What colours are best to use on singers for a good skin colour?

[nojbox87]

Sorry to ask another question but what colour filters are best to use on singers for a good skin colour. I jave been told white light is no god on its own it needs some colour but I cannot find what.

 

Thanks for any more help you can give.

[paulears]

I jave been told white light is no god on its own it needs some colour but I cannot find what.

 

We're pretty keen on proper spelling, punctuation and grammar in our posts, but as your lighting is for a Church, this one is rather good!

 

White light is good, if you want to see real colours, or want maximum brightness from your low power PARs, but is not really good at producing emotional responses. There are hundreds of colours to choose from, but most fall into categories of warm or cool - which really means shades of red or blue. You can use subtle pastel tints for where you need a little colour, or really saturated deep colour for visual effect - but this throws away almost all your light and you don't have much. Colours also interact when you use more than one, creating secondary colours in shadows. For flashy flashy poppy stuff, the a red, blue, yellow and magenta would be somewhere to start for effect lighting - however you don't see these colours much on Songs of Praise. We don't know what you are up to, so can't advise in detail. If you want colour and brightness, then maybe leave one either side in open white and add that when you need brightness.

 

Everyone has their own favourites, and there is no magic forumula - me, I really don't like green or gold, but both have their place for certain things.

 

The Lee Filter website has lots of colour info.

 

I worry a bit that you don't seem to have any lighting knowledge but have been put in the position of being 'the lighting man' - who gets the blame if this all goes wrong?

[JDP]

In my opinion it depends what your lighting them with.. Source 4's are not too bar on their own, for key light...

 

For a lot of fashion shows lit with parcans, we have a habit of using Hamburg frost in the cans to get a decent 'white' light. Alternatively, its worth looking into N.Ds, if your really that fussed. Theres also 201 and similar colours to look at.

 

Personally, for key lighting ie preachers, vicars, church band members, use profiles, and have them open white. Then use Parcans and/or Fresnels to add the dark blues, reds, mood colours for the bits.... If you have no profiles, I suggest using a little frost in Fresnels and spotting them down to reduce the 'glade' factor in eyes.

[dmoffat]

White light is good

 

I may have to disagree on this, on some levels.

 

It very much depends on the situation, but I would often either use diffusion to break up the light or use a cosmetic gel such as

 

L184 Cosmetic Peach

L185 Cosmetic Burgundy

L186 Cosmetic Silver Rose

L187 Cosmetic Rouge

L188 Cosmetic Highlight

L189 Cosmetic Silver Moss

L190 Cosmetic Emerald

L191 Cosmetic Aqua Blue

 

These Lee Gel are specifically designed to complement natural skin tones (which one depends on hte skin tone, naturally).

 

Personally I would use these Cosmetic Gel's in things like photo shoots and maybe some parts of theatre, depending on the situations.

As for rock, live band gigs, I would generally use some diffusion for a stage wash, then add in a hell of a lot of colour.

It entirely depends on the application.

 

Dave

[Modge]

It entirely depends on the application.

Couldn't agree more, however to throw my 2p worth in:

 

L201 as suggested somewhere above is good for a "Da Dar! We have some one doing a solo!" type effect. If you wish to be more subtle I really quite like L004 "Medium Bastard Amber", though a hudge range of other options (as evidenced by the number of other suggestions allready) exist.

 

Both of those however would normally be used in a profile as to light just one singer. For groups of singers in a Choir context, lit with par cans if I remember the other thread correctly, some thing very pale (perhaps incorperating the suggestions above regarding diff / frost) would be the way foward, in my book. For me (though it's a matter of opion) L201 would be too harsh in that application. I'd think of what colour cloths they where wearing as well if it is a choir (assuming they all wear the same?) as well as what colour skin they all had.

 

If on the other hand you're trying for a rock look some thing rather more saturated is the way foward. There's I don't know how many threads on here with regard band lighting, including I'm sure band lighting with 8 par cans from the front (though I leave it to some one with time on there hands to find that one!), so I shalln't bother retyping what I know I've contributed some where before.

[paulears]

White light is good

 

I may have to disagree on this, on some levels.

 

Ah, but you cropped off the rest of the sentence which read

White light is good, if you want to .......

Which does change the context quite a bit!

 

This topic got split, so has broadened out a bit.

 

Cosmetic colours have been round a wile now, and are not really 'normal' entertainment lighting standards. The idea works well enough, by combining gentle colour with frost/diffusion but they don't produce the kind of lighting we need in every case. In my opinion, if you want the look of a Fresel, from a profile as a face highlighter, then they have a place - but most designers don't use them that much unless there's a good reason. I suppose a spotty cast would be one. Combined with pancake, cosmetic gels can pretty people up - but the downside being soft lighting.

