Gel for Front Wash

[cw4u]

What's a good, broadcast friendly gel for front washes? All of our fixtures are Source4 pars or ellipsodials.

[waynehoskins]

My first go-to neutral-to-slightly-warm frontlight color would be R51 or 52, probably 51 for TV; 52 is twice as saturated. They work nicely with skin tones, and 51 is subtle enough to not really look like "a color".

Funny though, I've mostly been using cool fronts for theatre lately. R62, R362, L201. The show I'm lighting now is all about cools. Especially in the space I light most, where the DS frontlight position is wicked flat and very limited, I'll often use cool fronts when I have night scenes and might have to cheat in some general fronts in those scenes; I can do that with cool fronts but not with warm fronts.

On the other hand, for a happy warm musical I might use R33, R34, or R337, all pinks for facelight.

[petereit]

We don't gel our Source4's at all, but we have enough that we don't run them very hot. A video industry professional watched one of our Vimeo broadcasts and was really impressed. He asked us what kind of color correction we were using on our lights. When we told him "none", he asked us how much color correction we did in post. When we tod him "none" he asked us who we used to design our lighting. When we told him "no one" he thought we were trying to pull his leg.

And all along we thought our lighting was terrible since none of us really had any idea what we were doing. We pretty much just hung them, turned them on and aimed them wherever we thought we needed more light.

[cw4u]

We run un-geled as well and I think it works ok. We increased our Source4 count from 12 to 26 (mainly because of special performances) so hopefully things should even out a lot better now.

Just seeing if people do things differently.

[petereit]

Apparently there's one thing we do right: I bought a 2' x 4' piece of white foam-core art board at Hobby Lobby. Before each service, we set our lights to our "Pastor Preaching" scene, we have someone hold the white board at the pulpit, we zoom each of our cameras in on the white board and we set the camera's white balance.

[Paris MkVI]

Also using Source 4's throughout. We run no color on the front wash, just some frost to soften up a few places.

Backlights are basically gelled with an Amber (02) and a blue (I forget the number). We let those cool or warm the scene. Since folks in chairs can see these lights, just their presence in the sightline also does some of the work for us.

I have also gelled with a much bolder Amber and Blue and liked it fine. But last time we replaced I went back to the milder ones.

[Esoteric]

Good white balancing is absolutely essential. I never gel front light specifically for video, but I always do a good white balance with the front light ONLY.

[petereit]

For TV, my personal preference is not to add color. It looks great in a live venue because I think we're mentally prepared to expect it. But when you see it on TV I think it looks really weird. It's a mental thing.

[D.R.HADDOCK]

Originally Posted by cw4u

What's a good, broadcast friendly gel for front washes? All of our fixtures are Source4 pars or ellipsodials.

How long is a piece of string ?
What are you aiming for ?
Do you broadcast ?
How does it look now ?
What color scheme is in the room now ?
All these things have a bearing on the answer !

But generally I like to use a light pink or light amber,
to enhance the skin tones.
Otherwise skins can look cold.

The types of lamps used can also effect
the color temp's and the over all look.

The source fours tend to have a slightly higher
color temp when compared to a standard incandesant lamps.
Like what might be in your ellipsodials.

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by D.R.HADDOCK

How long is a piece of string ?

Two cubits.

Surprisingly not terribly far off topic even. I cut my tie line for lighting cables in two-cubit lengths. It's easy to measure and long enough to put on the cable and tie a bundle up to the pipe, but not so long that it's unsightly or unmanageable.



I presume it's general speaking wash we're talking about. Sometimes, not often, I'll do saturated colorwashes from front, and for church rock-and-roll lead vocal specials I tend to go with a booster like Lee 201 to bring the temperature up close to arc blue. I suspect neither of those apply to this situation, but I bring them up for reference or something.

[Esoteric]

We do 18" tie line. You know why? That is the circumference of the barrel we use to make the tie line.