White Balance

What this is about

White balance is a creative decision that hides behind a technical name. Balancing to 3200 K under tungsten renders the room neutral, while balancing to 5600 K in the same room leaves it warmly orange — and both can be right, depending on the story. Mixed sources are the trap: a tungsten practical, a daylight window and a green fluorescent ceiling cannot all be neutral at once, so somebody has to gel a source or accept the cast as part of the look.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Shooting raw keeps white balance adjustable in post, but the on-set value still steers every creative judgement made that day.
• The tint or green-magenta axis sits alongside the Kelvin value and matters under fluorescent and cheap LED sources.
• A grey card filmed at the head of a setup gives the colourist a reference that beats any note written on paper.

With TillyGen

In TillyGen the white balance sits with the lighting notes of a setup, so the value the DP chose survives the walk from prep to the set.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.