Tips on how to achieve the "all-red" look

[Tomas Gomez]

Hey everyone! I'm gonna be shooting a student short film in a few days and I wanted some tips on how to achieve the all-red look of the attached image. We only have a couple of Tungtsen 1000w and 650w lights, and no extra money to buy gels, so I was wondering if it's a good idea to shoot it under just the tungsten lights and give it a heavy red color grade, also to avoid having  the output of the lights reduced and focusing problems that I've heard shooting under red gels could give. I have also read on forums that someone recommended shooting under magenta gels (I have 3) and then adjusting it to red in color grade, but I dont really get why they recommend the magenta gels instead of just no gels? 

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[Satsuki Murashige]

From a recent thread: 

https://cinematography.com/index.php?/topic/86817-a-scene-solely-with-red-lighting/&tab=comments#comment-540715

It’s also been discussed in many other threads over the years.

If you can’t get red gels, then I would try to get a hold of a Red #25 filter at least. I would think a few sheets of Primary Red gel would be cheaper though.

[Mark Kenfield]

Personally, I tend to add a little clean tungsten light into my red-lit "darkroom" scenes (to pad out the spectrum a little). However, if you don't have the money for gels, you can 100% shoot the scene normally with plain tungsten light and get a perfect red result in the grade.

It take literally seconds, just drop a solid colour generator on top of your clips that need it. Set the colour generator to the red hue of your chosing, and then use "Colour Burn" as your composite mode for the generator. It'll turn a normal image, into a purely red one.

The only limitation, is that you can't easily isolate and remove the overlaid colour from selected parts of the image (say if you wanted to see a tiny bit of white light spilling under the doorway of the dark/red room).

Here's a couple of grabs from a recent shoot with this little colour overlay trick applied (so you can see how effective it is on even full daylight shots):

Edited May 23, 2021 by Mark Kenfield

[Phil Rhodes]

On 5/23/2021 at 3:44 PM, Mark Kenfield said:

Personally, I tend to add a little clean tungsten light into my red-lit "darkroom" scenes (to pad out the spectrum a little).

Yes. I think what we're basically talking about here is not just going for a maximally-saturated red, which can be hard to expose properly.

Another useful note is to look for LED lights with phosphor-converted reds, if you can't use tungsten.

Explanation for anyone who hasn't encountered this: conventional red LEDs, which are more or less big versions of the on-light from your TV, have a very narrow spectrum. Better ones use a blue LED to illuminate a red-emitting phosphor, which is much wider, which has the same effect Mark is discussing here. Non-phosphor converted red LEDs can look very, very harsh. Both are used in lighting; generally, higher-end options use the phosphor type, though it's becoming more common throughout.

It can be hard to tell them apart. Put side by side the phosphor-converted red should look more - for want of a better word - powdery, less saturated, very slightly pink or orangish rather than a deep crimson. You can see it once you get your eye in.

Yes, this means the red is less saturated and extreme, but it's easier to expose nicely.

I should shoot some demos of this.

P