Lighting a white room with tungsten, maintaining skin tones

[Gohanto]

For a project I'm shooting soon I'm working with a room that has all-white walls and attempting to make the room look tungsten lit for a slightly warmer feel. Kind of like the Jennifer Garner hotel scene in Catch Me If You Can or the suburban house in Transformers.

The problem I have is that one of my actors is Mexican, so I'm worried simply daylight white-balancing the camera will darken or warm her skin too much. The idea I started bouncing around was shooting with a daylight white-balance, and lighting the walls mainly with tungsten practicals, but using some CTB light on the actors off-camera so their skin tones aren't affected as much. (my goal is to have 99% of the look in-camera if possible)

Any ideas or experience with this?

 

[Kim Welch]

I apologize for the delay in responding, and thank you for posting. Your plan is a smart one: set the camera to daylight, let the tungsten practicals warm up the white walls, and light your actors with daylight-balanced or blued sources so their skin stays natural.

It also helps to keep the key light on the actors a little cooler than the background, and check skin tones on a calibrated monitor or with a vectorscope (the skin tone line). Shoot a test with both actors before the day. Our Lighting & Grip forum is a great place to share your results!