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What kind of gels would I need to get this look?


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Sure you could do that but since you’d want the bathroom light to be cyan like this (blue + green) it might be easier to set the camera to 4300K or so, then use Daylight tubes w/ Plus Green gel for cyan, use warming gels on the tungsten. Or set the camera to 3200K, use Cool White fluorescents, and gel the background lights orange. It’s just that if you start at a 5600K base then the bathroom light has to start at 5600K before you add both blue (CTB) and Plus Green gel (or Steel Blue / Cyan / many other gels.) Which is possible. Of course today there are RGB LED tubes that can create any color you want.

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20 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Sure you could do that but since you’d want the bathroom light to be cyan like this (blue + green) it might be easier to set the camera to 4300K or so, then use Daylight tubes w/ Plus Green gel for cyan, use warming gels on the tungsten. Or set the camera to 3200K, use Cool White fluorescents, and gel the background lights orange. It’s just that if you start at a 5600K base then the bathroom light has to start at 5600K before you add both blue (CTB) and Plus Green gel (or Steel Blue / Cyan / many other gels.) Which is possible. Of course today there are RGB LED tubes that can create any color you want.

Ahh that sounds reasonable. Do you know what strength I'd need for the plus green gel? We don't really have the budget to buy multiple rolls and we don't live near any place that sell them over the counter so there's no way for me to actually see it in person.

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There are super low-cost ways to do this. Get any white-ish light, a polystyrene board from a DIY store, and while you're there a tester-sized pot of blue-greenish paint. Paint the board, bounce the light off it. Total cost: one cheeseburger.

P

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1 hour ago, Phil Rhodes said:

There are super low-cost ways to do this. Get any white-ish light, a polystyrene board from a DIY store, and while you're there a tester-sized pot of blue-greenish paint. Paint the board, bounce the light off it. Total cost: one cheeseburger.

P

Yeah I figure I could do it that way, but at the same time I want to learn how to use the tools of the trade. We're handed a budget (this is a film school project) so in kind of don't want to do DIY solutions if I can avoid it. Those solutions I can save for private projects! Thanks for the suggestion though.

Meanwhile, just a curiosity. Does color shift if it's bounced off a white surface? Or will a white surface, being neutral, not affect the color of the light?

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If you're using tungsten (or tungsten balanced) lamps, try LEE 219 fluorescent green (1/2 CTB + 1/4 Plus Green would also work) and Full CTO. If you want to use an actual fluorescent fitting as a key, Cool White tubes have that kind of blue/green look when photographed with a tungsten WB 

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there are a couple variables that will determine the final color other than the gel, are your RGB primaries still set to wide gamut or are the reset to rec709? That might make the difference in whether you need a jade gel or cyan 60.  If your primaries are not set to rec709 or at least close, what the monitor will show will most certainly be different that what your eye sees on set some times by a large margin. Check your image processing workflow, that will usually determine the right gel.  

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
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Hi all,

Sorry for the long delay in my response. Basically, for the bathroom scene in JOKER, we had the Alexa 65 camera set at 3200 Kelvin and  most likely 1600 ISO to achieve an exposure of T1.4. As for the lighting, all fixtures were tied to a dimmer board where the dimmer board operator could dial in the fluorescent green combined with the orange of the sodium vapor lights. Everything was very controlled. I hope this helps. 
 

G

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1 hour ago, Gregory Irwin said:

Hi all,

Sorry for the long delay in my response. Basically, for the bathroom scene in JOKER, we had the Alexa 65 camera set at 3200 Kelvin and  most likely 1600 ISO to achieve an exposure of T1.4. As for the lighting, all fixtures were tied to a dimmer board where the dimmer board operator could dial in the fluorescent green combined with the orange of the sodium vapor lights. Everything was very controlled. I hope this helps. 
 

G

Thanks for that. A gruesome focus proposition!

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2 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Thanks for that. A gruesome focus proposition!

It certainly makes the day go by quickly. Larry Sher and I will be doing it again, beginning in April, except that this time around will be anamorphic. Warner Bros. /DC Comics, BLACK ADAM will also employ volume technology. It should be great!

G

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I think 219 Lee Fluorescent Green on a daylight source would get you in the ballpark http://www.leefilters.com/lighting/colour-details.html#219

 

Here is a very old test of mine, I tested shooting photos with a Canon DSLR using different color gels, with a daylight WB and daylight light source (studio flash)

Fluorescent green is in the bottom row, middle https://i.ibb.co/YPbvnBb/varikalvot.jpg

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On 2/3/2021 at 5:44 PM, Gregory Irwin said:

Hi all,

Sorry for the long delay in my response. Basically, for the bathroom scene in JOKER, we had the Alexa 65 camera set at 3200 Kelvin and  most likely 1600 ISO to achieve an exposure of T1.4. As for the lighting, all fixtures were tied to a dimmer board where the dimmer board operator could dial in the fluorescent green combined with the orange of the sodium vapor lights. Everything was very controlled. I hope this helps. 
 

G

Thank you very much for sharing! Needless to say we didn't have the resources to do anything like that. The scene from Joker was a big inspiration for a scene in our student shortfilm and we shot the scene yesterday!

In the end we gelled our 4000k white flourescents with two layers of half plus green and one layer of full CTB. The other lights in the shot at 2100k. Camera set at 4000K. I was really happy with the results, thank you very much for the inspiration! 

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