the picture is legal, the remaining decisions are about what the light says. A cool background reads as cold, formal, or night. A warm one reads as domestic. A gradient reads as depth. Haze makes beams visible and turns back light into something the audience can see.

Haze in a broadcast studio is a decision with consequences -- smoke detectors, people's comfort, and a picture that goes milky if you overdo it. But a small amount changes a flat studio into a space, and it is underused in corporate work.

Getting separation

What a background reads as

How to do it

1. Move the subject as far off it as the room allows.
2. Decide what you want it to read as before you point anything at it.
3. Light it as its own separate problem, with its own fixtures.
4. Meter it, and set it relative to the face rather than absolutely.
5. Check for the subject's shadow on it, and for your own fixtures in shot.
6. Add practicals or a pattern if it still reads as a wall.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A subject, a plain wall, and at least two fixtures you can spare for the background.

Green Screen and LED Walls

Two ways of putting a subject somewhere they are not, with opposite lighting problems. A key fails on lighting long before it fails on software, and an LED wall is a light source you do not control.

What a key actually needs

Chroma keying software separates a subject from a background by colour. To do that well it needs the screen to be one colour, evenly lit, saturated, and not falling on the subject. Those are four separate requirements and three of them are lighting.

Almost every bad key is an evenness problem. A screen with a bright middle and dark corners is several colours to the software, and it will pull a different key in each region, which is what produces a ragged edge.

Evenness, and how to measure it

Light the screen with its own fixtures, from both sides, at a shallow angle, and then measure it. Walk an incident meter across it -- centre, corners, edges -- and aim to be within a third of a stop across the whole usable area.

A waveform is the quicker check. Point the camera at the screen alone and look at the trace: an even screen is a flat band, and any hump or dip in that band is an unevenness you will pay for in the key.

Separation, and keeping green off the subject

Green spill on a subject's shoulders and hair is what puts a green fringe round them, and the software removes it by eating into the edge. The fix is distance -- the further the subject is from the screen, the less spill lands on them.

Six to ten feet is a realistic working minimum, and more is better. Then a back light or edge from a neutral or slightly warm source counteracts what spill remains, which is why a green-screen setup usually needs one more fixture than the same shot on a real background.

Green against blue

Green is the default because digital sensors carry more green information, so a green key is cleaner. Blue is chosen when the subject has green in their wardrobe, or when the intended background is a night or blue-lit scene where blue spill would be less objectionable.

The practical rule is that nobody in shot wears the colour of the screen. Ask before the guest arrives; it is a five-second question that saves the shot.

Lighting the subject to match the plate

A perfectly keyed subject dropped onto a background they do not match reads as a cutout instantly. If the plate is lit from the left, your key goes on the left. If the plate is warm afternoon light, your subject is not lit at 5600K.

Ask what they are going into before you light. It is the difference between a composite and a collage, and it costs nothing at the time and cannot be fixed afterwards.

LED walls -- a background that emits

An LED wall or a large screen behind a subject inverts the problem. There is nothing to key, and instead you have a very large, very bright, coloured light source pointed at the back of your subject, changing content as the show runs.

Three consequences. It spills coloured light onto hair and shoulders, and that colour changes when the content does. It competes with your exposure, because it is often brighter than the face. And it constrains where you can put fixtures, because anything spilling onto the wall washes the wall out.

Exposing for a wall and a face at once

Set the face first, then ask the video department to bring the wall's brightness to where it sits correctly against it. That request is normal and they expect it -- a wall run at its full output will clip in almost every studio picture.

Then keep your own light off the wall. A key spilling onto an LED wall lifts its blacks and destroys the contrast that made it worth having, and it is the commonest fault in this kind of studio.

Moire, refresh and the things that are not lighting

A wall can produce moire patterns against the camera's sensor, and scan lines or banding if its refresh rate and the camera's shutter disagree. Neither is a lighting fault and both will be described to you as one.

Know the names so you can say them. Moire is a pitch-against-sensor problem, fixed by camera distance, angle or a slight defocus. Banding is a refresh-against-shutter problem, fixed by genlock or a shutter change. Then it goes to the right department.

Green screen, and what each requirement is for

Green screen against LED wall

How to do it

1. Get the subject as far off the screen as the room allows, six feet minimum.
2. Light the screen with its own fixtures from both sides, shallow.
3. Measure the screen -- corners, edges and centre -- and get inside a third of a stop.
4. Check the screen alone on a waveform; the band should be flat.
5. Now light the subject, matching the direction and colour of the plate they are going into.
6. Flag your subject light off the screen, and the screen light off the subject.
7. Add a neutral or slightly warm edge to counteract remaining spill.
8. Check the subject's hair and shoulders on camera for green fringing.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A green screen or a large screen, a subject, and a camera with a waveform.

Flicker

A fixture that looks perfectly steady to your eye can beat against a camera's shutter and ruin material nobody can reshoot. It is the one fault in this book that is completely invisible in the room.

Why flicker exists at all

Mains power alternates, so a light running directly off it brightens and dims at twice the mains frequency -- a hundred or a hundred and twenty times a second. Your eye integrates that into steady light. A camera samples it, briefly, many times a second.

