With any studio based video production, there is a pattern that will be followed. It is obvious that there will be a requirement for some lighting so that the cameras can see, and give pictures to the director. There must be some attention given to sound so that we can hear what is going on. There must be a way of selecting the picture to be recorded (vision mixing).
Particularly true of small-scale television, and often the last consideration, is that all this action must appear to take place somewhere and it is just assumed that performers will be involved.
We have seen that scenery needs to be constructed and placed appropriately within the acting area as a set design, and that the necessary props are collected and placed within the scene. Everything is now ready for the performers. This is an area which can make a production look very poor, or can lift a mediocre performance from the actors into something that becomes acceptable because the whole performance of the production appears professional. This is the responsibility of the wardrobe team.
It is only in large-scale productions and in large studios that specialist teams can be afforded to look after the performers’ costumes and make-up. Normally the performers themselves will choose, and wear, their own clothing and will attempt their own make-up with little or no knowledge of the final effect when seen on camera. Whose responsibility it is to help guide the performers in their choice is open to debate, but it will often fall to the floor manager team or the PA.
A little understanding and guidance can go a long way towards making the performers feel more professional. For this reason it is worth looking at a few technical problems.
The wardrobe team need to be very well aware of the problems associated with the capabilities of the camera. Unlike our eyes, cameras work on a limited contrast range. They cannot see great ranges of white to black. The vision engineers can make some small corrections to the absolute level of white or black but they cannot alter the overall range. This means that an adjustment could be made to give correct exposure to a very white blouse, but at the expense of making a dark grey skirt appear black. Equally it follows that a dark grey skirt within the picture could be adjusted to appear dark grey, but a white blouse would now be overexposed and ‘wash out’.
Another common problem is caused by inappropriate clothing. A perfectly acceptable costume seen in long shot may not be as acceptable in close up, for instance with low neckline clothing which may produce a topless effect and lead to large areas of pale coloured skin becoming over exposed.
Cameras also do not reproduce all the colours that we can see absolutely as we see them. Reds, for instance, tend to stand out as much brighter and more intrusive.
The scanning process used within the camera to convert images into television pictures leads to other problems. Certain patterns used within suits, for instance, will cause unwelcome and distracting strobe effects.
Difficulties can occur with clothing colours that match the background and tend to merge into it, losing the effect of depth between the performer and the background. The wardrobe team need to be informed if any video special effects are intended to be used within the programme. Chroma-key is the classic example. It is possible, with technical adjustments, for a particular colour to be selected and then replaced with some totally different picture. This colour is normally blue, but it is possible to create this effect with any colour. There are occasions when this may be used for effect, in pop videos for example, to replace a shirt with moving images that ‘appear’ to be dancing across the performer’s body, but more usually it is used as background replacement. Here a newscaster or weather forecast presenter could have images superimposed behind them. This effect would be ruined if the presenter was wearing the selected chroma colour!
The wardrobe team need to know what sort of lighting is being used, and from which direction it is coming from. Some materials can become translucent allowing light to pass through, others can become totally transparent with consequent embarrassment to the performer.
Light is not reflected uniformly off all surfaces. A shiny suit, for example, may look perfectly acceptable under normal light conditions, but put it in a studio and it may look over bright and cause problems for the exposure of the cameras. Sequins and jewellery are other examples where unwanted light reflections may be cast onto the face or into the camera causing bright spots.