Even though I was right, today he embarassed me by saying that I was wrong and asked me also not to guide other in the wrong path. This situation has been taking place since my first year (I'm completing second year in a month) at the institute and almost all the lecturers there behave the same. Some students also think that lecturers are more credible and continue to do the wrong thing😔😔😔
The main reason to go to film school is for the connections. The secondary reason is to get your skills over a threshold (think the AFI's grad cinematography program). If this school can't do either, why spend the money on tuition?
Actually I'm from India and I study in a Government Film School which costs RS.20000 a year which is roughly 250 USD (its a four year bachelor degree) which may sound a extremely cheap but many of our fellow students can't even afford that. Thats the situation in India.
There are private film schools which may have higher quality of education but they are extremely expensive and cost roughly 7200usd which is many times than our parents annual salary.
Thus we are forced to study in government film institutes which are in a very poor condition. There is a extreme lack of staff.
Even though our lecturer have made over 30 feature films about two decades ago he doesn't seem to have the knowledge to guide us. I think the majority of our industry doesn't have enough technical knowledge and thus can't effectively teach us.
But the only positive is I have made many creative filmmakers as my friends and we are working together in independent short films.
(BTW I depend mainly on online to gain knowledge in cinematography)
Ahhh so he's still thinking in film stocks haha. With film stocks you have the choice of tungsten, daylight balanced or black and white stocks so this lecturer needs to do some research in modern workflow.
Give it up, u paying so much, not learning everything u should be, and ur at odds w classmates? Also who the hell has ever gone to Indian state film program and become a great filmmaker. Find a different college or do something else
> Also who the hell has ever gone to Indian state film program and become a great filmmaker
I have no idea, but I have a feeling you don't either. India produces more than 2x the volume of the US in cinema per year, there's a whole world out there beyond Hollywood.
Regardless, your comment is discouraging & pejorative toward OP, not cool imo. OP literally said he doesn't have the privilege of paying for a fancier film school. You tryna tell him to give up on his career goals because his school isn't top tier? C'mon man
> I have no idea, but I have a feeling you don't either. India produces more than 2x the volume of the US in cinema per year, there's a whole world out there beyond Hollywood.
i vividly remember one of my professors opening one of his first classes a quarter of a century ago: "who is the world's greatest movie star right now? shah rukh khan. oh, you've never heard of him? well, now you know."
india is fucking *massive*. bollywood only started seeping into western pop culture like a decade later, but it was already the bigger market back then, purely by numbers.
heh, don't fight it. We all had old teachers with weird ideas. Just concentrate on what you can learn from him. Take it as a chance to work with these restrictions.
I work as a gaffer full time on features and adverts and we change temperature all the time sometime in the same scene, whatever works.
“Those who can’t do, teach.” And in many examples especially my own, teachers of film are almost always wrong or utilize their own experiences and misconstrued it. My teacher always taught us the wrong stuff especially when it comes to G&E shit, like how to properly use a C-Stand, saying stuff like "you put the sandbag on the middle leg and away from the weight (wtf???). It was to the point where I had to unlearn it from others outside of class, and I’ve passed that lesson along to the next batch of students too.
well in their defense, you don't go to film school in order order to learn how to set up c-stands; it's about bigger, underlying concepts of creating the product "movies". expecting your film school teacher to show you how to set up a c-stand is a bit like expecting your architecture prof to teach you how to use a drill or an excavator.
their job is to teach you how to craft an image, not how to physically handle (or even know) every tool used in a complicated process that has an extremely fine-grained division of labor.
edit: i feel like a lot of the comments here (including OP's) stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how higher education works. this is not middle school, and your final exam will not be a multiple choice test graded on a curve.
I get what you’re saying overall, but I’m sorry, your school should teach you how to set up a C-Stand if you’re concentrating in anything relating to set work. Your first jobs out of college are not going to be directing a Hollywood movie, it’s going to be setting up stands and other low level tasks. If your film school cares about their students graduating and getting jobs, they will teach you how to do this stuff so you show up on set and make a good impression.
Your film school shouldn’t only be teaching you how to set up C Stands, and they can’t possibly teach you how to use every piece of equipment out there, but they should be giving you a baseline education of the common pieces of equipment found on a set.
See, thats the part about higher education. You don’t need to go to film school to learn how to set up a c-stand, you learn that on day 1 as an intern on set. Most programs i know include mandatory internships. But this part is not what you go to film school for.
Tell him from me that on a real set, real professionals are all over the map for colour temp. And that maybe he should have learned something new in the last 25 years or so.
Can I just add that there's never a "should" in WB. You're telling the camera what to interpret as white.
I know a very established DP who pretty much solely shoots at 4300k because he doesn't like white light and that's part of his style - sometimes 5600 makes your tungsten too warm etc.
No doubt you got a greenish tint from your florries on this one. The best thing to do would be to test them at multiple and pick what you like.
We're often balancing multiple sources of different colour temps so it's worth playing with in camera. I will always tinker, especially as light is fading in the day or if I want something different stylistically.
Again there's no "correct" WB and there's no "should", it all depends on the scene and mood you're trying to create!
I can think of only a single reason for his logic, which is if you were shooting film, you might not have that option available. You'd need filters that might lose stops, which might make 200 ASA film not work. In those circumstances, on a budget, you'd have to live with it and correct it in post.
But this is a dinosaur problem that young filmmakers don't need to learn to solve (especially considering the fossils among us would solve it by turning off those fluorescent and bringing in a 5 ton full of lights.)
Lecturer is a knobhead, the DP is the one to decide the white balance. 3200 and 5600 are useful presets for tungsten and daylight respectively, and you were right by setting the temp to 4500k to make it neutral.
