Colour Gels CTO + CTB

Colour Gels

In our group we carried out a Colour test using colour correction Gels, by using colour gels, or filters, is a process used in stage lighting, photography, television, cinematography and other disciplines. Colour gels are used to alter the lighting to make it brighter a blue gel would be used to warm the screen up, and an orange colour gel will cool the room down. In our group we thought the colour gels would be the opposite way around, I myself thought the blue colour gel would cool the room down but it does the opposite to this, the orange gel in fact cools the room down and the blue makes the room more warm and bright. Without colour correction gels being used this can alter the light in the recorded scene causing light to vary throughout the clip, this can make the scene have bad continuity as the light will change in each shot. Applying colour correction gels in front of light sources can alter the colour of the various light sources to match. Mixed lighting can produce an undesirable aesthetic when displayed on a television or in a theatre. In our group we used ½ and ¼ orange and blue colour gels; we covered the lighting with the gels and made sure all the wires from the lights were covered with black electrical tape to make sure it was safe.

White Balance test

In photography and the film industry white balance is a key part of making the colour realistic, Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "colour temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. Our eyes are very good at judging what is white under different light sources, but digital cameras often have great difficulty with auto white balance (AWB) and can create unsightly blue, orange, or even green colour casts. Understanding digital white balance can help you avoid these colour casts, thereby improving your photos under a wider range of lighting conditions. We used our colour correction gels to help us create a bright or cool lighting and we used the colours blue and orange, when we used the white balance setting on the camera we held the colour gel over the camera, then the camera automatically adjusted it’s colour temperature to how the environment’s temperature is.

Lighting test to see the values of using Colour correction Gels

After we had completed our White balance test we then used the colour correction gels to create emotion on our characters face, for example I was the actor and we used Green and Red colour gels to bring out a emotional effect that can be seen easier when the camera is recording. To do this we covered the lighting with the colour gels using crocodile clips to make sure the gels were at a safe distance from the lights as they can heat up very fast causing a high temperature so could be very dangerous. In this test we also made sure all the wires from the lights were covered up with black electrical tape so that all students in our group were at full safety.