Lighting for Music Video

[TimB]

Hi guys.

Lighting question here;

Im wanting to create a very light blue haze in an empty warehouse as a base for my next Music Video. I already have a Haze Machine, however, I want to do as little colour correcting as possible in post, so Im looking to Gels to create the effect I want.

Location wise, like I say, I'm in an empty warehouse, with few skylights, which will be covered.

I say very light blue, because in post I want a slight desaturation with a light blue tint from the Raw Footage. Can people suggest mixes of gels to achieve such a look? I've been looking;

Left: 1/8 Daylight with Slate Blue
Centre: 1/4 Daylight with Lavender
Right: 1/8 Daylight with Slate Blue/Lavender or similar to create a slight gradient.

Any suggestions for set-up/lighting to use and or gels?

 

[paulears]

Lavender is a strange colour and blends with both warm and cool colours and tends to have hardly any real colour of it's own.
Double CT blue, Steel Blue and Dark steel blue. For bluer - I quite like stage wash blue, which is a little darker - all Lee Filter.

One word about hazers - if you have a really good hazer, then you're going to get beam definition and sharpness, while a less efficient hazer (usually the cheaper ones) will give you movement within the beam - the haze being more visible having bigger particles. Smoke is just when the particle size increases even further. So with a good hazer, you'll have even colour, which I think is what you're after?

 

[TimB]

Paulears. Im looking to achieve something like this;



See Original (Top) to my idea (bottom)

 

[paulears]

Oh - I see. You are going to need a lot of haze and softlights. I actually had this as a 'fault' recently. I wanted to do the usual thing of letting the audience see the beams in the air - not really interested in illuminating anything other than the floor - but the hazer was clogged. I bought a cheap one, until I could service the DF50 I normally use. The cheap one seemed to have too big a tube bore and instead of atomising the fluid was just buring it - you could see the clouds puffing out of the machine. When they'd built up over half an hour or so, the coverage was patchy, and where it was too thick the beams from the 2K fresnels just did what your bottom image did. In this case the colour was a much darker blue, but I got a sort of sheen in a lighter colour. I didn't like it at all because it just didn't do what I wanted, but this could be just the effect you want.

You will need a lot of light though, and lots of haze. Even moderate drafts will wash it away - so you need a controlled environment.