Blue Gels for Audience Lighting

[ChampMan234]

My friends who have a band are doing a show in a local college gym and want to tape the show for DVD to release on their website. They want to have a blue wash over the audience in the bleachers. Any recommendations on a good blue gel to use for the par 64s we will use to light the audience that will look good on video?

 

[jhdesynz]

Color is very subjective, but a good starting point would be either R80 Primary Blue or Apollo 4250 Apollo Blue. You should contact Apollo, Rosco, and Lee and have them send you swatchbooks. They are usually free. PM me if you need a local dealer.

 

[rsmentele]

I agree with the R80. Its a very good, standard blue.

 

[derekleffew]

Is the video being shot at 3200K, 5600K, or something else?
L201, AP4650, or R68 might work. I wouldn't go darker than R68, or likely the camera will never see it, unless you have tons of horsepower. As in 1kPAR64-VNSPs.

 

[Syphilis]

You should check the color with the camera that's being used to record the concert, to make sure it has the effect. I've used R80 for that purpose, and it's looked good.

 

[shiben]

Just to throw it out there, any reason why just blue? I did this a while back, but also used a bunch of PARs as crowd blinders and used them a bit more than normal because it looked really cool to have a dolly shot of the band from the audience while they were going off, and the director of the shoot liked the effect. The other bonus of this was you could actually see the audience. I also had Blue, Red and Amber on the audience from behind them, to look cool. R80 would work fine, Just dont use anything wider than a 1k MFL in the PARs, preferable use a pile of NSP or VNSPs up in that.

 

[LuxMax]

Typically for video you do not need as saturated color as you might think. I have used L132 or R68 to get nice dark blues for background subjects like audience shots. You certainly can use darker colors like R80, but you lose the ability to get more lumens into the audience if you need to compensate for very bright stage lighting. It's all about balance with video.
Shiben is also correct in stating that you don't want really wide fixtures to do an even audience wash. A 'dappled' audience was looks much more interesting on camera.

 

[kendal69]

The color you select actually determines the mood of the room and the viewer on the video.
Blues ( COOL COLORS ) tend to lower the mood of the viewer - CHILL.
Golds ( WARM COLORS ) tend to be make people happy.
White - Signifies purity
Red - Denotes ANGER, fire.
Pink, is more tranquilizing.
Blue - Calming COLD.
Green - Calming used in prisons to calm prisoners
Yellow - A Cheerful happy color makes people feel WARM.
Brown - A Male color, woodsie.

As a designer it's your responsibility to control the mood by the colors you select. Personally I would want a crowd excited listening to a band use BLUE if it's JAZZ band and a more subdued audience.

THESE ARE MY WORDS AND MY WORDS ALONE. Author Kendall69

 

[derekleffew]

kendal69 , if the color attributions above are not your words, would you mind editing the post to show the quoted text and cite the source? As this is, primarily, an educational site, we take plagiarism rather seriously around here.

 

[Axislights]

Anger, he smiles,
towering in shiny metallic purple armour
Queen Jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground

Blue are the life-giving waters taken for granted,
They quietly understand
Once happy turquoise armies lay opposite ready,
But wonder why the fight is on
But they're all bold as love, yeah, they're all bold as love
Yeah, they're all bold as love
Just ask the axis

My red is so confident that he flashes trophies of war,
and ribbons of euphoria
Orange is young, full of daring,
But very unsteady for the first go round
My yellow in this case is not so mellow
In fact I'm trying to say it's frigthened like me
And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from, eh,
Giving my life to a rainbow like you
But, I'm eh , yeah, I'm bold as love
Yeah, yeah
Well I'm bold, bold as love (hear me talking, girl)
I'm bold as love
Just ask the axis (he knows everything)
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah!

Jimi Hendrix

There you go Derek!

 

[LightingTechie]

I suggest Just Blue (Lee 079)
- Lee Filters

 

[Syphilis]

"The color of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colors." What?

 

[GageStryker]

It all really depends. LIghting for video is all about balancing your output.

The more saturated a blue you get, the better it looks, until it drops off the cliff of "not bright enough to get noticed." Depending on what camera equipment, what your ambient light situation and what the stage lighting looks like, that can vary a LOT.

Also, are you lighting the audience for shots from FOH (fill light) or as a backdrop to a reverse angle shot (tinted audience blinders), or both? That's a big consideration.

I sometimes cheat, and use two colors for my wash: a saturated blue, like an R80, and then something with some more transmission, like an R64. That way I can have my deep blue for when I need it and I've got a fallback if the cameras really aren't up to snuff. And if I use both, I get to create some more texture and detail with an irregularly lit crowd.