If the camera's sampling and the light's cycling do not divide evenly into each other, each frame catches the light at a different point in its cycle, and the recording pulses. That is flicker, and it is arithmetic rather than a fault.

Frame rate, shutter and the safe combinations

At 24, 25, 30, 50 and 60 frames per second on the matching mains frequency, the numbers divide and things are generally safe. The trouble starts off those numbers -- and especially in high-speed work, where 120 or 240 frames per second will find flicker in almost anything that is not designed for it.

Shutter angle matters as much as frame rate, because it decides how long each sample is. A shorter shutter samples a smaller slice of the cycle and is more likely to catch a different part of it each time. So a fast shutter makes flicker worse, which is counter-intuitive and worth remembering.

Tungsten, discharge and LED, compared

A tungsten filament has thermal mass. It stays hot through the cycle and barely dims, which is why tungsten is close to flicker-free and became the safe default.

A discharge source has no thermal mass and follows the cycle closely, which is why HMI units on magnetic ballasts flicker badly and why electronic flicker-free ballasts were developed.

An LED does not follow the mains at all -- it follows its driver. Which means the flicker behaviour of an LED fixture is a design decision made by its manufacturer, and there is no way to infer it from the technology.

PWM, and the flicker that is built in

Most LED fixtures dim by pulse-width modulation -- switching fully on and off very fast, and varying how long the on period lasts. The perceived brightness is the average; the actual output is a square wave.

If that switching frequency is low, a camera will see it. A cheap fixture might switch at a few hundred hertz, which is fine at 25 frames per second and a disaster at 240. Good fixtures switch far higher, or offer a selectable frequency in the menu specifically for camera work.

The worst part is that PWM flicker often appears only at certain dim levels. A fixture that is clean at full can pulse at forty per cent, which is exactly the sort of fault that gets discovered in an edit.

Testing for it, which takes one minute

Point the camera at the fixture, at the frame rate and shutter the show will use, and run the fixture through its whole dim range while watching the picture. Then do it again at the highest frame rate anybody might use.

That is the entire test, and it is the single most valuable minute available before a shoot. Nothing else in this book is so cheap to check and so expensive to discover late.

LED walls, screens and computer monitors

Any emissive display in shot has the same problem, and it is usually worse because its refresh rate is fixed by the display rather than chosen by you. Banding rolling through a monitor or a wall is this fault.

The fix is genlock -- locking the display's refresh to the camera's timing -- or, failing that, a shutter setting that happens to divide evenly. It is a video department job, and knowing to send it there is the lighting contribution.

Sources, and their flicker behaviour

What makes flicker worse

How to do it

1. Set the camera to the frame rate and shutter the show will actually use.
2. Point it at the fixture, filling enough of frame to see clearly.
3. Run the fixture from full down to its lowest usable level, slowly, watching the picture the whole way.
4. Repeat at the highest frame rate anyone on the production might use.
5. Note any level at which it pulses, and either avoid that level or avoid that fixture.
6. Do the same for any screen or LED wall that will be in shot.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A camera with adjustable frame rate and shutter, and at least two different LED fixtures, ideally one cheap.

Power

The arithmetic that stops you tripping a breaker in front of an audience, done before you plug anything in -- and an honest account of where a lighting person's authority over power ends.

Volts, amps and watts

Watts are power -- what a fixture consumes. Volts are the supply. Amps are current, which is what a breaker limits and what a cable has to carry. The relationship is watts equals volts times amps, and rearranged, amps equals watts divided by volts.

That single rearrangement is the whole of practical load calculation. A 1000W fixture on a 120V supply draws roughly eight and a third amps. The same fixture on 230V draws about four and a third. Which is why North American and European crews have different instincts about how much you can put on a circuit, and why you check rather than assume when you travel.

What a circuit will actually carry

A 15A circuit does not give you 15A to use. The convention is to load a circuit to no more than eighty per cent of its rating for anything running continuously, which puts a 15A circuit at 12A usable and a 20A circuit at 16A.

In round numbers on a 120V supply, that is about 1400W on a 15A circuit and about 1900W on a 20A one. Two 1000W fixtures on one 15A circuit is a trip, and it will happen when they are both cold and drawing their inrush at the same moment.

Inrush, and why it trips on switch-on

A cold tungsten filament has far lower resistance than a hot one, so it draws a large surge for a fraction of a second at switch-on. Switch-mode power supplies in LED fixtures do something similar for different reasons.

This is why a rig that has run happily all day trips when everything is switched on at once after a break. The answer is to bring things up in stages or on a dimmer, not to conclude that the circuit is faulty.

Voltage drop over distance

Push current down a long thin cable and voltage falls along it. At the far end the fixture sees less than it should, which for tungsten means dimmer and warmer light, and for some electronics means unpredictable behaviour.

Long runs want heavier cable, and "long" starts sooner than people expect on high loads. If the fixtures at the end of a run look warm and low compared with the near ones, this is why, and no amount of dimmer adjustment fixes it.

Circuits, phases and balancing

A larger supply comes in as several phases, and the load should be spread reasonably evenly across them. A rig with everything on one phase and nothing on the others is an installation running badly even if nothing trips.

You do not need to be an electrician to ask "which phase is this circuit on" and to keep a note. Balancing is part of planning a rig, and the person who knows the answer is usually the lighting person, because nobody else has a reason to care.

