White Balancing When No Colors In The Scene Are To Be Pure White

MagnumDB

MagnumDB

Active member
Hello,

I'm curious how one white balances, or goes about gelling lights when you want the scene to be colored as follows:

Background is blueish green. Foreground is warm.

Where do you place the white balance card? Or is this where I should be using a gray card? Or do I have allow one of the lights to be white on set and then color time that light in the scene later?

This guy hates the look, and I agree it's over done, but here is a site with plenty of examples of the overused look: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html


Thank You!
 
White is white. If you want the background to read as bluish green, then it needs to be more bluish green than white. Similarly, if the background is to read as a warm orange, it will need to be more orange than your white point.

White balance, gels, and post production color adjustments all move the color temperature around. This is basically a math problem.

If it were me, I would probably start by trying to white balance using a "neutral" light on the set. Where "neutral" is defined as warmer than bluish green, and cooler than the warm foreground.

Let's say you're using all tungsten lights. You could set your white balance to 3200K, or use the white balance card before you put gels on the lights. Then you could start making the background bluer and the foreground more orange from that point, and see how it reads on camera.
 
Light foreground and background separately. Gel the foreground lights with CTO gels and the background lights with CTB gels.
Or apply the look in post.
Or do both.
 
As for how to white balance it, if you're using color-accurate lights (tungsten fixtures or movie-balanced fluos/hmi's) just use the preset.
 
majikfraug said:
Light foreground and background separately. Gel the foreground lights with CTO gels and the background lights with CTB gels.
Or apply the look in post.
Or do both.
Click to expand...

I wonder about the background color a little. Do you think some strength of CTB is the ticket or is there another color out there that would get you the teal look? Or a combination of gels? I guess I should flip through the swatches. Duh.
 
This has been a help, thank you. With these various options, I think I'll start testing them all to see which gives me the look I'm going for. It's funny, I've looked at the Kodak Matercass series, and I've looked through a handful of books on cinematography and lighting, and none of them covered this particular instance. Yes, they would all have a section about the two colors, but none then went on to say how you white balance.

Thank you again!
 
"white balance" usually means adjusting the camera, relative to a reference White such that 'that white' is what the camera records. So if you nominal lighting is Tungsten, then 'balancing' in that light, no filters, etc, will be what you calibrate.

Then you 'light' the scene using various colors/casts to match your artistic vision, or 'learn to see' for your artistic vision.

Further, in post processing you can 'shift' colors around a bit depending on the original color scheme. If you watch the Behind The Scenes segments on many films, the 'doc' video camera will often show a set in 'vivid' color... then you look at the final film, and there is a world of difference between the 'reality'(tm) and what the production finally looks like on screen.
 
Man, I'd hit the BG with flo's or HMI/HIDs or blue-gelled tungsten, talent with tungsten, WB tungsten and tweak from there...

When white balancing, the first "rule" (if there is a rule) is "don't fight the light". If you've got mostly sunlight, work around that - if you're indoors on a sunny day and the light is blue-gray, work around that.

It takes (usually) a lot of fixtures and amps to beat the primary light color in a scene - if you're in a setting with full control (no daylight pouring in), compare the image you want with the fixtures and color temps and gels you have available. But unless you're running and gunning, you should come in to a location or set with a basic idea of what WB and what fixtures/techniques you'll be using.

Don't think of white balance as a completely technical setting - in a way you could think of it as "what's the base color of the canvas I'm about to paint on... warm or cool?", and even that phrasing isn't metaphorically perfect.

I've never had one situation where I had to think twice about what my base WB would be. But that's why you haven't found a hard & fast example... "it depends".
 
Just pull the CTO off of your tungsten lights and place a white card in front of the camera. White balance, then put the CTO back on.

Or...as Barry suggested, just use the preset.
 
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