Theater and film slang for color filter media, polyester or polycarbonate sheets named after the gelatin the first filters were made from. Gels are numbered in the makers' swatch books, cut to size and slid into color frames, and they fade or burn through faster in hot, saturated colors. As a verb, to gel a fixture means to put color in it; color correction gels such as CTO and minus green are a separate category.
Gel the side lights with the pale lavender and drop a frost in the front wash, the faces look too hard.
Also heard as
- color
- color media
- filter
Related terms
CTO
Color Temperature Orange: a correction gel that warms daylight-balanced light toward tungsten color temperature.
Minus green
A magenta correction gel that removes the green tint from fluorescent or green-shifted LED light for camera work.
Gobo
A thin metal or glass disk with a cut pattern, placed in a spotlight to project shapes, textures or logos.
Hang and focus
The work of installing every fixture on the light plot, then aiming and shaping each one for the show.