Where your authority ends

Plugging a fixture into a receptacle is lighting work everywhere. Connecting feeder cable, opening a panel, tying into a supply, landing a generator or modifying anything on the supply side of a receptacle is licensed electrical work in most jurisdictions.

This is a legal boundary, not a matter of competence or confidence. Experienced lighting people who can do this work perfectly well still do not do it where the law reserves it, because the consequence of an incident is not technical.

What you do own is the planning. Knowing the load, knowing what you need, and being able to state it clearly to the electrician is the professional contribution, and it is more useful than being willing to do their job.

Distro, and reading a rig's power as a system

A distro takes one large supply and splits it into circuits with their own protection. In a studio this is usually installed and permanent; on location it arrives on a truck. Either way, the lighting person's job is knowing what is on which circuit.

Write it down. A rig whose power layout exists only in one person's head is a rig that becomes undiagnosable the day that person is not there.

Dimming and control in a studio

An installed studio is mostly presets and a small console, and the control system is part of the room rather than a rental item. Dimmer racks for tungsten, DMX or a network for LED fixtures, and a set of stored states for the shows the room runs.

Two things to understand. Dimming a tungsten fixture lowers its colour temperature, so a tungsten rig at seventy per cent is a warmer rig, and that is a colour decision disguised as a level one. And LED fixtures dim by their own driver, so the console is asking rather than controlling, and the fixture's dim curve is the fixture's business.

Load arithmetic worth memorising

Who does what with power

Power symptoms, and what they mean

How to do it

1. Add up the wattage of everything you intend to use.
2. Divide by the supply voltage to get amps.
3. Divide the rig across circuits so no circuit exceeds eighty per cent of its rating.
4. Check the longest cable run and increase the cable size if the load is high.
5. Ask which phase each circuit is on, and balance across them.
6. Write the whole layout down and leave a copy at the rack.
7. Bring the rig up in stages rather than all at once.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A rig of several fixtures, their wattages, and the circuits available to you.

Rigging and Safety in a Studio

Everything overhead is over somebody's head. A studio grid has its own rules, and lighting is the hottest and most heavily loaded department in the room.

The grid, and what is actually holding the fixture

A studio grid is a structural system with a rated capacity, and that capacity belongs to the whole grid rather than to each bar. Somebody worked it out, and it is written down somewhere in the building.

Every fixture hangs on a clamp, and every fixture also gets a safety bond -- a steel wire from the fixture to the structure, independent of the clamp. The bond is not a precaution against carelessness; it is what catches the fixture when the clamp fails, and clamps do fail.

Hoists and pantographs

A hoist raises and lowers a fixture or a bar so it can be worked on at a sensible height. A pantograph is a spring-balanced scissor mechanism that holds a fixture at whatever height you pull it to.

Both are mechanical devices with springs or motors under load, and both are genuinely dangerous when they fail or when they are worked on without being secured. They also both go out of balance as the fixture on them is changed for a heavier or lighter one, which is the commonest way a pantograph becomes a hazard.

Nothing above people, ever

While anything is being rigged, nobody is underneath. That means the area is cleared and it stays cleared, and it applies to the presenter who wants to check their notes just as much as to the crew.

It also applies to tools and to gel frames. A barn door dropped from a studio grid is a serious injury, and the thing that prevents it is that nobody was standing there.

Stands, and the floor

A stand's stability is its base, its height and what is on top of it, and it loses on all three when somebody extends it fully to get a fixture high. Weight the base, keep the extension modest, and put the heaviest leg towards the load.

Cable on the floor of a studio is a trip hazard in a room where people walk backwards looking at a camera. Run it to the walls, tape it down, and cover anything crossing a walking line. This is a lighting responsibility and it gets audited by whoever falls over.

Heat

A tungsten fixture is hot enough to burn instantly and stays hot long after it is switched off. Gloves are the procedure. So is not putting a fixture where somebody's hand will find it in the dark, and not putting anything flammable near its front.

Gel in a frame in front of a hot fixture is a fire consideration, which is why gel frames have space behind them and why gel burns out and needs replacing. LED fixtures have changed this enormously, which is one of the real reasons studios converted.

Electrical risk

The lighting department handles more mains connections than anybody else in the building, in the dark, often at height. The protections are unglamorous: inspect cables, do not use damaged ones, do not defeat earthing, isolate before opening anything, and never work on a circuit you have not proved dead.

Lockout and tagout exists because somebody else will switch a circuit back on while your hands are in it. It is not bureaucracy; it is the specific control for the specific way people are electrocuted.

IP and NEMA ratings, and working outside

An ingress rating tells you what a fixture is sealed against -- dust and water, in two digits. A studio fixture is usually rated for nothing much, because a studio is dry.

Which matters the moment a studio fixture is taken outside for an exterior shot, which happens constantly. Check the rating before the fixture is in the rain, not after, and know that a dry-rated fixture in wet conditions is an electrical hazard rather than merely a risk to the fixture.

The habit that actually keeps people safe

Stopping. Every serious incident in this trade has a moment before it where somebody knew it was wrong and continued because of the schedule. The ability to stop work is the one safety skill that cannot be replaced with equipment.