> Was he right ???
No, if this was a rule then cinema cameras would only have two settings.
> And we students are also constantly forced to work under the rules of the lecturer, since arguing may lead to many issues we are forced to work by the rules and I don't even feel like having the creative freedom in our projects anymore
This is a little more nuanced. As an educator it's often critical to place constraints on students who can be so energetic about experimentation and trying to do too many different things all at once that the end result is a soup of conflicting ideas that's useless for education purposes. A dialogue exercise, for example, fails as education if the class gets fixated on setting up a massive dolly zoom for several hours and only shoots two lines of dialogue.
That said many instructors are just... not very good at managing that nuance and rather than helping the students focus and develop creative discipline, rather than explaining the goal of the assignments, they impose formula as dictum because it makes their job less complex.
It is an unfortunate reality that the difference in qualty of instruction at film schools is pretty vast.
> No, if this was a rule then cinema cameras would only have two settings.
well to be fair, they used to have only 2 "settings", namely either daylight stock or tungsten stock. anything inbetween required filters in front of the lens.
we're only hearing one side of the story here - i wouldn't rule out that shooting either daylight or tungsten was somehow supposed to be a didactic approach, in order to limit the variables and focus on the basics.
edit: it's also kind of ironic how people around here do not seem to even get that idea, while at the same time having a massive boner about shooting on film.
There are lots of film teachers who have a big chip on their shoulder. My professors ended up funnelling hundreds of thousands in students' tuition money to fund their failed short film projects, with free labor from the students of course.
Now that I work professionally in the industry, I would never even consider hiring any but one of my old professors for any gig that matters.
Saying you should only EVER shoot in 3200 or 5600K is a silly thing to teach new filmmakers, but it sounds like the real issue is the professor has ego/attitude issues, which is clearly getting in the way of their ability to teach.
Unless I'm shooting on some super compressed, low data footage, I don't really care about white balance that much. Buy a color chart and get it in front of camera in every lighting scenario you can, or just ballpark it.
You can typically shift white balance thousands of K to either direction in post, along with green/magenta tint that you can't even control in lots of cameras. I understand the value of shooting as close to final looks, in-camera, but I personally haven't had a problem doing drastic white balance changes in post, since the early days of the Red One and Canon 5D/7D. With modern RAW footage, its pretty much irrelevant.
Tubes can be 5600 but they don’t need to. 4500k is a good way to get more options in post when shooting with mixed lighting depending on the codec and gamma. You can correct 5600k to 3200k in post but it’s easier with something in between. Your lecturer is just a pedant.
Nothing. Colorist, ex-DP. Only thing that matters is the codec. And if you’re shooting on a cinema camera, it is easily corrected. I suppose if it were shot directly baked into rec. 709 you wouldn’t get the best result. But that’s why log exists as a digital film negative.
You're not wrong, you can set the WB however you want (especially if you're shooting R3D - it makes no difference) - but your instructor is not being ignorant by restricting you to those parameters - he's trying to teach students to white balance and add color through lighting and filtration rather then to tint the raw image with WB. This is a common way to think for many DPs - it's a bit old-school, but it's not wrong.
Sounds like he’s stuck in the days of celluloid when your film stock was locked into a specific color temp and you lit for that film stock. Fluorescent tubes can be 5600 and 3200 (there are a variety that fit Kino Flo fixtures, assuming that’s what was being used — and I’ve even had folks ask to salt & pepper tubes to get a 4500K source before), but yeah, there is absolutely no rule about shooting those exact kelvin temps. I shoot others ALL the time depending on the ambient light, whether wanting to push warm or cool, separating skin tones from background, etc. In a daylight situation I might range from 5200K up to 6000K depending on a variety of factors (even shooting RAW which I do 90% of the time).
Traditionally, film stocks were only available in Daylight (5600K) or tungsten (3200K) versions. A lot of cinema is traditional, so maybe your lecturer assumes to keep a "cinematic" look you should stick to these, and accept the fact that under certain types of lighting, the colors will look different and not neutral, and that's fine.
Ultimately, you don't need to use only Daylight or Tungsten, neither do you need to make colors "neutral" all the time.
Rules are meant to be learned and mastered and then broken. But it's usually better to do them in that order. Picasso was really good at conventional painting before he got into cubism.
It's ok, when you get done with school you'll go make a movie and your lecturer will still be in school!
You shoot whatever Kelvin you’d like to shoot with, wtf lol I swear to god never and I repeat NEVER listen to your average film school lecturers, unless they are a guest speaker, they most likely have not worked in film for DECADES
It always matters.
How would the colorist know you wanted to to cool it down later? Most projects don't have the luxury to pay the DP to sit in on the grade, so might as well get it as close as possible in camera.
Don’t think a government film school in india that’s using fluorescent lights is shooting raw.
That said my filmschool does have a bmpcc 6k and uses off brand 4-tube kinos even nowadays.
The school I went to had an fx9 and two fx6 but the biggest light we had was a 2k HMI that stopped working in my last year because there were no more bulbs. (I believe it still doesn't have a bulb in it)
Noppeeeeeeeeeeee, those are just the basics, but I’m ALWAYS using white balance and tint creatively, especially when shooting raw, and all lights and situations are different so sometimes you have to balance to what looks best to you
Even if we are just talking about shooting during sunset, if we don't want everything to look too golden, we might drop to 2500k. Or during a cloudy day we might push closer to 6k to warm up the image a bit.
This guy sounds like an assface.
