The actual interesting stuff is more rare than Mr. Clean with hair. How do professional film crews mitigate this problem? Do they always edit and color separately? Or do they create two or three versions of the same scene, each in a different color palette (and edit them against each other), and then make decisions based on what they see in the final cut? Is there any trick to mitigate it when shooting? A: There is a simple solution. When you mix the shots, you match the color of the actors' wardrobe, and the color of the sets (if there is no change) or the light used on the set, and maybe the objects in the shot (and so on). If this has not been done, then there will be a distinct difference. This is the easiest way of shooting, you just do not care about the visual aspect. A: The main problem is that you have to look at a scene several times (at least twice) with the same mental model of the scene. That means that you have to be able to remember what the first time it was like, but you have to forget what the first time it was like. This is difficult even for amateur directors, because after a while, you start subconsciously remembering what the first time it was like and you can no longer fully watch the scene as it is now. When you shoot it two times (or more), your memory of the first time it was just does not fade as fast as when you watch the same scene in the shot. As a result, when you see the two scenes one after another (or simultaneously) you actually see differences that were not present when they were shot. This effect is amplified by the fact that when shooting, even if you plan to do it as color neutral as possible, you will always be a little bit color impaired. You have to have some confidence that you will not remember what the scene looked like before, or this would be an impossible task. A: You can try having people switch around in order to match up their skin tones. I was on a TV show once where we had people in black, white, and "neutral" color clothing (light blue, dark blue, etc.) - we would alternate each scene so that one person would be the only person of that color for that scene, and then switch the next scene. Not much of a solution though. I've always wondered if it were possible to have some kind of chemical treatment that you put on your skin that would cancel out its tint. Perhaps it could be combined with some sort of light-blocking glasses that you wear to block out the color of the lights, and thus make your skin "neutral". If the chemical on your skin was permanent and didn't wash off in the shower, that would be a good way to go about it - otherwise you'd have to re-treat with a new chemical each time you did the show. Or maybe the chemical could be combined with the color-blocking glasses in a way that it would only cancel out the white balance of the room and not the lights in the room? Or maybe you could have them put a chemical on their face (or some other non-sensitive area of their body) beforehand, and have that chemical cancel out the tint of their skin? I've thought about it before and I never came up with a good idea though. It's still a question that's been bugging me. A: There is a method the "school of life" uses in their teaching to learn how to pick up the nuance of colour and tone: Take a photograph (or film) of some subject, and see it with your naked eyes. Pick the best angle, and the best lighting conditions. This will give you the best representation of that subject. Now use some colour filters on your monitor. Red, Yellow, Green, and so on, all other colours being represented by a neutral (grey) light. This should look very flat and lifeless. Now use some colours in the spectrum with your colour filter (blue, red) to make it look similar to what you saw when you first saw the subject. Now you have to repeat it, preferably for each of your "light" sources: Sunlight, fluorescent light, candle light, artificial lights (like TVs and bulbs), incandescent light and finally sunlight on cloudy days. Now compare what you just created to your first "test" of the subject and you should be able to pick up any kind of nuance to that image. Now this should apply to video. I don't know if they have a "school of life" for this technique, but it's definitely a common way of getting better in visualisation. I have found that a good way of watching videos is not by just fast forwarding or rewinding, but zooming in or out, starting and stopping videos. By watching very closely, and looking at the details of how objects interact with each other, you will pick up a lot of what the director intended. You don't need to try to memorise scenes, just focus on what the director intended for the viewer to feel in that moment. This is all part of reading "subtext" in a scene. By picking up the subtle detail the director intended you will be able to focus on them easier as well. A: Sometimes you just can't control the lighting sufficiently to get a match for this. But if you can, you can sometimes avoid this by careful color grading. In your example, let's say that you have two people both with blue or light blue clothing. The scene is outdoors, at noon in good lighting. If you can put them inside in similar lighting conditions, you can use the indoor lighting to match the lighting on the scene. If the scene is outdoors but with the right lighting, or under a spotlight, you can use that light to color match it. That's not always possible (you may not want to do a lot of work to light the location). A common technique is called "two-strike lighting". The first strike is the normal lighting in the scene. The second strike is just the difference between daylight and fluorescent or incandescent lighting. In this shot, that would be about 7000K, so we have a difference of about 14000K between the two scenes. And then you color grade that shot to neutralize that extra light. I've seen a lot of movies and TV shows and this technique is almost always used when they're filming outdoors, at dusk, in low-light conditions. If the scene is indoors, in a low-light condition, or the setting is night time, you might just change it to a black & white scene. It's not as sexy, but the color does match. The only reason you should do this is because you want the exact color matching on both sides. It would be an extremely boring scene in black and white because it just wouldn't match. Because if you film it in color, it will match just fine. The color difference here is just a shade too little to justify the extra work and time that it would take. Or, if you do get to that point in your filming and you need to film a scene twice with color (in the same location), you can set up a mirror and film it once with the colored filter on and once without. It should work well enough with a good color grading.