Thoughts on the season 8 Game Changer coloring / lighting?
One of the first things I noticed when I saw the trailer for this season (and now that I've watched S8E1, it has become more apparent) was what looks to be new lighting and color grading. As you can see in the first image, the picture looks both more vibrant and more flat than past seasons. I've compiled screenshots from immediately after Sam says "I've been here the whole time" from the first episode of every season to demonstrate the changes in lighting and coloring. I skipped over season 3 because that was over zoom.
We can see in this second image the evolution of the screen behind Sam, but more importantly the evolution of the way that the scene is lit and then colored. By the way, my relevant qualifications are as a semi-professional photographer (I've been doing paid work for a little over three years now).
If you take a look at all of the shots in the second image, you can see that the overall tone has stayed relatively consistent, reaching its brightest in season 5. But if you switch back to season 8, we suddenly have a very different looking image. I noticed two things immediately; firstly, that Sam's face doesn't appear to have much shadow or contrast, so it looks like this image is lit by very diffused lights. Secondly, all of the warm tones are at full saturation; taking a look at the middle two stripes (yellow and orange) of the podium, we can see that in seasons 1, 2, and 4, those stripes are somewhat saturated and not too bright, and in seasons 5-7, those stripes are pretty bright but not fully saturated, and now in season 8, they've suddenly got a rich, mango-like color.
Now, this is obviously subjective, and I think quite a few people will prefer the more colorful look, but what I'm a little opposed to is the lighting; it's simply flatter than a modern movie. I think the best lighting in terms of giving us 3-dimensional looking shapes was season 4, not only allowing us to see Sam's face that way but also the podium (notice how season 4 is the only season where the podium looks like it has depth at all). Additionally, some people might mistake the season 8 coloring for a cyan-aqua grade, but those are simply the colors of the set, although the warmth really does accentuate it, and it still kinda looks bad in my opinion.
It's probably fine for a game show to be lit like this; when I watched my first episode of Jeopardy a few years ago, my instinctive reaction was "This is lit like a news broadcast." And, of course, there are plenty of people working on this show behind the scenes who are not only far more talented than me but also have significantly more experience, so these are just my thoughts. I'm curious, what do y'all think? Did you notice the new lighting, did you like it, and if not, what is your dream lighting like?