If you are leading, say out loud and early that stopping is allowed. Crews take their standard from whoever is in charge, and a lighting person who visibly refuses to rush is worth more than any written policy.

The overhead rules

The hazards, and the specific control for each

How to do it

1. Clear the area underneath and confirm it is clear out loud.
2. Check the clamp and the fixture's yoke bolt before it leaves the floor.
3. Fit the safety bond to structure, not to the clamp.
4. Dress the cable so it takes no weight and cannot snag the grid or a moving camera.
5. Tighten and check the pan and tilt locks.
6. If it is on a pantograph or hoist, confirm the balance is right for this fixture's weight.
7. Look at it from underneath before anybody comes back into the area.

What goes wrong

Practice it

A studio grid or a truss you can rig on, and one fixture.

The Studio Day

Lighting is prepped, rigged, focused, then run -- and the person doing the running is very often not the person who designed it. Knowing the shape of the day is what lets you be useful on any part of it.

The shape of it

Prep, rig, focus, look, rehearse, run, strike. Every studio job is those seven stages in some form, whether it takes a morning or a month, and each one has a different job for the lighting department.

The commonest professional failure is doing one stage's work during another -- designing during focus, focusing during rehearsal, fixing during transmission. Each is three times as slow and far more visible.

Prep, and the package

Prep is deciding what you need and confirming you have it. Fixtures, stands, cable, gel, diffusion, spare lamps, expendables, and the small consumable things that stop a day -- tape, clothes pegs, gloves, a spanner that fits the clamps in this building.

Expendables are the ones people forget to plan and then cannot work without. A studio with no diffusion in the store is a studio that will be lit worse today, and finding out at prep is the whole point of prep.

Rig, and doing it in an order

Rig from the top down and from the back forward. Overhead first, while the floor is empty and clear. Then the things on stands. Then cable. Then anything at floor level.

Doing it the other way round means working over your own cable and moving your own stands to get a ladder in, which is how a two-hour rig becomes four.

Focus

Focus is aiming, shaping and setting each fixture, one at a time, with everything else off. Everything off is what makes it possible -- with the whole rig up you cannot see what any single fixture is doing.

It is also a crew activity with one voice, which is the subject of its own discussion in Lighting Direction & Leadership, another book in this series. In a studio with an installed grid, focus is usually adjusting rather than starting from nothing, which is faster and requires knowing what the previous show left behind.

The look, and the camera arriving

At some point the cameras come up and everything you decided privately becomes a negotiation with the picture. This is where the meter and the waveform earn their place, because the conversation stops being about taste and becomes about numbers.

Expect to be asked for changes here and expect some of them to be about things that are not lighting. Learning to hear "it's too dark" and diagnose whether it is level, contrast, background or gain is most of the skill.

Rehearsal

Rehearsal is where you find out what actually happens -- that the presenter stands up, that the second guest sits in a different chair, that the camera pushes in further than anybody said. Watch it rather than working during it.

Take notes and fix them in a block afterwards. Fixing during rehearsal interrupts everybody else's rehearsal, and rehearsal time is the most expensive time in the building.

Set protocol

A studio is a shared quiet room with live microphones in it, and the conventions are not etiquette for its own sake. When the red light is on you do not walk, talk or move anything. Talkback is a shared channel and it is not for commentary. If somebody calls for quiet, it is immediate and total.

The reason to take this seriously is that protocol is what gets you hired again. Technical competence gets you the first call, and being easy to have in the room gets you the rest of them.

Who you are actually working for

In a studio the chain of authority is not obvious from where people stand. The director runs the show, but requests reach you through a lighting director or a floor manager, and the producer's note arrives through somebody else again.

Find out on day one who you take instructions from and who you report a problem to, and use those channels even when somebody more senior asks you directly. Going around the structure is how two people end up changing the same fixture in opposite directions.

Strike

Strike is not the end of the day; it is the beginning of the next one. Gear returned to where it lives, in working order, with anything broken tagged rather than quietly put back.

A fixture put back faulty and unmarked is a fault somebody will discover during a show. Tagging it takes ten seconds and is the clearest single indicator of whether somebody is a professional.

The studio day, stage by stage

Protocol in a studio

How to do it

1. Find out who you take instructions from and who you report problems to.
2. Get the house plot, or walk the grid and draw one.
3. Ask the house key level, ratio and colour temperature.
4. Ask which fixtures are known bad and which circuits are known tight.
5. Find the store -- gel, diffusion, spare lamps, expendables -- and check what is actually in it.
6. Find out the schedule, and which stage of the day you are joining.
7. Find the fire exits, the isolators and the first aid point.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Any studio job, or a rehearsal of one.

On Air

This is the actual daily job. A look signed off weeks ago, a different guest, a director asking for a fix during a commercial break, and no possibility of stopping.

Maintaining a picture you did not design

Most broadcast lighting work is not designing. It is holding a picture that somebody established, against a set of small daily changes -- a different presenter, a new guest, a fixture that has aged, a set piece that got moved two feet.

Which makes the first skill knowing what the picture is supposed to be. If there is a reference -- a frame grab, a written house look, a set of numbers -- use it. If there is not, make one, and you will have done the most useful thing available in that building.

