Very cool Derrel. Thank you for posting the diagram. That is a lot of information there to learn from (and I've got a lot of learning to do). Stupid question: the background color is just from a gel rather than a colored background? Why a gray background rather than white if you are going to project a color onto it?
Well, they HAD A BIG, wall-mounted projection screen for their projection television setup right THERE, already pulled down!!! So...rather than set up my OWN backdrop stands and crossbar, I left those in the back of my vehicle and used THEIR background, and it was light gray!!! So, it was a matter of convenience, and expedience...they already had a PERFECTLY SMOOTH, LOVELY very light,almost grayish backdrop screen right there on the liviing room's back wall! DOAH!!!!! How handy is THAT!?
In close confines like this, blasting a gel onto a WHITE screen means more chance of blow-back or "wrap"; in a confined shooting area, using a white background and a lighter colored gel means a LOT MORE light is reflected, and the color of the gel looks lighter in the photos; on gray, the color will be a bit more-saturated; when aiming the same light,m same gel, same Watt-seconds of flash power at a black screen, the color of the backdrop in the photo will be darker, more-saturated pink.
Same goes with other gels: take the same gel, same light unit, same flash power, same light positioning, same camera settings, and then 1) aim it at a white seamless, 2) then a thunder gray seamless, then 3) black seamless paper, and there will be three, significantly-different densities of background color. Assuming that ALL other variables are kept constant. Speedotron Brown line lights do NOT have the power-adjustment capabilities that my Black Line power packs have--they have NO variable, dial-down power. In close-confines like this smallish living room, shooting a gel onto a pure white paper leads to a LOT of "blow-back", and can, and often does, create a colored bit of light that actually comes back and hits the subjects hair and shoulders. THis can look neat...or horrible. Less-reflective material, like black velvet or black felt, ABSORBS MOST of the light that hits it, and does NOT send gel-colored light all over the shooting area. Gray is somewhere in-between.
If you want to get a REALLY deep, saturated background using any of the "pastel gels", like yellow, or pink, or baby blue, then Brown Line lights and packs are a terrible choice when shooting onto WHITE backgrounds. The relationship between the background light's REFLECTED LIGHT reading at the subject's BACK-of-the head
in relation to the INCIDENT LIGHT METER exposure of the person, determines the exact background density or "color". Brown Line packs do not allow a huge variety of flash power output, so, in a real,practical sense, I seldom EVER want to shoot colored gels at a pure-white screen if I am lighting the backdrop with a Brown Line head....I will instead use my 405 or 805 Black Line packs to give a teensie-tiny say 25 Watt-second or 50 Watt-second squirt of flash,and then have that paired up with 200 to 600 Watt-seconds of main light.
Here is an on-line page showing and talking about Chromazones, the old Dean Collins term for this use of gels, and how to precisely MEASURE,and predict the EXACT DENSITY of a background, by using a professional light meter that can read both reflected light AND incident light. TOny Corbell's book on basic studio lighting covers this subject, somewhat briefly, but well.
Basic Studio Lighting: The Photographer's Complete Guide to Professional ... - Tony L. Corbell - Google Books
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