Chase Oaks Sloan Creek Campus, Fairview, Texas; image courtesy of Idibri.
It's important as a designer to consider what color temperature is all about, and how it affects our perception of white. While this has affected lighting pretty much forever, the rapid adoption of the use of video on stage has added a new wrinkle into the importance of color temperature.
Video display sources, such as projectors, TV monitors and LED video walls, all have their own color temperatures.
Video display sources, such as projectors, TV monitors and LED video walls, all have their own color temperatures. The church I am attending has a large video wall as a backdrop to the stage. I’m guessing its color temperature is up around 6,000K, but we’re lighting the stage with LED fixtures that are running far closer to tungsten in color temperature. The cameras are white-balanced for how the lighting looks on the people on stage. When image magnification (IMAG) shots are put up on the side screens, the people look great, but the LED wall in the background of the shoot shifts radically to blue. If the LED video wall has an image with a lot of magenta, on the IMAG shot it appears to be a solid blue instead. And the person in the shot looks a different color that what we see in person. They look very natural on the screen, but in person (especially in contrast with the IMAG shot) they look a bit pale.
Why the color discrepancy?
The color shift is because the higher color temperature of the screens reads far more blue on a camera adjusted for tungsten front lighting, because there’s more blue in the light emitted from the screens.
Ideally, the video screens (if possible) should be adjusted to a much lower color temperature setting, and the stage lighting brought higher in color temperature to minimize the difference. Then the color temperature of the cameras would be adjusted so that what shows up on the screens matches what we see in person, and if the discrepancies are reduced enough, everything will look much more natural.
One consultant I’ve spoken with says they generally shoot for about a 4,400K color temperature for front lighting if they are using video on stage to bring the stage lighting closer to that video color temperature without going so far it looks harsh.
The challenge with accomplishing this is that LED video panels don’t tend to be adjustable in color temperature, and are frequently in the 6,500K color temperature range. The video processor for the video wall might be able to shift the color temperature lower artificially by altering the colors displayed. And the higher in color temperature you set the front stage lighting, the harsher the look you’ll have with your people on stage. One consultant I’ve spoken with says they generally shoot for about a 4,400K color temperature for front lighting if they are using video on stage to bring the stage lighting closer to that video color temperature without going so far it looks harsh. You could also then push the white balance color temperature of the video cameras a light higher than the actually stage lighting to move them a little closer to the video screen’s color temperature without having the people look too washed out.
Trying to find a happy middle ground is the challenge, and what that means will depend on the capabilities of your clients' equipment.
