Lighting for greenish look

[Ron Fya]

Hi there,

 

I was wondering what is the best way to light a scene towards a final look like those pictures in the nightclub from the TV series Lucifer (very nice new show by the way !).

 

What I like is the greenish background while still keeping the skin "somewhat" natural. Of course there is also heavy grading at play here and would appreciate input on this too.

 

Moreover, is this the same technique for Amélie Poulain hereunder?

 

Thank you very much !

 

Ron.

[Ron Fya]

Here are the pics of Amélie Poulain

 

[Stuart Brereton]

In the frames from Lucifer, it looks like the blue/green is coming mostly from backlight and accent lights around the set. The actor's keys seem much closer to tungsten, which would explain the neutral skin tones.

 

Amelie was, I believe, shot with Antique Suede filters of varying strengths. It no doubt had a little help in color-timing as well.

[Satsuki Murashige]

The key concept here is that if you want mixed colors in the lighting, then the most effective way to get this is to actually gel your lights with different colors at the time of shooting. Once you have already shot the footage, grading these color differences back into the image is akin to painting the colors in by hand one frame at a time. It is possible but extremely time consuming and generally won't look as natural.

 

On the other hand, if you have lit the foreground and background with different colors on set but later want to tweak the colors independently, then that is much simpler and quite commonly done. So in the first example you posted, if the DP had used blue 5600K daylight-balanced sources for the background and a warm 3200K tungsten-balanced key for the actors in the foreground, then it would be a simple matter to shift the blue backgrounds to cyan in grading by isolating the blues and adding green - while still keeping the warm key the same color or pushing it in a different direction.

[Ron Fya]

Thank you very much for your insights Satsuki ! Very appreciated!

 

A question them arise in my mind. When lighting the master shot, if we still want this color separation, how can one achieve that efficiently in small spaces where actors are lit with soft light and are closer to the backgrounds?

 

 

I would imagine lighting the space first with say "plus green" gels.

And then for the key light use a big light source with 1/2 CTO for the soft look with careful flag placement (if possible in the master) to prevent spilling. And maybe an additional fresnel to bring up the key level if needed.

[Satsuki Murashige]

Small locations are tough but still possible. I think the hard part of working in small spaces is figuring it how to maintain high contrast lighting ratios. If you don't have dark areas in the frame, saturated colors become washed out. Using practicals in the background that already have the color you want or that can be gelled easily can be a good way to go.

 

Matt Workman posted a really interesting breakdown of a recent music video that used mixed color lighting in small spaces:

 

http://www.cinematographydb.com/2016/01/cds0004-the-cinematography-of-justin-bieber-what-do-you-mean/

[David Mullen ASC]

You could get this look using a camera set to 3200K and cyan (blue + green) soft top and backlights as a base (maybe even Cool White flos) and then key using warmer tungsten and tungsten practicals for the foreground.