Colour and Skin Tone Question

[D_Szasz]

Hi Roger,

I might be overthinking this one but I’m in the middle of pre production on a short film and am wondering if you’d be able to lend some advice.

We’ve been doing tests in a couple of different bathrooms and are finding that our actor’s skin is blending into the room a little. I’m wondering if there is anything I can do with lighting to alleviate this or is this just a case of picking a better location? I was thinking I could neutralise the pink spill with some solids on the offscreen walls and then place a soft light above camera to bring him out of the background but I’m not totally convinced.

We really like the look of the vanity lights in the cream bathroom but the pink one will be easier to film in (better clearance and less camera shadows from the window). Would simply introducing our own vanity lighting into the room achieve a similar look?

Perhaps the simplest answer is to just use the cream bathroom?

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

David

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[LucaM]

I leave the technical answer to the experienced people on the forum, but what i noticed – as potential viewer of your short – is that the two rooms gave me two completely different feelings. I know nothing about the story of your short but they tell me two different stories. The guy living in the pink room bathroom can’t be  the same one living in the creamy one. What do you feel is the actual bathroom of your character? Are you going for a very armonic shot or for something with more color contrast?

By the way, i don’t how much my opinion is relevant (very little, i am afraid) but i prefer the pink one, the window behind the actor creates a nice effect around his head and i like how the stripes on the wall point towards his face. It seems a more interesting composition. So i’d go for the pink one with some light on the mirror, i don’t think it will be very complicated to add them, if you are allowed to do that. But the lights in your shot is nice as it is (again, my humble opinion) , did you experiment some solution with that window and the mirror? You could color somehow (with a gel for example) the light entering from the window to reduce the pinkness of the walls  or coloring the light from the mirror to the face. Perhaps it won’t solve your problem but i think it could offer some interesting effect.

[D_Szasz]

Thanks a lot for your reply, really appreciate your advice. We ended up landing on the pink one for both creative and practical reasons. I think we will live with the pinkness of the walls but your suggestion of using gels is quite interesting – I do wonder how that would look?

Still a little bit undecided about the lighting though. Not sure how much we can push light from the vanity without needing to build a practical source as motivation. My guess is that we can get away with it being quite subtle for most shots but may need to crank up the level a little when we’re shooting back towards the window. I guess we could also frame around the top of the vanity so that we would never have to see the source. Curious to hear if anyone has thoughts on this?

[LucaM]

Experiment! Get fun and see what works better for the story you want to tell! When i asked on the forum for some example of “good” cinematography Roger told that i should focus on the “right” cinematography for that particular story instead.

I was thinking about your shot and i think that i’d try with another solution : rotate the scene of 90° (so your talent is facing one wall and has the window on his side, instead of on his back). Of course you couldn’t show the entire room with this approach, but it would offer some interesting opportunities:
– if the window is on the side you can have some side lighting for a better contrast ratio, shooting on the “smart side” (with a negative fill on the dumb side to decrease the bouncing on it, or adding some bouncing in the dumb side to decrease the contrast ratio, according to what is best to create the mood of the story)
– you can shot your talent from the side within the frame of the window (instead of a frontal shot) , i think it would create a quite interesting composition
– if you can find a way to create it, you could add some haze to create a ray of light from the window. Think to “True Grit” scene in the court for example : perhaps not something  so strong and powerful as in True Grit, but it could create a quite interesting shot (if the story needs it) . Experiment and have fun!

[Author]

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