A Student Film Lighting Fiasco

I recently went to see a screening of a student film which my bother starred in, and while the flaws in this movie were numerous, the lighting was particularly to blame for the cheaply unrealistic quality of the image. The film was supposed to take place at a theme park and thousands of dollars had been used to construct a set of an outdoor theme-park area, but for some reasons which were not readily apparent the set did not look as though it was outside and instead looked as though it were on a theatrical stage. After watching a few minutes of the movie, I realized the problem was that the cinematographer had made the classic mistake of using amber gels to represent sunlight, causing the movie to feel overly warm in terms of color. I confirmed this with my brother, who said that the people in charge of lighting had opted to put warm gels over lights which were already daylight-balanced. Watching this really helped me realize how important cool colors are in terms of making lighting look good, especially considering the fact that sunlight is slightly blue.