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Inception's Blue-Ish Lighting.

Sweeney Jet

Sweeney Jet

I really like the blue lighting in some Inception scenes (and TDK as well). How did they do it?

I'm no DoP, but I guessed they used tungsten lighting and some type of gel. Maybe something in post? What do you think?

alg_inception_dicaprio.jpg
 
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Sweeney Jet said:
I really like the blue lighting in some Inception scenes (and TDK as well). How did they do it?

I'm no DoP, but I guessed they used tungsten lighting and some type of gel. Maybe something in post? What do you think?
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Could be tungsten, could be HMI, could be fluorescent. With a lot of effects like this, it's usually a combination of lighting and post-production - his skin tone is much more 'normal' looking than the rest of the shot, so some of it must have been done in the grade. If you read the American Cinematographer article you'll be able to learn a bit more about the lighting - you'll see that a mixture of tungsten and HMI lights were used, with the HMIs being very important for the super slow-motion shots, as there was no other way of getting that amount of light (a T-stop of f/90 at 24fps for one example).
 
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I believe Christopher Nolan doesn't do the DI (Digital Intermediate) process of scanning the film to get the color correction because he still does the basic color timing in the processing baths for the physical film to obtain the color palette from the scenes. In this case, it would be not using as much "red" to get the cool, blueish look.
 
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David.rhsc said:
You are correct, there was no DI on Inception. Remember also that a great deal of the "blue" also comes from the production design.
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This is true to an extent, because you'll notice no one is wearing red or orange or yellow, etc. nor is the set design in a colorful location, et al. But the main thing is looking at skin tones, they go blueish which means it's the color timing in an extreme. You are correct that this trick won't work without a uniform feel in all the looks and the art direction as a whole too.
 
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sonnyboo said:
This is true to an extent, because you'll notice no one is wearing red or orange or yellow, etc. nor is the set design in a colorful location, et al. But the main thing is looking at skin tones, they go blueish which means it's the color timing in an extreme. You are correct that this trick won't work without a uniform feel in all the looks and the art direction as a whole too.
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Very true. I meant to imply that the two work hand in hand. From Inception I recall it very strongly in the set where they made all of their preparations and plans. Very blue room. Fortunately there's a nice variation of tone in Inception. Many great examples.
 
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