Illuminations: Color Temperature Strategies
When you're lighting a shoot you're responsible for color temperature. Sure, videographers set the camcorder white balance, but they can only work with the light you give them; and in real-world production, that light is rarely the nice, clean 3200K temperature that makes the camera smile. You usually face a mixture of incandescent and fluorescent light, or either (or both) fighting window light. And that window light is anywhere from 5000K all the way up to nine and change. This would be no big deal if all the light sort of blended into a compromise color temperature, because the camcorder can be set for a wide range of nominal "whites".
But light doesn't do that, so there you are preparing to tape the CEO in her executive office, with a halogen spot for a key light, a huge window for fill, and a fluoro ceiling for rim and background lighting. Great: one side of the CEO is orange, the other side's blue, her hair is edged in green, and her priceless rosewood walls look like limed oak. What's a poor gaffer to do?
Plan ahead, for starters, beginning way back before your first lightin…
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