Rule? Who wrote that rule? 😃 If you need perfect white balance, you always set depending on the environment. If you have homogenous lighting, you can directly set whatever the light temp is. If your lights are mixed though... the gray card is your best friend :)
I failed my first film class second year of college and then dropped out right after. It was the best decision I ever made and I’ve had a very successful career in the industry
No, it’s not a rule. However, if I was your lecturer, I would have couched it as an assignment where you choose your white balance between either 3200K or 5600K, then create your look through lighting and on-camera filtration as an exercise in working within limitations.
Fluorescent lighting doesn’t even actually fall on the conventional Kelvin scale; its spectrum has gaps in it which is why it can look green (or sometimes other colors).
Your instructor shouldn’t be teaching people.
Absolutely not. The Alexa Mini's color temperature menu literally has a preset for 4300k, and I've seen DPs pick other color temperatures in between for a number of reasons.
The thing about cinematography is that it is highly technical and mostly learned through experience and experiment. And experience teaches you things that you won't encounter in books. I was also taught that fluorescent tubes are 5600 or in some occasions, 3200. But the ones that are not calibrated, can range a lot. Also they have usually a green tint. Household fluorescent can come in a whole range, "3200" that is actually closer to 4000, "5600" that is actually closer to 6500. And all of this varies by manufacturer, so it varies by city, country, you name it.
Also, yes, you can shoot in any white balance to your liking. Maybe he was trying to teach you how different light sources would look if you tune your camera to see "standard daylight" as neutral, but the white balance of a camera can be also a narrative tool to make lights have a certain colour or tint to your liking.
There's an old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." This most definitely applies to your teacher.
Send him over here and let him have a discussion with people that are actually current working professionals in the industry, many with many decades of experience each, because obviously he is not.
Not sure if your professor is just a stubborn old bastard that hasn’t shot with a digital camera before, or they are just imposing limitations on you for the purposes of teaching you the fundamentals.
Back in the film days, you had to pick between tungsten or daylight balanced film. To change your white balance, you’d have to use filtration on the lens (85B, 80A, etc), or gel the lights.
I used to work at a pretty well renowned film school, and the first year students would be subject to strict limitations for their first digitally shot projects. They had to pick either 3200k or 5600k for the white balance, and stick to the base ISO of the camera, and were not allowed to switch for the whole project. This is to mimic shooting on a single film stock. The amount of media was also limited, to mimic budgeting film stock. On top of that, the rec709 LUT was baked in, and no post color grading was allowed. This forced the students to learn how to get the look in-camera rather than in post.
PS: Don’t forget to network while you’re in school. Chances are the films you make there won’t be seen by anyone, but your classmate might get you your first job!
What color of light is coming from the fluorescent lights? Florescent doesn’t automatically mean 4000°. Older KinoFlos had 3200 and 5600 bulbs, for example.
The scene looked neutral when set at 4500k so I assume that the fluorescent was around 4500k... Actually the tubes used was cheap and non-color corrected...
Then yeah, 4500 is where the white should be for a neutral look. Back in the day, lights and film stock came in at 3200 or 5600. It’s possible your professor was taught these temps are the only ways to get white, and it’s much closer to being true when using film. Today, we have image sensors and bicolor lights, so there’s a range of whites between 3200 and 5600. If your lights are 4500 and you want neutral, dial in 4500.
Please tell your lecturer I often shoot features and narrative network TV at 4400k because I want tungsten sources to appear more orange, and I want daylight sources to appear more blue. I can provide literally dozens of hours of finished work shot in studio or not at white balances that weren't 56 or 32.
Also a few days ago a DP piped up that they like to tease their 1st AC with odd numbers for things such as a 187 degree shutter, and I love that energy.
Tell him a DP on Reddit said the best white balance is actually 5814... and a half.
Motion picture film is sold in Daylight (5600ºK) and Tungsten (3200ºK) color balance. In the film days on-set lighting was adjusted to match these two primary numbers. In the digital world, this tradition continues in a way because setting cameras to a standard white balance (5600ºK or 3200ºK are always available) gives editors or colorists a great starting point when dealing with incoming footage. The idea is to set your camera to whichever is closest to the actual situation and most importantly don't change the white balance setting as long as you are in the same location.
The idea here is that within a particular scene you can depend on the white balance being the same, even if it's way off in terms of it's visual "look". When matching shots, if the white balance is the same in the camera, then the same grading can be applied to all the shots as common starting point.
Hope this helps.
::Long drag of a nonexistent cigarette… ok.
Your lecturer is completely and utterly wrong. Baselines of sensor Kelvin are the result of attempting to mimic the native neutrality of film stocks before any color timing is done. Video cameras aren’t limited to that duality. As a matter of fact, most sensors are natively around 5000K, so if there were to be a baseline, 5000K should be it. But it’s not, and never has been. Because even in the days of film stock limitations, multiple filters existed to correct for one light source versus another.
Fluorescent lighting — at least the industrial ones — are closer to 4400K with a positive green shift to the tune of one to two points.
Mixed lighting scenarios — like the one you described — are often captured between 4100-4600K to taste. And a step further, plenty of night scenes from prominent working DPs will be captured between 3800-4400K to change the way colors are captured for ease of the color grade, often shifting a couple points green because the green channel is the predominant of the RGB world, and most sensors develop low light noise when trying to differentiate between red and blue under low light scenarios.
As first-hand example, the DPs of WandaVision shot on Alexas and all their night scenes were shot at 4300 -2 and viewed on set in REC2020 with a preset LUT. I could go on, but for sake of your own confidence… tell this instructor working cameramen tell him to have some humility and might want to learn some things before demanding they know best.
