cinematography What's the best skin tone temperature in your opinion?

[harmonica44]

I and a camera operator are wondering whether to order some gels for lights or not. The thing is I want to keep the skin tones consistent or at least consistent enough to look good for the movie. Daylight has a nice skin tone. Tungsten and fluorescent are not bad.

I was thinking I could do this either too ways. Shoot under daylight for the daylight scenes obviously. And shoot with halogen lights for the tungsten scenes, such as a house. And shoot with fluorescents for scenes where I want a fluorescent, such as on office. The actors skin will be different colored in each.

Or I can have the actor's skin be daylight balanced in each scene. Just set it to daylight for the tungsten scenes, and gel the halogen lights to look tungsten in the house scenes, and gel the same halogen to look like flourescents for the office scenes.

So the question is should I shoot under the same best looking skin tone temperature for the whole movie, and gel all the lights to be different colors? Or should I use different colored lights throughout under different color temperatures in camera?

 

[gpforet]

Yes, unless you're trying to create a particular effect, you should white balance to the scene lighting. It's not uncommon to have to adjust white balance between takes as the result of clouds, or when running out of day and the light is getting redder and redder as the sun sets.

Okay thanks. What about shooting outdoors in daylight?

Let's say you want to shoot in the sun, and you set the white balance to white. But then all of a sudden the sun goes behind clouds, and it's cloudy, and the white balance is now a bit blue-ish and you don't want that. Should the camera operator be adjusting the color temperature on the fly if things like that happen outdoors?

What if you are doing a scene where actors walk into shade and then walk out. Should you do a cut, then switch white balances back, after they come out of the shade?

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. As long as audience don't notice the switch.

 

[jax_rox]

If you're balancing properly, how could an audience possibly notice a switch from white to white..?

Get a colourist and have them match everything, or get it right in camera, especially if you're using a DSLR. Sometimes you make tweaks between takes or shots to adjust for different conditions. If the sun goes behind the clouds, you're going to open up a stop or three depending on how much light you just lost.

Realistically though, there shouldn't be too much of a difference in White Balance to warrant cutting and changing if you're talkign about the sun going behind the clouds..