Is it possible to get the Drive (2011) look with natural lighting?

I

ironpony

Carbonite Member
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX0H9moUGsI

They managed to get orange and green colored light with their camera. When I go outdoors with my Canon T3i, if I make sodium lights orange, the whiter lights come up white. If I make the white lights green, the sodiums come up too yellow. Is it possible to have both, white balance wise?
 
ironpony said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX0H9moUGsI

They managed to get orange and green colored light with their camera. When I go outdoors with my Canon T3i, if I make sodium lights orange, the whiter lights come up white. If I make the white lights green, the sodiums come up too yellow. Is it possible to have both, white balance wise?
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Roger Deakins said that he had a number of high wattage lights 'gelled to yellow/orange' to match up the industrial Sodium lighting in "In Time"(2012). Many scenes were shot in the LA industrial area near downtown. I asked him, as I'm familiar with the area and didn't recall 'that much light'.

I'm pretty sure the filmmakers who did the clip you reference did the same.

In addition to on set lighting, one can in digital post these days get effects that are not possible or easily possible in camera.

You should look to After Effects tutorials on using 'power windows', or 'Hue Saturation Lightness' to create masks to the selective work on changing color casts on different scene elements.
 
Okay thanks. With my camera if I white balance, the light turns white. But I work with a guy who's camera white balance works differently. When he white balances, the camera picks up accurate kelvin in the room, and the light comes out looking like real life. Is it possible to do that with mine or something equivalent?
 
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ironpony said:
Okay thanks. With my camera if I white balance, the light turns white. But I work with a guy who's camera white balance works differently. When he white balances, the camera picks up accurate kelvin in the room, and the light comes out looking like real life. Is it possible to do that with mine or something equivalent?
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As with many things you come up with, I have no idea what may be the actual situation.

When the Wife and I shot weddings we would 'white balance' to eliminate major color casts given off by tungsten lights, often set 'low', and so, resulted in heavy yellow/red cast, depending. Under fluorescents balance to minimize 'green', etc.

However, for theatrical lighting, one generally sets the 'color balance' for the given type of lights that one is lighting the scene with. So if one is using 3200 K tungsten, then balance for that. My GH-1 has a manual K setting, and one can also modify that with shifts in various colors to adjust if needed. I usually just leave the setting at 3200 K for tungsten, or 5600 K for 'daylight'.

By 'white balancing' under 'sodium' or simulated sodium you have pretty much eliminated the point of having the sodium 'cast' to give the shot the industrial look.
 
Yep leave the camera at 5000 , or maybe dial down to 4000, for the green lights to be green, they need to be green.

Mainly I shoot at 5500 and let the colours show - just not in a tungsten only studio shoot
 
Okay thanks that seems to work! There is a car scene at night I want to shoot with two cameras, though, in the car. Since the cameras are strapped to the car and are static shots, I can use two, without needing people behind them. I also have T2i from a friend who does video shoots as well. But her camera cannot do the kelvin adjustment thing. Is there a way I can get her's to match mine? I can't find a light source to white balance off of, that will give me both orange and green, and I've been looking.
 
bill totolo said:
I've always understood Deakins's recipe for sodium vapor to be 1/2 Straw + CTO, no?
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Thats a bit of a strange combination, as straw is more orange than anything else. I see people use 1/2 CTO + 1/4 Green or 1/8 Green a lot, but I don't know how much i like that color pack. Lee has an Urban sodium vapor gel that has given me the best results recently. A friend of mine also found some sort of color correction gel usually used for carbon arc lamps that was a pretty spot on rendition of sodium vapor, but the name escapes me. Maybe someone has used that before?
 
RyanT said:
A friend of mine also found some sort of color correction gel usually used for carbon arc lamps that was a pretty spot on rendition of sodium vapor, but the name escapes me. Maybe someone has used that before?
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Probably super white flame. I was BBE on a feature a month ago and that color was used pretty much on a daily basis for sodium vapor emulation.
And I believe Deakins typically uses straw tint (013) and 1/4 or 1/2 CTO.
 
Okay thanks. In Drive when the driver is going across the bridge, you see a shot out the windshield from his point of view and all the lights on the bridge are green. I am doing wide shots where you see the streetlights. Which means I have to use their light, and not be able to gel any lights for the shots I want. I had an idea of getting shots with orange and green light in the same shot. Especially since one of the locations has mercury lights, and sodium lights. But I cannot get both at 4000 kelvin. In order to get a more sodium look I need at least 2700. But if it's not possible to have both, then I will just pick one.
 