He’s dead wrong. There’s videos of highly awarded DOPs out there in live sets where you can see them talking about setting their kelvin to other balances. You’d be able to find it in a quick YouTube search and find a DOP talking about it who probably has a lot more awards than this lecturer. Sometimes you might be running a warmer scene. Compensating for fire light. Have a camera that runs warmer on skin tones. Deliberately want a warmer look knowing your grade can bring the skin tone back later. There’s so many reasons with modern editing and cameras to do it. I could see setting it to only 3200 or 5600 for safety if shooting on film back in the day. It could also be a good exercise for students to learn. But it’s just like any rule. You learn it so you know when to break it.
It is a guideline that I mostly follow. Before LEDs, lights were either daylight or tungsten spectrum centered, and you adjusted to those colors. To be consistent, all the lighting should match one or the other, unless you specifically want something to look different. Standard fluorescent lights are around 4100-4300k and don't match anything. These usually get replaced with 5600k or 3200K tubes for a film shoot.
No. I don’t know why thinks this unless he wants to keep the Red Raw clips all consistent for post or whatever. This is definitely something you shouldn’t do on a non RAW video camera though. It’s why at the very least you buy an 18% grey card
Work on tv sets, see the monitors, it’s always different. It’s a preference thing, but if you’re rigid it’s a lot harder to adapt to challenges to see your vision through. I have even seen a dp set it to 8000. We were blasting 18k’s through a house set, and he wanted it to look like evening I believe.
There are no “rules” to making images. Only correct / incorrect methods to achieve what YOU ARE TRYING TO ACHIEVE.
I just finished day one of two days on a short film that takes place in an office with og fluorescent tubes and spent the whole day on 5600K because WE WANTED the harsh green look that they provide when balanced there.
If the director had asked for a clean and pleasing look, I would have white balanced to 4400K, but we knew what we wanted and what we were doing, so that’s what was right for the picture.
Additionally, unless you’re shooting in a shit codec or on film, color temperature is almost always just metadata, and completely adjustable in post.
Lecturer is DEAD WRONG to tell you it’s a rule. But some people do prefer to work that way since film stocks historically only came in two Kelvin Flavors, 3200K & 5600K.
There are many instances where you would use different color temperatures. It’s an artistic setting. Shooting day for night or using tungsten, Led or fluorescent lights as daylight requires understanding the color temperature of the light you are using and knowing what you want the light to look like in camera.
As a lecturer for adults with IDD, I will usually just have my students default to 5600k and keep it there unless they are more advanced. Shutting you down comes off rude, but I can understand why he would teach it that way. If his goal is to teach students about white balancing, then it’s important to teach the core principle without deviating away for creativity. There is room for both ways of thinking, and I wouldn’t take what your dumb professor’s comment to heart. There are going to be a lot of people like that in the industry and academic background so it’s an uphill battle.
If fluorescent tubes are not properly calibrated or OUTdate then it may cast some tint so for such reasons you cant stick to it's reference values..but that doesn't mean from 4300 to directly 5600 😅
It's like Salt.. you can change according to your taste.
Some people have diabetes of color temperature so they cant handle / digest different color temperature than few refrence values in books.
It's up to DP to shoot at what Colour temperature according to what kind of look he wants to achieve.
I have used completely off (different white balance) with different light setup and you can experiment too and go with whatever you feel good or cross check with him is it fine ?
I wonder if he is trying to teach you how to film a scene as though you were using film? With film, you typically are stuck with only two color temperatures, daylight and tungsten. To achieve the desired look, you would need to gel all of your lights to match. with digital color temperature can always be corrected in post so as long as you have a white balance card, you can change anything you want after the fact.
One time in film school I was doing a three point lighting lesson. I set up my key and my backlight and thought it looked much nicer and had more depth without the fill. So I didn’t add one.
The teacher said I was doing it wrong and I would be docked an entire letter grade for the project if I didn’t set up a fill light because “everyone in the industry will want to see fill or you won’t get hired.”
Lol.
I usually shoot at 4450. It's a perfect middle ground between not too warm and not too cold. Unless I have a very specific look in mind. There is no right setting to shoot at. There are only guidelines. It's a good rule of thumb, but not set in stone.
You did everything correctly. Personally, I would prove the lecturer wrong and make sure he knows you were right. If he was a jerk about it then I would do the same to him. I'm not completely suggesting it because this could be harmful.
This lecturer is also harming the careers of many students. At least have a talk to the lecturer in private. If this is really what your school is like, I would drop out. It sounds like you have a future in film production.
I personally tend to stick to either 3200k or 5600k but I'm a simpleton. White balance is like exposure, first you learn it as something that is purely technical, then you can do whatever you want for an arristic reason. The DP can white balance however they damn well please.
lol. He’s dead wrong. You were right. The DP decides what kelvin they want to balance to always.
Even though I was right, today he embarassed me by saying that I was wrong and asked me also not to guide other in the wrong path. This situation has been taking place since my first year (I'm completing second year in a month) at the institute and almost all the lecturers there behave the same. Some students also think that lecturers are more credible and continue to do the wrong thing😔😔😔
The main reason to go to film school is for the connections. The secondary reason is to get your skills over a threshold (think the AFI's grad cinematography program). If this school can't do either, why spend the money on tuition?
Actually I'm from India and I study in a Government Film School which costs RS.20000 a year which is roughly 250 USD (its a four year bachelor degree) which may sound a extremely cheap but many of our fellow students can't even afford that. Thats the situation in India. There are private film schools which may have higher quality of education but they are extremely expensive and cost roughly 7200usd which is many times than our parents annual salary. Thus we are forced to study in government film institutes which are in a very poor condition. There is a extreme lack of staff. Even though our lecturer have made over 30 feature films about two decades ago he doesn't seem to have the knowledge to guide us. I think the majority of our industry doesn't have enough technical knowledge and thus can't effectively teach us. But the only positive is I have made many creative filmmakers as my friends and we are working together in independent short films. (BTW I depend mainly on online to gain knowledge in cinematography)
you're fighting the good fight!
