Lighting background for night shoots like hollywood does

[Anonymous]

In most motion pictures when the background has to be illuminated at night for a large area they almost always have a giant lighting system atop a crane and the light that comes from it is bluish. Do they use a gel to get that blue-light or is a type of blue bulb?? Anyone know? I’d like to illuminate my night videos using this technique.

[Anonymous]

They sometimes use arclights, but that’s an expensive proposition. My suggestion would be use normal lights, as many as you can find, to get the area illuminated. Then in post production, use your video editor to slightly desaturate the colors and add a subtle blue cast.

If you want a mixture of blue-tinted moonlight along with warm yellowish lights from practical lamps, use the daylight-balanced photoflood bulbs for the moonlight. Those "dayight-balanced" photofloods really have a color temperature of about 4800 Kelvin … not really daylight, which is about 5500 Kelvin. But they give a slightly blue tint when your white balance is set for indoor light (around 3200 Kelvin). You can get those photoflood bulbs in either 250 or 500 Watts at a camera store. The daylight-balanced bulbs will have an obvious blue color.

My 3 cents worth. 🙂
Ken Hull

[Anonymous]

Ken Wrote:

They sometimes use arclights, but that’s an expensive proposition. My suggestion would be use normal lights, as many as you can find, to get the area illuminated. Then in post production, use your video editor to slightly desaturate the colors and add a subtle blue cast.

If you want a mixture of blue-tinted moonlight along with warm yellowish lights from practical lamps, use the daylight-balanced photoflood bulbs for the moonlight. Those "dayight-balanced" photofloods really have a color temperature of about 4800 Kelvin … not really daylight, which is about 5500 Kelvin. But they give a slightly blue tint when your white balance is set for indoor light (around 3200 Kelvin). You can get those photoflood bulbs in either 250 or 500 Watts at a camera store. The daylight-balanced bulbs will have an obvious blue color.

My 3 cents worth. 🙂
Ken Hull

Thanks, Ken. Couldn’t I place a gel in front of the lights to cast a blue moonlight look?

[Anonymous]

Well, I guess you could get some blue gels from a theatrical supplies company. Then clamp them to your lights. Do you want the whole scene to have to blue tint? Or are you going to have a few warm yellow lights in the scene for a color-contrast? If the whole scene is blue-tinted, then tinting it in the video editor would be a lot easier. 😉

Ken Hull

[Author]

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