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White balance is to tell the camera what white is. Nothing more, nothing less. It can be tricked for effect but I think you are overthinking this. If you want to represent the colours you're seeing then set the white balance manually or using white light off set and then leave it alone. Then, if the colours are present on location, you'll see them. If you white balance to sodium it will think sodium is white. So don't white balance to sodium.

The point of white balance is to help match the look of footage shot under different light conditions. If you are shooting a night scene it doesn't have to match the day scenes, just the other night scenes. And night scenes aren't subject to the shifting of the sun (the main reason you need white balance) so just set it once and leave it. White balance won't fix mismatched lighting fixtures (such as interior tungsten lighting and daylight windows) that's what gels are for. If you want the different colours leave the white balance alone. You're complicating a simple tool.
 
RyanT said:
Thats a bit of a strange combination, as straw is more orange than anything else. I see people use 1/2 CTO + 1/4 Green or 1/8 Green a lot, but I don't know how much i like that color pack. Lee has an Urban sodium vapor gel that has given me the best results recently. A friend of mine also found some sort of color correction gel usually used for carbon arc lamps that was a pretty spot on rendition of sodium vapor, but the name escapes me. Maybe someone has used that before?
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1/2 Straw + CTO pretty good match to Sodium Vapor, you can see the first several scenes with Nelly Furtado on my demo reel: http://alphasonic.net/demo-reel/
I experimented with Lee 653 Lo Sodium gels. Combined with red LED's, and some deep amber, as well as CTO + 1/2 Straw on the PAR cans, I tried to create an urban feel to this studio performance
 
Egg Born Son said:
White balance is to tell the camera what white is. Nothing more, nothing less. It can be tricked for effect but I think you are overthinking this. If you want to represent the colours you're seeing then set the white balance manually or using white light off set and then leave it alone. Then, if the colours are present on location, you'll see them. If you white balance to sodium it will think sodium is white. So don't white balance to sodium.

The point of white balance is to help match the look of footage shot under different light conditions. If you are shooting a night scene it doesn't have to match the day scenes, just the other night scenes. And night scenes aren't subject to the shifting of the sun (the main reason you need white balance) so just set it once and leave it. White balance won't fix mismatched lighting fixtures (such as interior tungsten lighting and daylight windows) that's what gels are for. If you want the different colours leave the white balance alone. You're complicating a simple tool.
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Okay thanks I should leave the white balance alone then. But the camera has several white balance presets. Which preset do you go with if you don't want any kind of white balance?
 
The best way to decide is to test. Go to a location that has the kind of lighting you want to use (sounds like you want somewhere with sodium lighting with a traffic light in the shot) and take some footage at different manual white balances. Write the settings down on a piece of paper and show it to the camera so you know which footage is which. Then look at it in your NLE and decide what looks best. Alternatively just auto white balance to a white or 18% grey card under either tungsten or daylight and then go out and film your footage. As long as all the footage is taken with the same white balance you can batch correct it in post. If you were to white balance to sodium you probably wouldn't be left with enough colour information to bring it back in post. So the goal is 1) you want to see all the colours you want present in the raw footage and 2) you want all the night footage shot at the same settings so you don't have to correct each clip individually.

The reason you white balance constantly during the day is to correct for the colour temperatures variation as the sun and clouds move. It's not dramatic, it's subtle but mismatched footage will be obvious when you try to cut it together. At night the colour temp only changes when the light source changes but you aren't trying to balance those light sources...you want the different colours to show up. Colour temperature and colour isn't the same thing. Think of colour temp like a filter, it changes the way the colours look, it doesn't change the colours. White balance can be misused to dramatic effect but it is usually used to correct for subtle shifts and make editing easier.
 
ironpony said:
Which preset do you go with if you don't want any kind of white balance?
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You do need to set white balance to something. But what setting is less important than using the same setting for all the footage. Just as long as it is the same for all your night shots. If it will be shot over two or more nights it's probably safer to enter a manual setting so it is easily repeatable. Colour rendition at night is never accurate anyway, on camera or in the flesh. Films tend to use a blue tint to represent moonlight. It isn't real, it's deliberate fakery. But when the audience watches it they know blue means moonlight. A tungsten balance might look good, the sodium will be more subtle. Unless you want the sodium lighting to be really saturated. It's up to you, the point is to use the same setting at night, especially if it's a two night shoot and you want the footage from each night to mix well. Also be aware that twilight and proper night will not mix at the same wb setting.
 
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