ABSTRACT
Lighting is to film what music is to opera. As theater became more formalized with written scripts and larger audiences, daylight performance became the norm: more light was necessary so that everyone could see clearly. Controllable, directional lighting for the theater is not a new idea. The great theater pioneers Adolphe Appia and David Belasco were revolutionary figures in the realm of expressionistic staging. To counteract the harsh theatrical hardness, Belasco and Hartmann also developed a row of overhead reflected soft lights, which were useful for naturalistic daylight scenes. Studio management saw in the new technology an economical means by which set lighting could be accomplished by the push of a button. Technicolor required a spectral distribution close to that of natural daylight, which made tungsten lighting difficult. The constant supervision of the Technicolor cameramen, along with the employment of color advisors, gave rise to the still current myth of the "Technicolor look".