What drifts, and how fast

Lamps age and lose output and shift colour. Fixtures collect dust on lenses and in filters. Gel fades, and it fades fastest in the hottest fixtures, which are the ones nobody wants to reach. Positions creep as things get knocked.

None of this is visible day to day and all of it is obvious over three months. The answer is a schedule -- lamps changed on hours rather than on failure, gel replaced on a cycle, filters cleaned, and a periodic comparison against the reference frame.

Working in the gaps

During a programme your working time is the commercial breaks and whatever the director gives you. That is a real constraint and it has a real discipline: know before the break exactly what you are going to change, do that one thing, and be clear of the floor before the count.

What you do not do is start something you cannot finish. A half-adjusted fixture going back on air is worse than the problem you were fixing.

Hearing a note correctly

Directors describe pictures, not lighting. "It's too dark", "he looks ill", "it looks flat", "something's wrong with her face". Every one of those is a symptom with several possible causes, and translating is the skill.

"Too dark" might be level, or contrast, or a background that has nothing on it, or an operator riding the iris. "He looks ill" is frequently colour rendering or a colour cast rather than level. "Flat" is almost always ratio. Ask one clarifying question if you can, and if you cannot, fix the most likely cause and check.

Triage -- deciding fast with an imperfect rig

Four minutes and three problems is the normal condition, and it is the thing this book can teach least well and the job needs most. So here is an order that holds up.

Fix anything that is broken before anything that is imperfect. Fix the face before the background. Fix clipping before darkness, because clipping destroys information and darkness only hides it. Fix the shot that is on air longest before the one used once. And accept the rest out loud, so nobody else is still working on it.

Good enough, and saying so

Part of being useful on air is being able to say "that is good enough for now, and here is what I will fix at the break". It tells the director the state of things, it stops three people chasing the same problem, and it is more professional than silent perfectionism.

The opposite behaviour -- continuing to adjust something during transmission because it is not quite right -- is how a small imperfection becomes a visible fault.

When a fixture fails mid-show

One fixture out is a lighting problem. One fixture out that happens to be somebody's key is a transmission problem, and the difference in urgency is enormous.

Know which fixtures are load-bearing. If a key goes, the fastest recovery is usually re-pointing something else rather than replacing the dead unit, and having thought about that in advance is what makes it fast.

Handing over

Somebody else will run this rig tomorrow. What they need is the current state, the known quirks, what changed today, and anything that is being worked around.

A quirk that only you know how to work around makes you the single point of failure on the rig -- which feels like job security and is actually the thing that stops you being promoted off it.

What drifts in an installed studio

Translating a note

Triage order on air

How to do it

1. Decide, before the break starts, the single thing you are going to change.
2. Confirm with whoever runs the floor that you are going on.
3. Do that one thing only.
4. Be clear of the floor before the count back.
5. Check it on the waveform once you are back at the desk.
6. Report what you did, and what you did not.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Any live or as-live programme you can observe or run.

Location Work

Most broadcast lighting people also shoot in rooms nobody designed. The skills transfer badly in one direction, and it is worth knowing which.

What a studio gives you that a room does not

A studio gives you a grid, power, darkness, silence, height, blackout, a floor you can put stands on and permission to do all of it. A room gives you none of those and a window you cannot turn off.

Which is why studio experience transfers to location work more slowly than people expect. The lighting knowledge transfers completely; the assumptions do not.

Surveying a room before you carry anything in

Find the windows and which way they face. Find the sockets and ask what else is on those circuits. Find the ceiling height and what the ceiling is made of. Find the noise -- air conditioning, a corridor, a lift. Find out how long you have and who has to be able to work while you are there.

Five minutes of that changes the plan more than any amount of gear does, and it is the part inexperienced crews skip because it does not look like work.

The window

A window is the largest and best light source you will get and the most uncontrollable. It changes over the afternoon, it changes when a cloud crosses, and it is a different colour temperature from everything in your case.

Three approaches. Use it as your key and build around it, which gives the best-looking result and the least control. Gel it to match your fixtures, which costs time and looks excellent. Or kill it with blackout and light from nothing, which is slowest, most reliable, and what you do when the shoot runs for hours.

Practicals and available light

A room's own lights are usually the wrong colour, in the wrong place, and overhead -- which is the least flattering direction available. The default move is to turn them off and light from scratch.

The exception is when they are in shot, in which case they are set dressing that motivates your lighting, and turning them off makes the picture look wrong for a reason the audience cannot name.

Power in somebody else's building

You do not know what is on a circuit in a building you do not work in, and the person who does is usually not available. So the rule is conservative: spread across sockets in different rooms, keep total load modest, and never take a chance on a circuit that might be shared with something that matters.

Ask before you plug into anything in a working office. Tripping a breaker in a studio is an inconvenience; tripping one in somebody's server room is an incident.

Small-space technique

In a small room the walls become your fill whether you want them to or not, and the ceiling is close enough to bounce off. Both are useful. Bounce off a white ceiling is the fastest soft source available in a low room and it needs no stand.

The same closeness is the problem. Every shadow gets filled by a wall, so you will get no modelling without negative fill. In a small white room, black panels are more useful than another fixture.

