Colour balance trends

I was reading about the making of the Iron Man movie in the ASC magazine about how cinematographer (Matthew Libatique, ASC) used varying lighting sources (fluorescents, dimmed incandescents, etc) to achieve mixed colour balances within the scenes.

So often we learn how to ‘equalise’ colour temperatures so that a scene has a consistent ‘look’ throughout, however, creative use of mixed colour temperatures and lighting fixtures can lead to a more interesting scene.  You can see examples in many recent movies where they let the fluorescents ‘go green’ rather than correcting them.

As Libatique states, “I find it very flat to go with a single colour temperature”.

James