Can reflectors be gelled?

[Ville Pakarinen]

Hi y'all!

We're shooting in this gorgeous hallway, and I was thinking of ways to achieve soft light by bouncing off of reflectors attached to the walls. We have some redheads and blondes that I would like to change to daylight. So I got this crazy idea of saving some time and attaching the gel to the reflectors, not on the lights. Would this work? Would I need to use half CTB to achieve full daylight correction since the light goes first through the gel, then bounces back and goes through a second time. Am I being a little too creative here, or is this almost genius-level lateral thinking?


Thanks!

[Aapo Lettinen]

the gel surface will create a hard additional reflection just like any shiny plastic foil. it may look like a reflection from glass surface, mirror or other shiny surface but it is definitely distracting if you are not intended to have it around

Edited September 15, 2014 by aapo lettinen

[Ville Pakarinen]

Hmmm... That makes a lot of sense.

[David Mullen ASC]

Doesn't work too well because gels are shiny so your bounce surface has a big crinkly hot spot... Besides, it takes less gel to cover a light with two layers than a wall with one layer.

 

"Blade Runner" bounced off of gels to get that wavy shimmering pattern on the walls of the Tyrell Corporation.

[Ville Pakarinen]

Hmmm... Blade Runner, eh? Actually, I have to look into that look. Maybe it will be interesting.

[Aapo Lettinen]

what kind of scene you are shooting there? for daylight it would be much better to use hmi:s for the reflectors, you could manage with single 1.2k for example instead of using quite a bunch of small tungsten lights corrected to daylight (light loss about 2 stops…)

If you cannot use hmi and can manage with warmer fill, them maybe you could correct the tungstens with 1/2 ctb so you have double the light level compared to full correction

Edited September 15, 2014 by aapo lettinen

[Ville Pakarinen]

Yeah, I was also thinking of gelling the windows. In fact, I think that's the ticket!

I'm not sure I could hide 1.2Ks with their ballasts and I'd much rather have smaller pools of light rather than a wide fill.

Those walls aren't very smooth. Maybe that could motivate a little uneven bounced light look.

Edited September 15, 2014 by Ville Pakarinen

[Ville Pakarinen]

Two guys struggle to reach a door first. I don't want any practical lights there. They are in a hurry and don't have the time to turn on the lights.

I'm wondering how the pools of light could be positioned still retaining the feeling that they are created by natural light.

[Aapo Lettinen]

how much of the stairs is visible? for the area downstairs, you could bounce light from white surface under the stairs on both sides, you could hide the lights downstairs so they are not visible. this is only effective if you need just a little bit more light near the windows because the light would be too frontal if you increase the bounce area by using more surface. or you could use bigger lights for bounce, thought this might not be practical. fresnel or par would do for this but definitely not open face tungstens, they have too much spread to get a reasonable spot to the corners near the windows.. for upper stairs, you could hang 4-4 or bigger kino flos above the frame line so the light is coming from the general direction of the big windows but is wrapping around the stairs to the shadow area and creates good soft backlight for the characters. you could archive kind of similar type of effect by using bounced or softened tungsten light but the rigging is much more complicate and more time-consuming to tweak if you need changes

Edited September 15, 2014 by aapo lettinen

[John E Clark]

Hmmm... Blade Runner, eh? Actually, I have to look into that look. Maybe it will be interesting.

 

Here's an old American Cinematographer article on "Blade Runner"(1982)

 

https://www.theasc.com/magazine/mar99/blade/pg1.htm

 

Didn't have time to check to see if there's a discussion on the specific wall shimmer effect or not.

 

I've read elsewhere that it involved floating reflective/gelled objects in water. Some things are more doable with larger budgets...

[Albion Hockney]

when you say reflectors do you mean bouncs or reflectors. Reflected light is much differnt then bounced light.

 

 

Bounced light unless controled will not likley look like pools of light in that space.... it will light up the whole room.

[Ville Pakarinen]

You mean bounced light is when the surface is diffuse, and reflected is when the surface is specular? I'm not really sure yet what kind of effect I'm looking for. Haven't seen the location yet.

[Albion Hockney]

yes literally reflected light means a mirror but using shinny board or something gets you something that is a bit diffused but still has some directonality to it.

 

bounced light generally has very little directionality it goes everywhere.