Run and gun, and the on-camera light

News gathering and fast corporate work sometimes means one camera, one light and two minutes. An on-camera panel is a poor key, and it is better than a noisy picture.

Two things make it less poor. Get it off the camera if you possibly can, even a foot to the side, because an on-axis source is what makes the look so flat. And bounce or diffuse it, because a bare panel at close range is hard.

Matching a location to a studio

Often the location material cuts against studio material in the same programme, and the two have to look like the same show. That means matching colour temperature, roughly matching ratio, and matching the direction the key comes from.

Ask what it is cutting against before you light. It is the same question as matching a green-screen plate, and the answer costs nothing at the time.

Studio against location

Dealing with a window

How to do it

1. Walk the room before carrying anything in.
2. Note the windows, their direction and the time of day.
3. Find the sockets and ask what shares those circuits.
4. Note the ceiling height and whether it can be bounced off.
5. Listen for noise, and find out whether it can be turned off.
6. Decide where the subject sits, prioritising distance from the background over everything else.
7. Ask what this material cuts against, and match it.
8. Then bring the gear in, and only what the plan needs.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Any ordinary room with a window, and a small lighting kit.

Getting Hired and Getting Better

The career is a ladder with named rungs, and most people entering it cannot say what the next one is called. Here are the names.

The same job, three sets of words

In film, the lighting department is led by a gaffer, who works to a director of photography and is assisted by a best boy electric and a crew of electricians and lamp operators. Grips handle the shaping and rigging, and that split is jurisdictional, not casual.

In broadcast, a lighting director runs the lighting, often as a staff role inside a facility, with lighting technicians or electricians under them. In theatre and live events, a lighting designer designs, a programmer programmes, and an operator runs it.

People will use all of these at you interchangeably and incorrectly. When a job title is offered, ask what the role actually does rather than what it is called.

Where a studio lighting career starts

Usually as a technician or an assistant, rigging, running cable, changing lamps and gel, and being the person on the ladder. That is not a holding pattern; it is where you learn the grid, the gear and the building.

The people who progress out of it fastest are the ones who learn the numbers -- who can set a key to a target, read a waveform and explain a ratio -- because that is the skill that separates somebody who executes from somebody who decides.

What gets you the second call

Technical competence gets you the first call. Being easy to have in the room gets you every call after it, and this is not a motivational sentiment -- it is the observable behaviour of who gets rebooked.

Specifically: arriving early, knowing the protocol, taking a note without defending the previous version, saying clearly when something will not work, tagging a fault instead of hiding it, and not being the person who has to be managed.

Building something to show

Lighting is hard to show, because the credit goes to the picture. So keep frames. Ask permission, keep a still from every job, and keep a note of what you did in it -- which fixtures, what ratio, what the problem was.

A reel of pretty pictures is weak. A short set of frames where you can explain the problem and the decision is strong, because the person hiring you is buying judgement rather than taste.

The certifications and the ones that matter

In this field the useful credentials are mostly about access and safety rather than about lighting itself -- working at height, lift operation, electrical safety awareness, first aid. They are the ones that let you be on a site at all.

Manufacturer training on consoles, networks and specific fixture ranges is worth having and worth keeping current, because it is concrete and checkable. General lighting qualifications matter less than a body of work and a reference.

What to learn next, in order

If you want to go deeper into the picture, learn colour science and camera behaviour properly, and get fluent on a scope. If you want to lead, learn the lighting direction and leadership side -- running a focus, leading a crew, budgets, schedules and saying no.

If you want to broaden, the neighbouring crafts are film and on-set lighting, which is the same physics with a different working culture, and lighting automation, which is where the control side lives.

The AV fundamentals underneath all of it

Studio and broadcast lighting sits inside a bigger system -- cameras, switchers, audio, signal flow, networks and the people running them. A lighting person who understands the whole chain is the one whose opinion gets asked for, because they can tell the difference between a lighting problem and a problem being described as one.

That is why the whole AV fundamentals series is worth doing even if you intend to specialise here. Understanding the bigger picture is what makes a technician stand out in their field.

Staying in it

Broadcast hours are long and studio hours are unsociable, and the industry loses good lighting people to exhaustion rather than to incompetence. Knowing that in advance is part of the craft.

The practical protections are dull and they work: know your rates, keep your records, keep your certifications current, keep a network of people who will call you, and do not be the only person who can run your rig.

The same job, three vocabularies

What to learn next, by where you want to go

How to do it

1. Write down what your current role actually does, in tasks rather than in its title.
2. Write down what the next role does, and get somebody in it to correct you.
3. Identify the two or three specific skills that are the difference.
4. Learn the numbers if you have not -- targets, ratios, scope reading. They are the most common actual gap.
5. Keep frames and notes from every job, with permission.
6. Get the access and safety certifications your region requires.
7. Tell somebody you want the next thing. It is frequently the whole step.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Your own career, honestly assessed.

Lighting for the Camera

Lighting so it looks right on camera, not just to the eye.

The camera, not the eye

Studio and broadcast lighting differs from live-event lighting in a fundamental way: it lights for the camera, not (primarily) for the live audience's eye. The camera 'sees' differently from the eye — it needs the right amount of light (exposure), consistent colour, and appropriate contrast to produce a good picture. So broadcast lighting is designed and judged by how it looks on camera (on the monitor), not how it looks in the room. Lighting for the camera is the defining principle of studio and broadcast lighting. Broadcast lighting serves the picture.