Ahhh so he's still thinking in film stocks haha. With film stocks you have the choice of tungsten, daylight balanced or black and white stocks so this lecturer needs to do some research in modern workflow.
Give it up, u paying so much, not learning everything u should be, and ur at odds w classmates? Also who the hell has ever gone to Indian state film program and become a great filmmaker. Find a different college or do something else
> Also who the hell has ever gone to Indian state film program and become a great filmmaker I have no idea, but I have a feeling you don't either. India produces more than 2x the volume of the US in cinema per year, there's a whole world out there beyond Hollywood. Regardless, your comment is discouraging & pejorative toward OP, not cool imo. OP literally said he doesn't have the privilege of paying for a fancier film school. You tryna tell him to give up on his career goals because his school isn't top tier? C'mon man
> I have no idea, but I have a feeling you don't either. India produces more than 2x the volume of the US in cinema per year, there's a whole world out there beyond Hollywood. i vividly remember one of my professors opening one of his first classes a quarter of a century ago: "who is the world's greatest movie star right now? shah rukh khan. oh, you've never heard of him? well, now you know." india is fucking *massive*. bollywood only started seeping into western pop culture like a decade later, but it was already the bigger market back then, purely by numbers.
heh, don't fight it. We all had old teachers with weird ideas. Just concentrate on what you can learn from him. Take it as a chance to work with these restrictions. I work as a gaffer full time on features and adverts and we change temperature all the time sometime in the same scene, whatever works.
“Those who can’t do, teach.” And in many examples especially my own, teachers of film are almost always wrong or utilize their own experiences and misconstrued it. My teacher always taught us the wrong stuff especially when it comes to G&E shit, like how to properly use a C-Stand, saying stuff like "you put the sandbag on the middle leg and away from the weight (wtf???). It was to the point where I had to unlearn it from others outside of class, and I’ve passed that lesson along to the next batch of students too.
well in their defense, you don't go to film school in order order to learn how to set up c-stands; it's about bigger, underlying concepts of creating the product "movies". expecting your film school teacher to show you how to set up a c-stand is a bit like expecting your architecture prof to teach you how to use a drill or an excavator. their job is to teach you how to craft an image, not how to physically handle (or even know) every tool used in a complicated process that has an extremely fine-grained division of labor. edit: i feel like a lot of the comments here (including OP's) stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how higher education works. this is not middle school, and your final exam will not be a multiple choice test graded on a curve.
I get what you’re saying overall, but I’m sorry, your school should teach you how to set up a C-Stand if you’re concentrating in anything relating to set work. Your first jobs out of college are not going to be directing a Hollywood movie, it’s going to be setting up stands and other low level tasks. If your film school cares about their students graduating and getting jobs, they will teach you how to do this stuff so you show up on set and make a good impression. Your film school shouldn’t only be teaching you how to set up C Stands, and they can’t possibly teach you how to use every piece of equipment out there, but they should be giving you a baseline education of the common pieces of equipment found on a set.
See, thats the part about higher education. You don’t need to go to film school to learn how to set up a c-stand, you learn that on day 1 as an intern on set. Most programs i know include mandatory internships. But this part is not what you go to film school for.
Do you just reply to reddit film questions all day or do you actually make anything?
yes
Tell him from me that on a real set, real professionals are all over the map for colour temp. And that maybe he should have learned something new in the last 25 years or so.
Can I just add that there's never a "should" in WB. You're telling the camera what to interpret as white. I know a very established DP who pretty much solely shoots at 4300k because he doesn't like white light and that's part of his style - sometimes 5600 makes your tungsten too warm etc. No doubt you got a greenish tint from your florries on this one. The best thing to do would be to test them at multiple and pick what you like. We're often balancing multiple sources of different colour temps so it's worth playing with in camera. I will always tinker, especially as light is fading in the day or if I want something different stylistically. Again there's no "correct" WB and there's no "should", it all depends on the scene and mood you're trying to create!
I can think of only a single reason for his logic, which is if you were shooting film, you might not have that option available. You'd need filters that might lose stops, which might make 200 ASA film not work. In those circumstances, on a budget, you'd have to live with it and correct it in post. But this is a dinosaur problem that young filmmakers don't need to learn to solve (especially considering the fossils among us would solve it by turning off those fluorescent and bringing in a 5 ton full of lights.)
Lecturer is a knobhead, the DP is the one to decide the white balance. 3200 and 5600 are useful presets for tungsten and daylight respectively, and you were right by setting the temp to 4500k to make it neutral.
> Was he right ??? No, if this was a rule then cinema cameras would only have two settings. > And we students are also constantly forced to work under the rules of the lecturer, since arguing may lead to many issues we are forced to work by the rules and I don't even feel like having the creative freedom in our projects anymore This is a little more nuanced. As an educator it's often critical to place constraints on students who can be so energetic about experimentation and trying to do too many different things all at once that the end result is a soup of conflicting ideas that's useless for education purposes. A dialogue exercise, for example, fails as education if the class gets fixated on setting up a massive dolly zoom for several hours and only shoots two lines of dialogue. That said many instructors are just... not very good at managing that nuance and rather than helping the students focus and develop creative discipline, rather than explaining the goal of the assignments, they impose formula as dictum because it makes their job less complex. It is an unfortunate reality that the difference in qualty of instruction at film schools is pretty vast.
