Getting to grips with gels

Photography is all about light. It’s about telling a story that you’ve painted with light. Making video is much the same thing. By manipulating the light that you have at your disposal, you’ll be able to better tell the story that needs to be told. With photography, we’re accustomed to either setting our white balance in-camera or adjusting it after the fact. Movie-makers are much more inclined to use gels over their light sources to get the look that they want. So what different gels are there, and what can they do for your images?

White balance

You can correct the colour temperature of your light source to ensure that it’s emitting a natural-looking light with a gel or a filter. This is especially important if you’re using a variety of light sources with different temperatures, to create an even colour.
However, as well as correcting your white balance, gels can be used to throw colour casts across your set, adding to its artisitic impact.

Colour Temperature Blue

CTB (colour temperature blue) gels come in varying strengths and are used to cool 44 warm lights that have an orange hue. If you need to match a tungsten light with daylight or sun coming through a window, you can do this using a CTB gel, too. Using a CTB gel can mimic a night-time look or make an already cool light appear even cooler.

Colour Temperature Orange

CTO (colour temperature orange) gels are used to warm lights or warm the colour temperature of a light with a blue hue. Conversely, these gels can also be used in conjunction with a cool light source to match tungsten ambient light.

Plus & Minus Green

Artificial lighting that is not intentionally manufactured for video purposes is not correctly colour balanced, and actually gives off a greenish cast. You really don’t want to have someone’s face lit with the sickly green colour caused by fluorescent lights. When shooting under artificial lighting, use a minus green gel to neutralise the cast introduced by the fluorescent light and all of its annoying green glory.

Stylising Gels

At a first glance, these sheets of heat-resistant colourful plastic can resemble festive plastic wrap. But rather than wrapping your gifts, they can wrap your scenes in specific looks. They offer great versatility, being able to apply a specific colour cast to scene so that it adds to the drama or represents a particular time of day.

Diffusion Gels or Filters

When hard light needs to be softened, diffusion filters, gels, or materials present another alternative to softboxes. Diffusion filter and gel options come in a wide range of intensities and mediums.
The Moviemaking With Your Camera Field Guide is Olivia Speranza’s guide that shows you how you can build on what you already know to create truly spectacular movies with your camera in whatever genre you choose. It introduces everything from the language of film and basic equipment you will need, to the art of post-production and publishing your new work.
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