Best way to get white under fluorescents

[Tim Carroll]

We're going to be shooting a number of scenes on 7217 (Kodak Vision2 200T) in a community college classroom that has a ceiling full of fluorescent lights. I want the look of the lights coming down from above, that harsh, industrial classroom look, but I don't want the sickly green. I want to get the light to go from sickly green to pure white.

 

Replacing the tubes is out, so our options are to gel the tubes they have (sheets of gel on the plastic grids below the fluorescent tubes), use a magenta filter on the camera lens, or color correct during telecine transfer.

 

I would like to hold onto as many stops of light as possible, something that will be lost if we gel the tubes, and if we use the magenta filter on the camera.

 

But my concern is if we try to take it all out in telecine, are we going to be losing anything or are we going to be skewing the rest of the colors in some other way?

 

Any and all experience with this or other info will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

-Tim

 

PS: Actually, I just realized something, if we are shooting tungsten film, is magenta even the color we want to use to remove the fluorescent? How do you color match fluorescent light to tungsten film? Or should we be doing what is listed above, but using daylight film, the new Kodak Vision3 250D 7207?

[David Mullen ASC]

First of all, I'm assuming you are talking about Cool White fluorescents, which are closer to daylight, not Warm White fluorescents, which are closer to tungsten.

 

Cool Whites are around 4800K and have green in them, so the question is due you need to correct for the green, or the green and the blue? (I find the best gel combination on a tungsten light to match is 3/4 Blue + 1/2 Plus Green).

 

Generally, it's no big deal to just correct it in post, just shoot a greyscale under the flos. You may find it a bit tricky to correct some blonde-haired people because their hair picks up more green/yellow in them, so even when you time the face correctly, there is still a bit of green in the blonde hair. But it's not that bad, and if you say you want an industrial look, then you'll be fine.

 

You may find 250D to be a better match than 200T though.

[Tim Carroll]

Thanks David.

 

Haven't seen the cast yet, so don't know if we will have any blondies.

 

For matching my tungsten lights to the fluorescents (I believe they are Cool White, but I will be checking), I gel 3/4 Blue + 1/2 Plus Green, and I would do that no matter which film I was shooting, correct.

 

So whether we go with 250D as opposed to the 200T, if we are fixing it in post, I gel like above, which just makes my tungsten match what is coming out of the Cool White fluorescents.

 

Thanks,

-Tim

[Dan Goulder]

If you have enough light to work with, the combination of 250D with an FLD filter works quite well.