Night Time Lighting

[timsabre]

Moonlight is 4100K according to this discussion, which has some interesting research into why we perceive it as bluey.

 

 

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/244922/why-does-moonlight-have-a-lower-color-temperature

[adam2]

Actual moonlight is indeed slightly yellowish. The moon itself is of a neutral grey colour, it produces no light of its own but shines only be reflecting sunlight. Therefore moonlight is about the same colour as sunlight, though vastly reduced in intensity.

 

However in western cultures it has become accepted practice to represent moonlight as blue on stage or in films and TV. I suspect the reason for this is historical, during the hours of darkness, occupied buildings require artificial illumination. Until recently this was commonly achieved by candles and by oil lamps, both of which are very yellow. Early types of electric lamp also were somewhat yellow. Therefore, to a person leaving a yellow lit building and emerging into a moonlit night, the moonlight would appear subjectively blueish.

 

Note that in other cultures accepted practice differs. I have heard, but can not substantiate, that in Asian cultures , that moonlight on stage is commonly represented by a dull amber or orange light.

 

 

 

[Jivemaster]

In real life the human eye has very poor colour rendering in very low light levels, and in moderate light levels can acclimatise to many colours including sodium yellow! Consider that "hi-vis" for daylight is orange but for night time is saturn yellow.

 

On stage blue is used for night scenes but the audience soon acclimatises to the colour, however shafts of blue light on a dimly lit scene lets the blue be perceived for longer. What we do see is the comparison between warm and cold colours of light.

[sandall]

I suspect that "night = blue" can largely be blamed on the early days of colour movies. The film stock needed a lot of light to give a decent exposure, so everything was flooded with bright blue, which made it easy to pick out the stars' faces with a bit of open-white. In B&W days it was all bright beams & shadows. Nowadays film stock & video cameras are so sensitive that it's really easy to shoot scenes which are so dim you can barely see the faces at all :(

[alistermorton]

I've used L728 and L725 for moon light - they have some green and some yellow and give a different effect to L117 which also works for moonlight detail.

[Andrew C]

But the moon is yellow, not blue, which is a mystery, who started lighting night time scenes with blue ?

 

Doesn't matter - ask yourself "What do the audience expect it to look like?"

[Martin Lepley]

Thanks again for all of the replies. I think I will be achieving the night time look with our RGB LED Freznels so will have the ability to experiment with the colours and see if blue has the correct "feel". We are an amateur theatre company. We hire the hall, 4pm the day before the first performance (2.45pm) so not the luxury of hours of setup and deliberation. That time also includes a single full dress / technical rehearsal. Coupled with all that, we have just acquired a new lighting truss so plenty of new things to try on this production (three shows).

[andy_s]

But the moon is yellow, not blue, which is a mystery, who started lighting night time scenes with blue ?

Doesn't matter - ask yourself "What do the audience expect it to look like?"

Nothing wrong with challenging audience expectations!