This means the broadcast lighting professional thinks in terms of the picture: is the subject properly exposed, correctly coloured, well-shaped, and clear on camera? The goal is a great image, achieved by lighting the scene correctly for the camera's needs. This camera-first mindset distinguishes broadcast lighting from lighting for a live audience. The camera's view is what broadcast lighting is for.

What the camera needs

The camera needs specific things from lighting to produce a good picture. Exposure — enough light, at the right level, for the camera to capture a properly bright image (not too dark or blown out). Colour temperature — consistent, correct colour (white balance) so colours look right and don't shift. Contrast — appropriate light-to-dark range for the camera (which handles contrast differently from the eye, often needing a measured, gentler ratio, such as two to one for news). And shaping — light placed to make subjects look good (dimension, no bad shadows). Meeting the camera's needs is the foundation of broadcast lighting. Light the scene for what the camera requires.

These needs (exposure, colour, contrast, shaping) are technical and specific — broadcast lighting is partly a technical craft of giving the camera correct light. A scene lit to meet the camera's needs looks great on air; one that ignores them (too dark, wrong colour, harsh contrast) looks bad however nice it seems to the eye. The broadcast lighting professional lights to the camera's requirements. Correct light for the camera makes the picture.

Three-Point Lighting

The foundation: lighting a subject for the camera.

The three-point setup

The foundation of lighting a subject (a presenter, interviewee, performer) for the camera is three-point lighting — three lights working together. The key light is the main light, providing the primary illumination on the subject (placed to one side and front, the strongest light). The fill light softens the shadows the key creates (placed on the opposite side, less intense, reducing harsh contrast). The back light (or hair/rim light) separates the subject from the background (placed behind/above, creating an edge of light that gives depth). Together, these three light a subject well for the camera. Three-point lighting is the classic foundation of broadcast and film lighting. It lights the subject with dimension and clarity.

Each light has a purpose: the key reveals and shapes, the fill controls contrast, the back adds depth and separation. Balanced together, they produce a well-lit, dimensional, professional-looking subject on camera. Three-point lighting is the starting point for most studio lighting (news, interviews, presenters) and a fundamental skill. Understanding and applying three-point lighting is central to broadcast lighting. Three lights, well-balanced, light a subject for the camera.

Balancing the look

Three-point lighting is not just placing three lights but balancing them to create the right look — the relative levels of key, fill, and back determine how the subject looks (flat and even, or shaped and dramatic). A higher fill (closer to the key level) gives flatter, softer light (common for news — clean and even); a lower fill (more contrast between key and shadow) gives a more shaped, dramatic look. The lighting professional balances the three lights for the look the production wants, judged on camera. Balancing the three-point setup for the desired look is a key craft. The balance, not just the lights, creates the look.

This balancing — adjusting the levels and quality of each light, watching the result on the monitor — is where lighting craft turns three lights into a good-looking image. The professional shapes the look to suit the show (flat for news, more dimensional for features) while keeping it correct for the camera. Balancing the look is central to lighting a subject well. Three-point lighting delivers its look through careful balance. The lighting pro balances the light to make the subject look right.

Studio Setups & The Camera

Light studios and work with the camera.

Common studio setups

Studio and broadcast lighting includes common setups for typical productions. A news set is lit evenly and flatly (clean, bright, consistent light on the presenters and set, easy on the camera, professional and neutral). An interview/talk setup lights the host and guests (often three-point on each, balanced for the conversation). A general studio (for shows, demos, presentations) is lit for the set and the action. These setups apply three-point principles and even, camera-correct lighting to real broadcast scenarios. Knowing the common studio setups is practical broadcast-lighting knowledge. Studios are lit with proven setups for their content.

Each setup aims for a well-exposed, correctly coloured, appropriately even picture suited to the content (news wants clean and neutral; a feature might want more mood). The lighting professional sets up and maintains these to give the cameras a great picture of the set and people. The pro lights the studio for its show, correctly for the cameras.

Working with the camera and monitor

Because broadcast lighting is for the camera, the lighting professional works with the camera and monitor to get it right — judging the lighting on the picture (the monitor/waveform), coordinating with the camera and video team (the lighting and camera/video must work together for a good picture), and adjusting the light based on what the camera sees. The picture is the truth (the lighting is judged by the signal on the waveform, not the room or an uncalibrated monitor), so the lighting pro lights, checks the monitor, and adjusts until the picture is right. Working with the camera and monitor is essential to broadcast lighting. The picture is the judge, and the pro lights to it.

This connects lighting to the camera/video discipline: the lighting professional and the camera/video team collaborate to produce the image (lighting provides correct light; the camera captures it). Checking the monitor and adjusting to it is how the lighting is dialled in. A pro who lights to the monitor gets a great picture; one who lights only to the eye may not. Working with the camera and monitor is central to lighting for broadcast. The lighting is right when the picture is right.

Maintaining the Picture On Air

Keep the lighting correct through the broadcast.

