Lighting in Soap Operas

As a low budget school production, our soap opera trailer won't have a lot of the same technical qualities as a real soap opera; because of this, we will be using mainly natural lighting and so will need to plan filming schedules during hours of sunlight in order for the trailer to be the best possible quality. Also, we can film inside under artifical lighting, which again, isn't necessarily the way soap operas would normally be filmed but is a way for us to get around lighting problems.

In a soap opera, a "three point lighting" set up is made use of as a cheap but efficent way of lighting the set. The reason this is cheap to do is because the whole set is lit up and lights arent specifically changed for each shot, meaning fewer takes are needed. This means that less time is spent filming because the acors can move freely without havung to adjust lights and therefore less money is spent. In a film, this type of lighting set up wouldn't be used because it can look a far better quality and more natural by training specific lights on people, and films have a much larger budget.


(Information gained from http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/58468)




(http://goldderby.latimes.com/awards_goldderby/2008/04/)

This is an example of a soap opera set, where it is clear that the lights are fixed and do not move to track actors.



(http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035565178@N01/316688438)

This is another photo that shows how the lights are used on a set.