Skervald
Active Member
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to post this but here I go anyway.
I work for a growing organization that, until I was hired about 10 months ago, had no one with any technical knowledge on staff. Sets, sound, and lighting were all done by volunteers with little to no theatre background. It would seem that most of them knew just enough to be dangerous but that's another post. I'm working very hard to raise our technical game as quickly as I can and for the most part, I have excellent support.
One of the areas I am frustrated by is critiques of my lighting designs. I can handle criticism and would love to improve. My problem is that all judgments and opinions are based on the archival video we shoot for a production and not what the design looks like in real life. We typically hire someone to shoot this video.
I have a background in still photography and I know very little about video but here is my theory. I think the problem is in how the video is shot (auto?). Most of the complaints are "It's too dark" and, "I can't see ____." Obviously the camera isn't as good as the human eye at adjusting to light levels. I think the camera adjusts to the brightest area on the stage and everything else looks dark or it adjusts to the dimmer areas and the bright areas are overexposed. The human eye is much better at doing this and can see the bright areas and the darker areas simultaneously.
My questions are three:
First, is my theory correct?
Second, is there a better way to explain the problem to a group of very non-technical people without sounding defensive?
Third, are these video people clueless as to how to shoot theatrical productions or is this just how it goes?
I work for a growing organization that, until I was hired about 10 months ago, had no one with any technical knowledge on staff. Sets, sound, and lighting were all done by volunteers with little to no theatre background. It would seem that most of them knew just enough to be dangerous but that's another post. I'm working very hard to raise our technical game as quickly as I can and for the most part, I have excellent support.
One of the areas I am frustrated by is critiques of my lighting designs. I can handle criticism and would love to improve. My problem is that all judgments and opinions are based on the archival video we shoot for a production and not what the design looks like in real life. We typically hire someone to shoot this video.
I have a background in still photography and I know very little about video but here is my theory. I think the problem is in how the video is shot (auto?). Most of the complaints are "It's too dark" and, "I can't see ____." Obviously the camera isn't as good as the human eye at adjusting to light levels. I think the camera adjusts to the brightest area on the stage and everything else looks dark or it adjusts to the dimmer areas and the bright areas are overexposed. The human eye is much better at doing this and can see the bright areas and the darker areas simultaneously.
My questions are three:
First, is my theory correct?
Second, is there a better way to explain the problem to a group of very non-technical people without sounding defensive?
Third, are these video people clueless as to how to shoot theatrical productions or is this just how it goes?