Why do a lot of filmmakers seem to hate deep focus cinematography?

[Brian Drysdale]

It's more complicated than 3 point lighting.

Put cool blue practicals into the shot, the white walls will pick up the colour.

[Paul R Johnson]

The Bradbury building made me smile. One of my clients always asks me to photograph the set for each production for their archive. They have always asked that it is taken with white light, not production light. Last year they changed - they asked for production lighting and they had totally unusable pictures because they were either bright and cheerful, mean and moody, hot and cold in terms of brightness and colour. They couldn't;t make any sense out of them from a set perspective. They often decide to get things made by reference to these pictures and they were useless for that. Great pictures, but hopeless. Give a real lighting person a bland set and they can do wonders. Have you looked at the Lee filter and Rosco stuff mentioned above? HUNDREDS of very subtle and similar shades but in the hands of experts, pure magic. One I work with has a kind of rule - light the people well, don't light the set. Then, if something can't be seen, only then light it!

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

It's more complicated than 3 point lighting.

Put cool blue practicals into the shot, the white walls will pick up the colour.

Oh okay, but I thought I should probably gel the blue practicals still, to make them more blue perhaps, no?

[Brian Drysdale]

If you're shooting tungsten, daylight CTB would look pretty blue, it really depends how extreme you want to go and how much stray light is around. An office won't look like a night club.

You can tell on the day by looking at the monitor, discuss this with the DP.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay sure. I don't want the blue light to be really saturated, I just want it to be a darker blue, darker than the actors if possible. So I thought that CTB gel, would maybe make it darker, but yes do not want it saturated like a night club.

[Josh Bass]

youre getting way into micromanaging things that would be handled by your dp and gaffer. Your role should basically be “I want it blue. No too blue. Now make it darker. Great. Let’s shoot.” All the specifics of lighting units etc would be handled by them.

[Brian Drysdale]

You seem to be confusing saturation with brightness, leave this to DP as Josh says.

[Ryan Elder]

Sure I can leave it to the DP. It's just I've been told before by a DP even that lighting walls certain colors looks weird, if there is no motivation for it, so I wanted to be better prepared with the idea of the look.

[Paul R Johnson]

Ryan - you don't understand it. Your friends give advice that you take out of context. They don't understand what you want. Lighting walls a colour can look weird. So can painting them with that colour paint.

Colour can be a tool. If you understand how to apply it.

[Josh Bass]

Heres an idea... find visual references to other films/tv shows that have the look you want, show THOSE R I used to have

[Ryan Elder]

Oh I've tried that but it's hard cause every movie that I thought of seems to have painted walls, instead of lit walls. I can keep looking.

[Brian Drysdale]

You need to use your imagination. Here are all kinds of colours on walls:

Storaro on Color: Bulworth on Vimeo

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks. Well, the script is a police procedural thriller to a degree with a lot of it taking place in the police station. One option for a look, I was considering is something similar to Seven. Here's a scene from Seven, where the walls are painted brown:

Seven office scene - YouTube

But if for mine, I cannot paint the walls of the location, and I lit the walls brown instead. Would that come off as strange at all?

[Brian Drysdale]

Usually films are shot in unused building that are awaiting development, where the owners don't care about you repainting walls etc.

You won't get that grimy police station look with lights to colour all the walls like paint, you can get pools of light. Is this your rape film?

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, what do you mean I can get pools of light? Yes this is the same script.