PRE-PRODUCTION • Lighting | Research & Development

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British Sitcoms traditionally use high key lighting on a grid, attached to the ceiling, lighting from above. This is the typical style used by sitcoms that are filmed in a studio and are set based. This ensures maximum room on the floor for characters to move around and for the cameras to have as much room more movement as possible.  
Sitcom Lighting on a Grid

During our test shoot, I took out the Rotolight as this was a new piece of equipment I hadn't used yet and wanted to have a better understanding of. This light allowed for the colour temperature to be changed which is very useful for me as we're trying to create a natural lighting look. This means that I can change the lighting temperature to 5600K which is the daylight colour temperature to make the artificial lighting match with the natural lighting from the windows we will be using. 

 As written in the Young & Famous pre-production book, In the test shoot for scene 9 from script draft 1, I used the artificial lighting to see if it would benefit us and if there were any extra things that I would need to consider. The first thing that I noticed was the bright hotspot on the sofa in the shot. To reduce this, I used a diffuser which helped to disperse the light and make it appear more subtle. This reduced the hot spot but still allowed for enough light to brighten the left side of the shot. 


I also decided to do a lighting test in the kitchen as this is another of our main locations and out of all the rooms we were using had the smallest window. I first tried the scene with just the natural lighting from the window. This worked better than I imagined it would and was enough to light the whole room without the need for artificial lighting. In order to add more of the warm colour and tone wanted for the show, I decided to use the under cabinet lighting in the kitchen to add some tungsten lighting to the scene, giving off a soft orange glow. 

By using the natural lighting and the in-house kitchen lighting, this gives the scene a softer tone as it supposed to be one of the more comedic scenes and fits the tone of the scene. This also brings some more advantages in that if we film at a similar time of day and if the weather is similar then there won't be a need for any artificial lighting, giving the cameras more floor room and availability to move around as this room is one of the smaller ones which produces the challenge to fitting in the cameras and whether we use 2 and in that case what shots would be the best to capture. 

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