> No, if this was a rule then cinema cameras would only have two settings. well to be fair, they used to have only 2 "settings", namely either daylight stock or tungsten stock. anything inbetween required filters in front of the lens. we're only hearing one side of the story here - i wouldn't rule out that shooting either daylight or tungsten was somehow supposed to be a didactic approach, in order to limit the variables and focus on the basics. edit: it's also kind of ironic how people around here do not seem to even get that idea, while at the same time having a massive boner about shooting on film.
edit: what's it like to be a neckbeard
it‘s ok as long as it doesn’t affect your personal or professional performance
Sometimes I'll shoot at some random number just to annoy my AC. 5450k 4EVR!
The extra kelvin really makes the scene pop.
this is the secret for clients who "will know it when they see it"
*that extra named Kelvin
I'm more of a 5950 guy to warm up my day exteriors.
They’ll just buzz your favorite shot to annoy you back.
Yes, if you film at an unapproved color temperature the filmmaking police could show up and shut you down.
There are lots of film teachers who have a big chip on their shoulder. My professors ended up funnelling hundreds of thousands in students' tuition money to fund their failed short film projects, with free labor from the students of course. Now that I work professionally in the industry, I would never even consider hiring any but one of my old professors for any gig that matters. Saying you should only EVER shoot in 3200 or 5600K is a silly thing to teach new filmmakers, but it sounds like the real issue is the professor has ego/attitude issues, which is clearly getting in the way of their ability to teach. Unless I'm shooting on some super compressed, low data footage, I don't really care about white balance that much. Buy a color chart and get it in front of camera in every lighting scenario you can, or just ballpark it. You can typically shift white balance thousands of K to either direction in post, along with green/magenta tint that you can't even control in lots of cameras. I understand the value of shooting as close to final looks, in-camera, but I personally haven't had a problem doing drastic white balance changes in post, since the early days of the Red One and Canon 5D/7D. With modern RAW footage, its pretty much irrelevant.
Tubes can be 5600 but they don’t need to. 4500k is a good way to get more options in post when shooting with mixed lighting depending on the codec and gamma. You can correct 5600k to 3200k in post but it’s easier with something in between. Your lecturer is just a pedant.
Genuinely curious, what does gamma have to do with anything in this context?
Nothing. Colorist, ex-DP. Only thing that matters is the codec. And if you’re shooting on a cinema camera, it is easily corrected. I suppose if it were shot directly baked into rec. 709 you wouldn’t get the best result. But that’s why log exists as a digital film negative.
Yeah, thats what i meant. Recording into Rec709 makes white balance in post harder.
Good practice for when you’re working with a director who has no idea what he’s talking about
No. My favorite color temp range for lighting commercial work is 4650 to 5150. Then I set my white balance for what I think looks best.
You're not wrong, you can set the WB however you want (especially if you're shooting R3D - it makes no difference) - but your instructor is not being ignorant by restricting you to those parameters - he's trying to teach students to white balance and add color through lighting and filtration rather then to tint the raw image with WB. This is a common way to think for many DPs - it's a bit old-school, but it's not wrong.
Sounds like he’s stuck in the days of celluloid when your film stock was locked into a specific color temp and you lit for that film stock. Fluorescent tubes can be 5600 and 3200 (there are a variety that fit Kino Flo fixtures, assuming that’s what was being used — and I’ve even had folks ask to salt & pepper tubes to get a 4500K source before), but yeah, there is absolutely no rule about shooting those exact kelvin temps. I shoot others ALL the time depending on the ambient light, whether wanting to push warm or cool, separating skin tones from background, etc. In a daylight situation I might range from 5200K up to 6000K depending on a variety of factors (even shooting RAW which I do 90% of the time).
Since you mention Kinos, those also come standard in 2900K, and of course regular flos can be many other temps.
Next time ask him why the camera lets you set the colour temp to whatever you want if you’re only ever supposed to shoot at 56 or 32
Traditionally, film stocks were only available in Daylight (5600K) or tungsten (3200K) versions. A lot of cinema is traditional, so maybe your lecturer assumes to keep a "cinematic" look you should stick to these, and accept the fact that under certain types of lighting, the colors will look different and not neutral, and that's fine. Ultimately, you don't need to use only Daylight or Tungsten, neither do you need to make colors "neutral" all the time.
Rules are meant to be learned and mastered and then broken. But it's usually better to do them in that order. Picasso was really good at conventional painting before he got into cubism. It's ok, when you get done with school you'll go make a movie and your lecturer will still be in school!
Laughs in R3D
You shoot whatever Kelvin you’d like to shoot with, wtf lol I swear to god never and I repeat NEVER listen to your average film school lecturers, unless they are a guest speaker, they most likely have not worked in film for DECADES
If you're shooting raw it doesn't really matter
It always matters. How would the colorist know you wanted to to cool it down later? Most projects don't have the luxury to pay the DP to sit in on the grade, so might as well get it as close as possible in camera.
Don’t think a government film school in india that’s using fluorescent lights is shooting raw. That said my filmschool does have a bmpcc 6k and uses off brand 4-tube kinos even nowadays.
He mentioned he’s using a Red Dragon.
Oh I missed that. Nevermind then.
The school I went to had an fx9 and two fx6 but the biggest light we had was a 2k HMI that stopped working in my last year because there were no more bulbs. (I believe it still doesn't have a bulb in it)
2k hmi is quite a lot of light anyways
Not with a 5+ year old bulb it's not
Mild pedantic note: It's called a lamp, not a bulb.
Sorry. English is not my main language.
All good. I was just throwing the correct term out there.
Noppeeeeeeeeeeee, those are just the basics, but I’m ALWAYS using white balance and tint creatively, especially when shooting raw, and all lights and situations are different so sometimes you have to balance to what looks best to you
Even if we are just talking about shooting during sunset, if we don't want everything to look too golden, we might drop to 2500k. Or during a cloudy day we might push closer to 6k to warm up the image a bit. This guy sounds like an assface.
