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Reproducing the bluish glow from a TV set

G

greg

New member
i want to light a scene in which most of the light comes from the blue/white glow of a tv set (off-camera).
this is actually a still project, so i am not worried about the flicker, or animating the light in any way. i just want it to look like it's coming from a tv set.
a blue gel seems like it would be, well, too blue. how do i mix in that whitish quality?
also, what other lighting should i have in the room so that it's light enough to see, or will the tv-like ones do it?
thanks in advance!
 
TV's are daylight-balanced and thus blue-ish in tungsten-lit situations like night interiors. However, they are not as blue to your eye in real life since your eyes/brain adjusts somewhat. And the color of the light from a TV depends on the screen content -- obviously an all-green image would project a greenish light.

I think you'll find that half-blue (1/2 CTB on a tungsten lamp) would be cool enough when combined with a few warm tungsten practicals in the frame, or some tungsten back, edge, or side light on the subject. In theory, the softness of the TV light is determined by the size of the TV and distance to the subject, i.e. you'd use a diffusion frame for the blue light that was TV-sized. But in practice, often people use a larger diffusion frame, like a 4'x4' frame.
 
software

software

is there software you can plug into the lights that will make them flicker or change colors and intensity? like you are really watching TV? Maybe the special effects programers could make something. Or is there a way that is commonly used? I guess it all depends on the look you are going for and there is probably more than one way to do this. I think most of these shots are exagerated with the blue light coming from the TV. I still wonder what a real TV like one of those big 40 inch SONY XBR things lighting the subkect woulk look like. And what wold be different if you were shooting it with HD and not film. Anyone here have some pratice with HD where one might be making a scene with a TV on in the room?
 
Usually I just either put two blue-gelled lamps through one frame of diffusion, one on a flicker box and the other on a hand dimmer being dimmed now & then -- or I just wave my hands randomly in front of the lights but behind the diffusion frame. This works great for firelight effects.

Yes, you can also put strips of colored gels on a rod or stick and wave or move them past the lights, again, then diffusing them.

One possible trick would be to project video using a video projector (LCD would avoid dealing with roll bar issues), maybe through a frame of Opal or Hampshire Frost to help diffuse the image being projected onto the faces.
 
That last idea

That last idea

One possible trick would be to project video using a video projector (LCD would avoid dealing with roll bar issues), maybe through a frame of Opal or Hampshire Frost to help diffuse the image being projected onto the faces.
Click to expand...

That idea sounds like it might produce the most realistic look if done right becuase that in a sense is what the TV is doing but the design is so that the image is being projected at a focal point to be viewed on the surface of the TV screen and the light that hits the faces is like a diffused residual if I can use that as a word for the description of light even though it might not be nominclacher. But i think testing and finding the right material to diffuse a projected image might be worth the time. Time is money and i think sometimes when people are working they just want to get it done using the method they have used before that they know will work, right?
 
thanks so much for the help so far.

i am liking the idea of a video projector mixed in with a few practicals.
i was wondering about the Opal or Hampshire frost, though-- is there a way to rig up a simillar effect on the cheap (ie: making a frame out of common household items/materials.) I can maybe get a diffusion frame, but i'm less sure about the Opal/Hampshire
 
I'm just guessing that some older video projectors may be using CRT's and thus have a roll bar in the image if the signal is NTSC and you're shooting at 24 fps, just as when filming a TV set. But I think most projectors these days are LCD's.

There isn't really any common household item like Hampshire Frost -- the closest would probably be a lightly pebbled glass shower door but the gel would be cheaper. I think gel like that comes in 24" x 36" sheets or something, and maybe $5 a sheet, so you could buy four sheets and tape them together with Scotch tape to make one big one.

Basically it's an extremely thin diffuser, almost clear. Now if you want a much softer effect, you can use anything -- a curtain sheer for example -- but you might not get enough light output. Maybe some very thin tissue papers from an art supply store would be translucent enough. Maybe a certain plastic shower curtain would have the right combination of diffusion and clarity.

You can also throw the projected image out-of-focus, but it would still be a specular (sharp) light source unless diffused through something.

I got this idea, by the way, from the Nestor Almendro's book "A Man with A Camera" when describing how he created a movie theater flickering light effect on faces. I think he took the lens out of the projector shining onto the faces to create just colored shapes playing on the faces, but again, the only thing unrealistic about this is that the source is sharp (a projector bulb) and not soft (a screen bouncing light back onto faces) so you'd get a sharp nose shadow, etc. on the face.
 
thanks for all the help.
what we ended up doing was taking an lcd projector as our key (which actually puts quite a bit of light, im not sure in terms of watts, though), and diffusing it through a thin white plastic shopping bag. this gave us the look we wanted. [/img]
 
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