Lighting To get sufficient light, and keep costs down, early silent films were filmed in daylight, either on open stages or on location. As the movie industry developed and became more prosperous, artificial lights were introduced – first to supplement the natural light and then to replace it altogether – which freed-up the industry from the vagaries of the weather and, in the long run, gave cinematographers greater control over how their films looked on screen. Early film studios did not use incandescent lights of the sort used on theater stages – as they had a low actinicity (the proportion of the light which is captured on the film stock) on blue-sensitive film – but relied instead on mercury-vapor and/or carbon-arc lights. The Cooper-Hewitt mercury-vapor lamps they used produced a soft, blueish-green light, ideal for blue-sensitive film – which was sensitive to the violet-blue end of the spectrum – but made everything looked unnatural on the set. Carbon-arc lamps produced a brighter, whiter light but the light was harder and the lamps were noisy and spluttery. Early open arcs also produced arc-light dust which irritated the actor’s eyes if it got into them. Later closed arc lamps – often called ‘Klieglights’ after the Kliegl company, a major supplier – did not have this problem but still caused eye problems due to the unshielded ultra-violet light they produced – the so called ‘Klieg eye’ (actinic conjunctivitis). Every profession has its disagreeable duties, and one of ours is to work under the studio lights. Every actress dreads them, for they are simply cruel to the eyes, and to work within a few feet of eight or ten ghastly, hissing, flaming arcs will unnerve the strongest of us. The red rays are entirely absent in these awful things, the consequence being that when they are used, everything in the scene is bathed in a sickly, bluish green. Faces appear ashen gray and the red of one’s lips looks purple. The actors appear like uncanny corpses suddenly come to life. The light is so dreadful to the eyes that the least result is a splitting headache, and the worst, the necessity of seeking the solace of an oculist or of wearing amber glasses for several days. (Wagner, 1918) Although artificial lighting created some problems for the early screen actors, as techniques got more sophisticated it become apparent that lighting was at least as, if not more important than make-up in determining the way actors looked on the screen.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 00:55:47 +0000
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