lighting A cold "hair backlight".

FernandoAndre

FernandoAndre

In most scenes on my short film, I need contour the head of the characters with a strong light with a cold temperature - like an orange source at night.

Something like this girl, but at night:

Backlight.png




But the hard point is that I need to match this city lights:

curitiba-rua-xv-noite.jpg



So, the goal is to reinforce the light of this public lamps in order to make it shine a lot as a thin backlight in the character's head, hair, body, whatever I can. Any tips about a good light equipment for this purpose and how I can change the color temperature if needed? Is extremely important do not light the front of the actor with this source, but creating incandescent outlines with the same color of the ambient.

Thanks for any help.
 
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I generally white balance to tungsten at night. As was noted that will make car headlights and SOME street lights pure white. Other street lights (sodium I think) appear very orange (as they also do to the eye). That would be the reason to orange gel I suppose to motivate the light as a warm sodium street light.
 
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FernandoAndre,
This is one of those things that is best discovered with your own eyes. I talked about it and talked about it on this forum, but it wasn't until I finally went though the trouble of doing my own White Balance testing with my OWN camera that I was able to "internalize it" enough to feel comfortable with the topic.

Do you need a tungsten light? Who can know? We can not know what you need for lighting a REAL world shot in a hypothetical discussion... Chances are you will HAVE a tungsten light as they are the most light for the money and are readily available. You may need to use filters to get the desired LOOK in camera.


If you can go out tonight to the actual location your shooting, with your camera, White Balance set to Tungsten and post some screen caps here, we can give more specific advice.
 
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wheatgrinder said:
Easy answer on the first one..

Look at something BLUE it makes you feel cool. Look at something orange it makes you feel warm.. the SCIENCE came after!
.....
Click to expand...

Indeed: a winter morning in Norway looks blue and cold.
A sunny afternoon in the South of France looks 'yellow' and warm.

If I'm remembering it correctly the science part is that's it's the color of iron at those temperatures.
 
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But I remember my DP teacher saying "the hot and cold logic for light is the opposite of what you know about colors in art direction".

Then I read on wikipedia exactly this: For colors based on black body theory, blue occurs at higher temperatures, while red occurs at lower, cooler, temperatures. This is the opposite of the cultural associations attributed to colors, in which "red" is "hot", and "blue" is "cold".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature

That's why I wrote "cold backlight" on the title.
 
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What I think you're confusing here is the science, and the emotion.

We associate Blue shades as 'cool' colours, and orange/red shades as 'warm' colours. That's the emotion of it, and it's generally accepted. If you were describing the look you wanted for a scene, for example, you would use warm to describe oranges, yellows, reds etc. and cool to describe blues, greens etc.

The science of colour temperature comes from the way heat reacts. Colour temperature came about by heating an object and recording the temperatures at which it changed colour. Think of your stove, for example - the blue flame on your stove is indeed hotter than the yellow flame of a fire.
Therefore, the 'hotter' colour temperature is actually bluer.

However, when we discuss colour temperature, we'll usually use 'cooler' to describe higher numbers, and 'warmer' to describe lower numbers simply because it correlates with the colour we're seeing, even though scientifically the higher numbers are in fact hotter.

A 'cold hair backlight' would normally be understood as a bluer backlight, whereas a warm backlight would be understood as orange. This is generally accepted, and you should get into the habit of describing colours the standard way as it will go a long way when you ask a Production Designer to use warm colours and they bring you reds and yellows (rather than the blue you were expecting).

You shouldn't worry too much about the science, other than the fact that 'cooler' (bluer) colours have a higher colour temperature, and 'warmer' (orange-er) colours have a lower colour temperature.
 
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Right, jax. :)

I talked with a photographer about the temperature of this lights from our city and he told me I need lights from 2.300K to 2.700K to match a good additive effect.
Any tips about what equipment I can use with this color temperature?
 
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Like I said tungsten light. (2300K, to 2700K is smack dab in the middle of tungsten range) If the camera had been white balanced to tungsten, then lights would look WHITE, however if the camera was set to white balance of DAYLIGHT, then the tungsten light would look golden to the sensor. Test this on your camera as soon as you can.
 
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wheatgrinder said:
Like I said tungsten light. (2300K, to 2700K is smack dab in the middle of tungsten range) If the camera had been white balanced to tungsten, then lights would look WHITE, however if the camera was set to white balance of DAYLIGHT, then the tungsten light would look golden to the sensor. Test this on your camera as soon as you can.
Click to expand...

Tungsten is 3200K, and that's what your camera gets set to when you white balance for a tungsten preset. A lot of household globes are actually warmer, however, somewhere in the ~2900K range, so it might actually be an idea to light the warmer tones with china balls containing household globes if you're using Tungsten lights as your main source.

If you're using daylight lights as your main source, I'd probably stick a half straw on a Tungsten fixture so that it's not quite as orange, and more yellow/golden unless that orange is whaty ou want.
 
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Mask, it's a shooting board from one of your movies or you did it specifically for this thread? Asking because if it's from a movie, I would like to see the final result hehe. But thanks if you did for my question, that's pretty close to what I need.

I'm wondering how to set the light in the same height of the street lamps. Quite tall. Do you recommend any gear for this?

Thank you.
 
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FernandoAndre said:
Mask, it's a shooting board from one of your movies or you did it specifically for this thread? Asking because if it's from a movie, I would like to see the final result hehe. But thanks if you did for my question, that's pretty close to what I need.

I'm wondering how to set the light in the same height of the street lamps. Quite tall. Do you recommend any gear for this?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

hello it drawn for this thread. anyway i pretty sure about best result in this board.

actually no need same height with lamps. just lights higher than actor's head enough. but clearly lights should be angle to actor's line of action.

between you might need defuses,nd filters, quality WB and BB but everything depend on what you need.

of course i don't know real situation so this is just suggestion only

best regards
 
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