 

Modeg has it about right here. Lighting a choir in church, or doing a disco? Each one needs different colours.

 

The fact that there are so many colours in the swatch book, and we tend to use our own personal mini-swatch shows how Lighting Designers see things differently.

 

So the rule seems to be:

 

You MUST only use these colours (unless you want to use others.......)

[Ken Coker]

Ummm........what colour is the skin? What are they wearing? Is there a dark/light background?

 

Do you tend to run everything at full or dimmed?

 

I tend to put 218 into everything for this kind of thing; gives a certain "clarity" to the light an holds up the CT if the unit is dimmed.

 

KC

[gherriott]

How are you planning to light this singer? If it is a single spot then I would go with L201, if you have the luxury of the using two lanterns then depending on whether you want it to be a warm or cold colour, I tend to use two different shades eg: L152 and L154 crossing onto the body at about 45 degrees, this helps (in my opinion) create more definition to the face, again with a cold use L201 and L202 or similar just to slightly vary the colour on each side of the face. It is not noticable unless you can compare it to someone else lit with the same colour from both sides.

 

I would say that is mainly for white skin, asian and black skin can look rather 'ill' depending on your intensities!

 

Just my 2p worth

[dmoffat]

White light is good

 

I may have to disagree on this, on some levels.

 

Ah, but you cropped off the rest of the sentence which read

White light is good, if you want to .......

 

I am sorry, I didn't mean for it to be interpreted like that, I simply meant that I don't think white light is good for lighting singers in general, as it just flattens them. I didn't mean to misinterpret your statement, just using it to link into my advice of not generally using white light, but of much preferring to use diffusion or cosmetic gel.

 

Dave

[woody74]

I don't think white light is good for lighting singers in general, as it just flattens them.

Any light will flatten, depending on the angle in relation to the viewer.

 

To the OP, I recommend a very large grain of salt when people say "you must use". My two bits is that it's not the type or color of the light but how you use it.

 

I don't believe you said what kind of light the filters were being used on, and what the distance away from the subject is. Diffusion is great, but if your source is 40 meters away, it won't do much good.

 

-w

[niclights]

There are a lot of recommendations here for cold tungsten to daylight conversion (201/202 etc.) but I prefer warmer. I'll go as far as to say L147 apricot.

 

I suggest getting a sheet of this and some 201 and see what you think.

[Modge]

I don't believe you said what kind of light the filters were being used on, and what the distance away from the subject is. Diffusion is great, but if your source is 40 meters away, it won't do much good.

 

This is completely true, however this thread has been split off from another one about what lights he should but and it seems essentially it's down to par cans from the front. Granted no has yet told him where to put them. So to rectify that I'd suggest:

 

Assuming 2 T-bars of 4 (seems reasonable from previous thread) - Wide of the choir (assuming that's what it is again! dangerous thing assumption) and as close as you can get them [bold]whilst giving even coverage[/bold] if you use diff it'll allow you to get a bit closer. This is good because (as alluded by others) the more "striage on" you light something the less interesting / 3d it looks. This can also be resolved by use of different colours from opposite sides others have suggested. Any two slightly dis-similar colours will do it, the more disimilar the more "interesting" and the less "perfect" it looks (any one who can suggest better adjectives there is encouraged to do so).

 

There are a lot of recommendations here for cold tungsten to daylight conversion (201/202 etc.) but I prefer warmer

 

I'm with you there, with the proviso it's not a soloist. Then colder can have a place.

[daifuse]

From years ago, when 'Tabs' was still being published and we only had tungsten filaments, I remember something that goes like this:

 

'Keep it simple, keep it bright - don't forget there's always open white'

 

and

 

'No.52, ideal for ageing actresses.'

 

I think that was in the days of greasepaint! (showing my age now)

[Just Some Bloke]

Could I just mention that if the singers are wearing white shirts/blouses then stay clear of anything with yellow, red, pink or amber in it as the white shirt could easily look horrid. Maybe a touch of lavender or correction (201, 202, 203) will be OK or just go with that old classical music stalwart... er... open white.

[Wingwalker]

I tend to find that if you overlap Lee 152 with Lee 153 (I.e both gels in the same holder) you can cover most cases but not all. Its true that costumes, set design and mood enhancement all come into play but as a general rule of thumb try it out.

 

David.