Consistency and correctness

Broadcast lighting must be consistent and correct throughout the programme — the picture should stay well-exposed and correctly coloured from start to finish, across all the cameras and shots. This means the lighting professional sets up correct, even, consistent lighting (so every camera and angle sees a good picture, and the look doesn't shift) and maintains it through the broadcast. Consistency is key in broadcast (the picture can't suddenly change exposure or colour), and correctness (proper exposure and colour) is essential to a professional image. Maintaining consistent, correct lighting is central to broadcast lighting. The picture must stay right throughout the programme.

This requires lighting the whole set/scene evenly and correctly (not just one shot), so all the cameras and angles work, and the programme looks consistent. The lighting pro ensures the light is right everywhere it needs to be and stays that way. Inconsistent or incorrect lighting shows immediately on air. Maintaining consistency and correctness is essential to broadcast lighting. The professional keeps the whole picture right throughout.

On-air and adapting

During a live broadcast, the lighting must keep working — and in live TV the lighting director (Lighting Direction) may adjust the lighting live to keep the picture right as the show unfolds. The broadcast lighting professional ensures the lighting holds up on air (correct and consistent throughout) and adapts to anything that changes (a new segment, a different setup, a problem), keeping the picture broadcast-quality the whole time. This on-air reliability and adaptation, serving the live picture, is the culmination of broadcast lighting. The lighting keeps the picture right, live, throughout the broadcast. Broadcast lighting is judged by the picture, on air, the whole show.

This connects broadcast lighting to the live broadcast world (the lighting serves the live picture, alongside camera, switching, and the rest): the lighting must be right and stay right through the live programme. Combining lighting for the camera, three-point craft, studio setups, working to the monitor, and maintaining the picture on air is studio and broadcast lighting. The professional delivers a correctly lit picture throughout the broadcast. This is broadcast lighting at full demand. The picture stays broadcast-quality because the lighting holds.

Lighting the Broadcast Picture

A technical lighting specialty serving the camera.

The broadcast lighting professional

Pulling it together, studio and broadcast lighting is lighting for the camera — meeting the camera's needs (exposure, colour, contrast), applying three-point lighting, setting up studios, working to the monitor, and maintaining a correct, consistent picture on air. The broadcast lighting professional combines lighting craft with a camera-and-picture focus, delivering light that makes the broadcast image look great. This makes them essential to studio and broadcast production, where the picture depends on correct lighting, and it is a valued technical specialty. Broadcast lighting mastered is delivering a correctly lit picture for the camera, on air.

Broadcast lighting is a specialised, technical craft serving the camera and the broadcast — distinct from but related to live-event lighting, and closely tied to the camera/video team. A great broadcast lighting professional makes presenters and sets look their best on screen, consistently and on air. Understanding broadcast lighting — the camera's needs, three-point, studio setups, the picture — is a valuable specialty. The broadcast lighting pro lights the picture the world sees.

Developing in broadcast lighting

Developing in studio and broadcast lighting means building lighting craft (basics and fixtures), learning the camera's needs and how to light for them, practising three-point and studio setups, learning to judge and adjust lighting on the monitor, and getting experience lighting real studios and broadcasts. It connects to the other books in this series: Lighting Basics, Camera Basics and Video Basics, and Lighting Direction & Leadership (for live broadcast). The best broadcast lighting professionals have solid lighting craft, deep camera-and-picture understanding, and the eye to light for the screen, built over many productions. Deliberately developing these is the path forward.

From here, growing means lighting more and bigger broadcasts and studios, deepening camera and picture knowledge, and building towards broadcast lighting direction and senior roles. It is a valued technical specialty in the broadcast and studio world — the craft of lighting the picture. The skills this book brings together — the camera's needs, three-point, studio setups, the monitor, on-air consistency — are the foundation; mastery comes from lighting many broadcasts. Keep lighting for the camera, keep developing your picture eye, and you grow into a studio and broadcast lighting professional.

Glossary

Practical sign-off

Broadcast lighting is learned lighting real studios. The learner lights for the camera, applies three-point, sets up a studio, works to the monitor, and maintains the picture on air. A mentor signs off when the learner can light correctly for broadcast.

• Lit a subject correctly for the camera (exposure and colour)
• Applied and balanced three-point lighting
• Set up a studio look and judged it on the monitor
• Maintained a consistent, correct picture on air

What the gear actually looks like

Every device named in this book, in one place. Recognition is the whole point of Chapter 4 — use this page to attach a picture to each name before you meet it on a dock at six in the morning.

Audio

Dynamic microphone

Condenser microphone

Wireless handheld

Radio rack

Mixing console

Stage box / snake

Power amplifier

Main loudspeaker

Subwoofer

Stage monitor wedge

In-ear monitors

DI box

Video

Camera

Video switcher

Scaler / processor

Projector

LED wall panel

Confidence monitor

Lighting & control

Conventional fixture

Moving-head fixture

Lighting console

Dimmer

Show controller

Media server

Networking & infrastructure

Network switch

Patch bay

Equipment rack

Power distribution

Cable tester

A properly coiled cable

Connectors, close up

XLR

TRS / TS ¼-inch

SDI on BNC

HDMI

Cat5e / Cat6 (RJ45)

Fiber optic

DMX (5-pin XLR)

AC power — not signal