Recreating a look - orange/blue split tones

[ionian]

I'm looking for ways to recreate a look I see often in recent films, which simulates firelight with a blue/yellow split tone. Some screen caps below of the look I want. I'd assume it was mixed and gelled light sources, only I wondered if it was actually a mix of white balances or a split tone applied in post. I'm not having much success recreating it with post processing - I haven't tried gelled flash yet. Any ideas or tips?

[Manfred M]

Simon - those effects are done by gelling the lights. In cinematography, doing this in post is a P.I.T.A. Blue gels to simulate the cool moonlit night and orange gels to create the warm indoor scenes.

[ionian]

Manfred - thanks, although the more I think about it the more I am not convinced it is just a gelled light source. Look at the eye of the character in the second image - the white is white, not orange as you'd expect if the light source was gelled yellow/orange. Plus saturation of other colours is visible, unlike working with gelled lights. I used to work in theatre LX, a very similar concept to film lights (albeit in a much more controlled environment).

How about if you gelled the main light and then cooled the white balance towards the blue, so the ambient appears blue and the gelled moves towards the yellow? Or the opposite?

Edit: or perhaps there are white lights picking out details - they are likely to be working with a slightly more complicated set up than my two cheap speedlites...

[Manfred M]

I've done both theatre lighting (a very long time ago) and take cinematography lighting more recently. The lights illuminating the set will be gelled. The lights on the second actor does look white and I suspect they have a narrow beamed snoot on that white light. I'm just looking at the hot spot on the forehead and the direction of the shadows to the actor's right.

The reason I suspect it was not done in post is that in feature film, you are looking at (for cinematography) 24 frames / second. This type of work is generally done in Adobe After Effects and building the masks and lighting all take time. I've done some work in AE and I know this can be done in post, but it is better done during the shoot.

[ionian]

Yes, I can see that it's a multiple light set up now with zones of colour; I have flash gels so with some patience I could achieve something similar I guess. Thanks for the help!