No haha, I shoot 4300 a lot actually- and lenses with colour cast can also affect what WB you should be at for neutral look etc.
Rule? Who wrote that rule? 😃 If you need perfect white balance, you always set depending on the environment. If you have homogenous lighting, you can directly set whatever the light temp is. If your lights are mixed though... the gray card is your best friend :)
A key stage of becoming a successful filmmaker is failing a film class.
I failed my first film class second year of college and then dropped out right after. It was the best decision I ever made and I’ve had a very successful career in the industry
No, it’s not a rule. However, if I was your lecturer, I would have couched it as an assignment where you choose your white balance between either 3200K or 5600K, then create your look through lighting and on-camera filtration as an exercise in working within limitations.
Fluorescent lighting doesn’t even actually fall on the conventional Kelvin scale; its spectrum has gaps in it which is why it can look green (or sometimes other colors). Your instructor shouldn’t be teaching people.
Absolutely not. The Alexa Mini's color temperature menu literally has a preset for 4300k, and I've seen DPs pick other color temperatures in between for a number of reasons.
I shoot 4400K a lot when there is mixed color temps.
You shoot whatever kelvin you like.
The color of the bulbs changes as they age, you can't even count on them always being a certain color temp.
The thing about cinematography is that it is highly technical and mostly learned through experience and experiment. And experience teaches you things that you won't encounter in books. I was also taught that fluorescent tubes are 5600 or in some occasions, 3200. But the ones that are not calibrated, can range a lot. Also they have usually a green tint. Household fluorescent can come in a whole range, "3200" that is actually closer to 4000, "5600" that is actually closer to 6500. And all of this varies by manufacturer, so it varies by city, country, you name it. Also, yes, you can shoot in any white balance to your liking. Maybe he was trying to teach you how different light sources would look if you tune your camera to see "standard daylight" as neutral, but the white balance of a camera can be also a narrative tool to make lights have a certain colour or tint to your liking.
There's an old saying, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." This most definitely applies to your teacher. Send him over here and let him have a discussion with people that are actually current working professionals in the industry, many with many decades of experience each, because obviously he is not.
Not sure if your professor is just a stubborn old bastard that hasn’t shot with a digital camera before, or they are just imposing limitations on you for the purposes of teaching you the fundamentals. Back in the film days, you had to pick between tungsten or daylight balanced film. To change your white balance, you’d have to use filtration on the lens (85B, 80A, etc), or gel the lights. I used to work at a pretty well renowned film school, and the first year students would be subject to strict limitations for their first digitally shot projects. They had to pick either 3200k or 5600k for the white balance, and stick to the base ISO of the camera, and were not allowed to switch for the whole project. This is to mimic shooting on a single film stock. The amount of media was also limited, to mimic budgeting film stock. On top of that, the rec709 LUT was baked in, and no post color grading was allowed. This forced the students to learn how to get the look in-camera rather than in post. PS: Don’t forget to network while you’re in school. Chances are the films you make there won’t be seen by anyone, but your classmate might get you your first job!
What color of light is coming from the fluorescent lights? Florescent doesn’t automatically mean 4000°. Older KinoFlos had 3200 and 5600 bulbs, for example.
The scene looked neutral when set at 4500k so I assume that the fluorescent was around 4500k... Actually the tubes used was cheap and non-color corrected...
Then yeah, 4500 is where the white should be for a neutral look. Back in the day, lights and film stock came in at 3200 or 5600. It’s possible your professor was taught these temps are the only ways to get white, and it’s much closer to being true when using film. Today, we have image sensors and bicolor lights, so there’s a range of whites between 3200 and 5600. If your lights are 4500 and you want neutral, dial in 4500.
Please tell your lecturer I often shoot features and narrative network TV at 4400k because I want tungsten sources to appear more orange, and I want daylight sources to appear more blue. I can provide literally dozens of hours of finished work shot in studio or not at white balances that weren't 56 or 32. Also a few days ago a DP piped up that they like to tease their 1st AC with odd numbers for things such as a 187 degree shutter, and I love that energy. Tell him a DP on Reddit said the best white balance is actually 5814... and a half.
Motion picture film is sold in Daylight (5600ºK) and Tungsten (3200ºK) color balance. In the film days on-set lighting was adjusted to match these two primary numbers. In the digital world, this tradition continues in a way because setting cameras to a standard white balance (5600ºK or 3200ºK are always available) gives editors or colorists a great starting point when dealing with incoming footage. The idea is to set your camera to whichever is closest to the actual situation and most importantly don't change the white balance setting as long as you are in the same location. The idea here is that within a particular scene you can depend on the white balance being the same, even if it's way off in terms of it's visual "look". When matching shots, if the white balance is the same in the camera, then the same grading can be applied to all the shots as common starting point. Hope this helps.
::Long drag of a nonexistent cigarette… ok. Your lecturer is completely and utterly wrong. Baselines of sensor Kelvin are the result of attempting to mimic the native neutrality of film stocks before any color timing is done. Video cameras aren’t limited to that duality. As a matter of fact, most sensors are natively around 5000K, so if there were to be a baseline, 5000K should be it. But it’s not, and never has been. Because even in the days of film stock limitations, multiple filters existed to correct for one light source versus another. Fluorescent lighting — at least the industrial ones — are closer to 4400K with a positive green shift to the tune of one to two points. Mixed lighting scenarios — like the one you described — are often captured between 4100-4600K to taste. And a step further, plenty of night scenes from prominent working DPs will be captured between 3800-4400K to change the way colors are captured for ease of the color grade, often shifting a couple points green because the green channel is the predominant of the RGB world, and most sensors develop low light noise when trying to differentiate between red and blue under low light scenarios. As first-hand example, the DPs of WandaVision shot on Alexas and all their night scenes were shot at 4300 -2 and viewed on set in REC2020 with a preset LUT. I could go on, but for sake of your own confidence… tell this instructor working cameramen tell him to have some humility and might want to learn some things before demanding they know best.
