Re: Non-white bouncing -- anyone done this?

Todd,

I think your blue glass filters are way overkill. I've long found that when mixing tungsten with HMI/daylight, placing 1/2 CTB on the tungsten units does very well. Or, if there's no actual daylight in the scene, you can get more bang by placing 1/2 CTO on the HIM. 1/2 CTB cuts the light by 1 whole stop; 1/2 CTO cuts the light by 1/2 stop....

Correcting by only 1/2 seems to produce good results. Note that a full CTB overcorrects a tungsten unit to 5700K, and a full CTO on an HMI overcorrects the unit to 2100K. (Source: "Set Lighting Technician's Handbook, 3rd edition, by Harry C. Box, p. 166.)

But your painted foamcore idea sounds like fun. Perhaps you could put 1/2 or 3/4 CTO on a C-stand arm so that the gel covers only 1/2 of the foamcore; the rest receives raw HMI. Then try to paint a bit of the raw side of the foamcore to match the color of the gelled side(it will have to dry to be true....) No doubt several trials to get this even close to right.

Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
and part-time instructor lighting and camera
grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com