Lighting for Film & TV: Colour Correction Filters Pt 1: What is Colour Temperature?

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Colour Correction Filters
There’s more to it than meets the eye!

So I thought I’d do a series of blogs all about filters; what they do, how you use them and why they’re so damned handy…

OK, I know you may think that this isn’t perhaps the most exciting subject to read about, but it’s vital for all you budding Directors of Photography and Cinematographers out there, to understand that your ultimate aim is to master your craft, and that means having a deep understanding of ALL aspects of camerawork and lighting.

Mastery will get you to the top of your profession; being part of what I call the ‘Mediocre Majority’ will not, and knowing your craft will get you ultimate respect from your colleagues. If you don’t know this basic stuff, then when you work with experienced Lighting Gaffers and ‘Sparks’ you’ll gain zero respect from them, they’ll see you as unprofessional and treat you with contempt… quite right too!

I know I keep banging on about this but remember… a big part of mastering this craft means having a real in-depth understanding of anything and everything to do with camerawork.

So now I’ve had my industry rant let’s get down to work…

I’m going to divide this into a mini series of into 6 easy to understand parts:

Part 1 : What is Colour Temperature?

Part 2: Why Colour Correction filters are used to change colour temperature and how to use them.

Part 3: The most commonly used Filters.

Part 4: Effects filters and how to use them.

Part 5: How and why you use diffusion to soften a light source.

Part 6 : Bringing it all together a practical workshop on colour correction and filming using mixed lighting

So without further ado, let’s get on with…

Lighting for Film & TV – Part 2: 3 Point Lighting

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“If you can light an orange so that it looks or photographs as smooth and round as a billiard ball, you are ready to light close-ups and portraits of living people.“

– John Alton, Cinematographer.

So… Lighting: It’s a huge subject, but I thought I’d attack the very basics in part 2 of this series – 3 point lighting. If you haven’t read the intro to this series you can find it here.

3 Point Lighting is a common technique that can be used for both documentary AND drama. It’s the foundation of most lighting techniques and is relatively quick and easy to setup. Please keep in mind that although I make a lot of references to lighting interviews here, these techniques are perfectly transferable to lighting your lead actors in a film, musicians in a music video or products in a commercial.

I’m going to keep this one quick, snappy and concise. So let’s get to it!…

Lighting for Film & TV – Part 1: The Basics

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We’ve briefly touched on some of the techniques required to become a successful camera operator in the “How to be a Better Camera Operator” series, (part 1, part 2 & part 3). This next series is going to be all about Lighting.

Why lighting? Well first and foremost we get asked about it a lot. We’ve had a lot of requests from people wanting to know more about how to light and it’s one of our most successful courses.

In the posts that follow, we’ll be discussing everything and anything to do with lighting, from the basics right up to more advanced, in depth knowledge. So let’s go!…

3 Simple Rules for Filming Without Lights (Exterior)

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I often get asked about lighting techniques for Film and TV. Whether you’re lighting a simple interview for a TV documentary or organising a big lighting set-up for a film or TV drama, I will eventually have articles on here to explain all the techniques you’ll need to employ…

However, for now I want to start with the basics, some of the fundamentals of good lighting.

The first thing I want to talk about is shooting using Available Light. Available light is the ambient light that is exists in any given situation. In other words shooting in available light is when you don’t add any of your own film lights. (“Pretty obvious” I hear you say, “Thanks for that great pearl of wisdom there Chris!“).

So, if there’s enough light around without needing to rig any of your own lights, it should be pretty simple, just pick camera up and start filming right?!… Wrong!

Occasionally I have laps of concentration and end up inadvertently watching Daytime TV (it happens OK?!)… and the number of times I see examples of how not to shoot in available light is unbelievable! Bleached out images of presenters, dark shadows of the camera operator and mic shadows mysteriously drifting in and out of shot, not to mention unintentional lens flares all over the place (remember, this isn’t Star Trek and we’re not shooting Anamorphic!).

So… let’s get to it! Here are my 3 Simple Rules for Shooting With Available Light….

What’s a Lighting “Gobo” & How to Make One in 5 Simple Steps

How to light an interview (specifically background lighting)

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First of all, for those who don’t know… what the hell’s a Gobo?! Gobo stands for ‘Go-Between’. It’s basically a stencil or cut out that you position ‘between’ a lamp and the area you want to light. The resulting shadows create an artistic effect, simple.

If you’re shooting an interview at an interior location, say a room for example, the background can sometimes look really boring. I’m sure you’ll agree a plain white wall looks pretty unexciting (snore).

How do you get round this one? Easy! You need a Gobo!

You’ll need 3 lamps in total to light the interview (full post on that one to come!), and we’ll be using one of those to create the nice background.

So here’s how to produce a great background lighting effect…