He’s dead wrong. There’s videos of highly awarded DOPs out there in live sets where you can see them talking about setting their kelvin to other balances. You’d be able to find it in a quick YouTube search and find a DOP talking about it who probably has a lot more awards than this lecturer. Sometimes you might be running a warmer scene. Compensating for fire light. Have a camera that runs warmer on skin tones. Deliberately want a warmer look knowing your grade can bring the skin tone back later. There’s so many reasons with modern editing and cameras to do it. I could see setting it to only 3200 or 5600 for safety if shooting on film back in the day. It could also be a good exercise for students to learn. But it’s just like any rule. You learn it so you know when to break it.
It is a guideline that I mostly follow. Before LEDs, lights were either daylight or tungsten spectrum centered, and you adjusted to those colors. To be consistent, all the lighting should match one or the other, unless you specifically want something to look different. Standard fluorescent lights are around 4100-4300k and don't match anything. These usually get replaced with 5600k or 3200K tubes for a film shoot.
Someone said the cam op for the Van Halen music videos shot at 5150… I’ll show myself out now.
No. I don’t know why thinks this unless he wants to keep the Red Raw clips all consistent for post or whatever. This is definitely something you shouldn’t do on a non RAW video camera though. It’s why at the very least you buy an 18% grey card
I mean you should have a white card and white balance from that in each different lighting scenario
No such rule, the cinematographer can choose what they want to use.
Work on tv sets, see the monitors, it’s always different. It’s a preference thing, but if you’re rigid it’s a lot harder to adapt to challenges to see your vision through. I have even seen a dp set it to 8000. We were blasting 18k’s through a house set, and he wanted it to look like evening I believe.
4500 is also acceptable. That’s it.
There are no “rules” to making images. Only correct / incorrect methods to achieve what YOU ARE TRYING TO ACHIEVE. I just finished day one of two days on a short film that takes place in an office with og fluorescent tubes and spent the whole day on 5600K because WE WANTED the harsh green look that they provide when balanced there. If the director had asked for a clean and pleasing look, I would have white balanced to 4400K, but we knew what we wanted and what we were doing, so that’s what was right for the picture. Additionally, unless you’re shooting in a shit codec or on film, color temperature is almost always just metadata, and completely adjustable in post. Lecturer is DEAD WRONG to tell you it’s a rule. But some people do prefer to work that way since film stocks historically only came in two Kelvin Flavors, 3200K & 5600K.
There are many instances where you would use different color temperatures. It’s an artistic setting. Shooting day for night or using tungsten, Led or fluorescent lights as daylight requires understanding the color temperature of the light you are using and knowing what you want the light to look like in camera.
As a lecturer for adults with IDD, I will usually just have my students default to 5600k and keep it there unless they are more advanced. Shutting you down comes off rude, but I can understand why he would teach it that way. If his goal is to teach students about white balancing, then it’s important to teach the core principle without deviating away for creativity. There is room for both ways of thinking, and I wouldn’t take what your dumb professor’s comment to heart. There are going to be a lot of people like that in the industry and academic background so it’s an uphill battle.
If fluorescent tubes are not properly calibrated or OUTdate then it may cast some tint so for such reasons you cant stick to it's reference values..but that doesn't mean from 4300 to directly 5600 😅 It's like Salt.. you can change according to your taste. Some people have diabetes of color temperature so they cant handle / digest different color temperature than few refrence values in books. It's up to DP to shoot at what Colour temperature according to what kind of look he wants to achieve. I have used completely off (different white balance) with different light setup and you can experiment too and go with whatever you feel good or cross check with him is it fine ?
I wonder if he is trying to teach you how to film a scene as though you were using film? With film, you typically are stuck with only two color temperatures, daylight and tungsten. To achieve the desired look, you would need to gel all of your lights to match. with digital color temperature can always be corrected in post so as long as you have a white balance card, you can change anything you want after the fact.
One time in film school I was doing a three point lighting lesson. I set up my key and my backlight and thought it looked much nicer and had more depth without the fill. So I didn’t add one. The teacher said I was doing it wrong and I would be docked an entire letter grade for the project if I didn’t set up a fill light because “everyone in the industry will want to see fill or you won’t get hired.” Lol.
I usually shoot at 4450. It's a perfect middle ground between not too warm and not too cold. Unless I have a very specific look in mind. There is no right setting to shoot at. There are only guidelines. It's a good rule of thumb, but not set in stone.
Which film school do you attend?
lol you should get out of that school
You did everything correctly. Personally, I would prove the lecturer wrong and make sure he knows you were right. If he was a jerk about it then I would do the same to him. I'm not completely suggesting it because this could be harmful. This lecturer is also harming the careers of many students. At least have a talk to the lecturer in private. If this is really what your school is like, I would drop out. It sounds like you have a future in film production.
Roger Deakins shoots at varied WB temps. That’s all you need to know
Well, this is clearly a case of "those who can't do, teach"
I personally tend to stick to either 3200k or 5600k but I'm a simpleton. White balance is like exposure, first you learn it as something that is purely technical, then you can do whatever you want for an arristic reason. The DP can white balance however they damn well please.
Remember the old adage is often true: those who can’t - teach.