There is no shortage of opinions, discussions, or presentations when it comes to TV vs. Feature quality, especially on the internet! As studio leadership strive to appease shareholders by increasing outsourcing and chasing tax credits, this debate rises to the forefront again.  With the many variables that factor into ‘Feature vs. TV’ quality, all of which boils down to time and money, lighting tends to often be the first thing sacrificed, as though it is reserved as a luxury for just the big budget productions. Why is it that mainly just the A-List features bring a strong sense of lighting and beauty, where it tends to fall away as the budget shrinks? Is there some hidden ability that requires a large budget to achieve? Something that can only be achieve by throwing millions of dollars at it?  While watching an animated series with my son recently, I started looking at the images and pondered about what could be achieved simply by adjusting the lighting, and even more so, just the comp. Could taking what was there and doing basically just a color-grading pass on it, elevate it to a more dramatic level?

Not having worked on this project nor knowing any of the internal challenges, schedules, issues faced by the production or vendor, etc., the following images are simply an approach of how I would note shots and work with the team to elevate the lighting to a more dramatic level, using what was available with the images from the show and being guided by my familiarity with the 3 films.

Next was a more straightforward scene, exhibiting some of what I would call tell-tale signs of a TV workflow, lifted blacks and ambient lighting. One aspect of TV lighting is not having control over the viewing environment and with such a wide range of viewing scenarios, there is a subconcious urge to err on the side of too bright vs too dark to ensure that it can be watchable by the audience. Especially after the Game of Thrones Season 8 kerfuffle, and blaming the audience’s TV/viewing setup does not really gain anything. However the general lifting of the blacks tends to wash out the image and erase the drama.  Here, reducing the ambient levels helps bring focus and clarity to the establishing shot.

This shot popped out to me with several items, and along the above Game of Thrones kerfuffle, the laptop screen was so dark it was hard to see what was going on (especially for being an illuminated surface). It was also hard to tell if she was sitting in the dark or with the room lights on. bringing up the room lights a little, however more importantly treating the screen so that it feels illuminated, to help focus on the story of her hacking the system to protect her friends.

For this scene, while the helmet is important, so is his realization, and while there is some separation of the foreground characters with the room through the depth of field blur, the color and values are so similar, that everything starts to mush together. Warming up the ceiling and increasing the cyan rim from the window light while reducing the ambient level of he helmet, helps separate them and focus your attention to Tom’s face.

The following two shots are with D’Angelo operating the crane to lower Tom and June into the Fissure. The sequence takes place at night with bright moonlight. Instinctively it seems like low light, low contrast, however at night with a full moon, the moonlight is so strong that you tend to lose all detail in the shadows and contrast is actually increased. While there is plenty of mist and fog, there is still a lack of shading on the light that falls on the environment.

In context you know D is operating the crane to drop Tom and June into the fissure, however when I first started working on the still, I forgot that D was in the shot and I had a hard time discerning what I was looking at. The contrast is low and everything is very busy in the still. Taking some artistic license, even with a wide camera angle, it felt like a little depth of field could help draw your focus. Keeping the swinging capsule in focus, extending back to cab of the crane, then allowing the rest to fall out of focus. Painting over a screen grab is a little rough, however it should be short work in a compositing package with the depth pass so it doesn’t feel so much like a miniature. then darkening the cliff wall and increasing teh intensity of the lights on the crane and capsule help add to the photographic effect.

Here the capsule is blending in with the night sky and while out in the open and with lights, has the same value as the underside of the platform. The mountain in the screen right corner is also bright and flat, especially when the rest of the shot is more of a silhouette from screen right. This side of the mountain should be in shadow, or at least with a side light, have ridges and valley’s that are accentuated. That being said, it also does not help this still very well compositional and would be great to remove (skirting continuity/asset issues, the other option is to minimize/hide it with atmosphere. I refrained from adding a lens flare from the lights, however if this were a J.J. Abrams production, it would be mandatory! The underside of the platform should be darker than the sides, and darker towards the cliff, as less light is available to illuminate it.

Another common occurrence I encounter with TV scenes, is when the bright objects are clipped, and if the scene is to be darker, things are just made darker as though by adding black, muddying the colors. As we enter into the world of HDR, this becomes even more apparent when mixing SDR footage as HDR. While Tom and June are behind a thick window, everything is just getting a little too mushy and blending together, and the reflection of the lava, the bright, glowing light source, is muted as well. A slight cyan haze from the glass is brought back a little to help the feeling of glass without putting a huge specular reflection over the characters.

There were a lot of potential frames for the Fault Ripper chase, and I will probably try a few more in another post. this was tricky in several ways as A, the items were not separated, B the details on the walls was faint and the information with the screen grab was gone. One of the big points that stuck out to me here was the lack of motion blur, which I am not sure if it was a stylistic choice, production constraint, or something else, without any, the sequence became very staccato and busy with the fast motion being hard to follow. Adding in blur on the paintover was trying to help with the illusion of the speed of the chase and the peril that Tom and Thunder were in. With such strong top light, the lack of anything hitting the canyon walls was a little missed. Wouldn’t want anything strong there, however the shadows and light would help the eye track the motion, with motion blur, it would also still be able to fade into the background.

The big item here was the lack of danger and the ability to quickly identify whats going on. The dragons blend together however with the lack of overall contrast compiled with the natural contrast in Thunder’s scales, it is hard to make out his form, and while in the foreground, it is the gaping maw of the fault riper that should be the focus, the imminent danger that they are in. Increasing the strength of the top light, rimming the features of the Fault Ripper, help to make him more menacing and scary. It is always spookier when you can’t quite see the whole thing, as was masterfully show in Alien. Bringing in the motion blur helps redirect your focus back to the Fault Ripper’s head. The scene is moving fast and the Fault ripper is about to catch them, the added contrast in the lighting helps to increase and underline the drama.

This scene lacks lighting consistency, the color temperature of the light is different between each character as well as the background, along with the strength of the light. On Tom, it is from a soft source, light the sun is behind a cloud, and not as strong as on his mother. The light hitting the far cliff is also the same color as the shadow on the capsule. To help bring focus to Olivia, increased the depth of field blur, darkened the cliff wall, and increased the contrast of her lighting, along with Tom and Sledkin, with adjustments to align their lighting with the rest of the scene.

After going through this exercise, going back to the original question, no, there is not some secret item that requires a certain level of budget. In the end it comes down to time and resources, which is the budget of course, however a more targeted approach to lighting, stronger collaboration with the team earlier on would allow for the quality to be increased without a strong burden on the budget, even within a tv pipeline.  Starting from the completed episode, certain sequences like the battle with the Fault Ripper would need to be re-lit/rendered most likely, to achieve what I painted.  However, working with the artists early on, getting key setups done before the crush of the full production schedule, would allow the first pass to be closer without costing much more.