Thu, June 26, 2003

This week is reruns for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which means that my evenings are lacking that entertaining nightcap that I normally look forward to. Luckily, TiVo and I have stashed a few episodes of Trading Spaces for just such an occasion. It's fantastic to sort of watch idly; it'll get your blood boiling, but you're aggravated about design, not politics.

The episode I watched tonight featured quite possibly two of the worst rooms they've ever done. In general, there is at least one element of every room that turns out looking kind of cheap, because the budget is a large part of the show's challenge. In this case, both rooms looked very cheap and unplanned. Also, Laurie Hickson-Smith created a giant graphic treatment on the walls of her room which just never, ever looks good.

But beyond the design (which is hardly much of the point any more), I was struck by something interesting that happened. I guess I hadn't really noticed it before, but generally the rooms on Trading Spaces have the windows shuttered or they're on the first floor where the view out the window is like a shrub or something so it kind of blocks things out. I couldn't have told you if you'd asked me but now that I think about it, it does seem like you never see the windows "blown out," the way they would normally look as a result of the sunlight outside being far brighter than the ambient light in the room. I guess it's just not a look the producers like, so they keep the windows covered or shoot mainly towards other walls. It is, however, a look we're accustomed to.

The human eye is far more versatile than any camera but, even so, it must adjust to different levels of light. When we're in a room with bright sunshine out the windows, we seldom "see" the bright outdoor world and the indoor space at the same time. Our iris adjusts so that we "focus" on one space or the other, even while we're aware of both. In film and pictures, the difference is more pronounced because the camera must expose for one or the other. We don't really think about it; it's just the way things look and we grow accustomed to it.

There is a trick that you can use, though. It's called an ND filter, which stands for "neutral density." These exist as filters which can be attached to the camera's lens to reduce the amount of light without altering the color (hence "neutral") and also as "gels," or sheets of tinted plastic that can be used in front of a light source. It's common practice to place gels over windows when shooting near them in order to match the color temperature of the sunlight to that of the lights in the room. Sometimes, ND gels will be used to bring the outdoor light down, but in the rare case that this technique is used it is generally a static shot where the exterior scene appears fixed in the window. Again, not something I ever thought about much before tonight.

The Trading Spaces producers were met with a challenge. The little girls' bedroom that they were fixing up was on the second floor and the windows didn't have blinds on them. The room was not big enough to shoot in just one direction, so the windows were going to be a factor. The decision was made to put ND gels on the outside of the windows in order to keep them from blowing out in the camera. The result is somewhat staggering. See, it turns out the reason that only static shots shoot through ND-filtered windows is that the added depth of field is quite disorienting. It's okay if the picture outside stays in one place but, due to the perspective involved, when the camera is walking around the way it is on Trading Spaces the world outside seems to slosh rapidly past the window. Man, it's weird.

It's hard to describe but hugely disorienting. It feels somewhat like a really strange motion-simulator ride. It's an interesting phenomenon because if the same scene had been filmed on a balcony or in a field, it would have felt normal. Something about imposing that wall between the subject and the distant backdrop, with the relatively small window aperture, turns the whole thing on its ear. Anyway, fascinating.

Also, the episode titles for the show are things like "Virginia: Cherryblossom Lane" which made me think. Someday, I'd like to build a subdivision, so I can name all the streets things like Sex Drive and Inner Circle and Circuit Court.

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