How to get a Sodium Vapor (street light) look when lighting

Sodium Vapor lights are those muddy orange lights that line the streets of your neighborhood. This is a small tutorial on how to reproduce this lighting effect to make your film's lighting scheme more dynamic.
The light from these globes are produced by energizing sodium atoms to produce photons. The very specific color temperature of these lights can be used to accent the scene you are lighting and create a more dynamic scheme. Below are some tips on how to achieve and utilize this effect.

First we'll talk about my favorite way to use color correct gels to get the sodium look.

If you are using tungsten lights, the cocktail I prefer is to color balance further toward orange using Full CTO (Color Temperature orange) #204 gel and 1/4 Plus Green/Minus Magenta #246.

If you plan to use HMI (Hydrargyrum Medium-arc Iodide, Hydrargyrum is essentially mercury and this lamp uses an arc to produce light) or other daylight balanced hard light sources, I prefer to use this color correct cocktail: Double Full CTO (2 cuts of #204) and 1/8 Plus Green (since HMI's can have a little bit of green to them already).

This should give you the color you're looking for in a sodium.

Now for a couple of different uses for this effect.

One way I like to use this is to mimic a street light above or attached to a building. If you have access to the roof of the building you are shooting in front of, I find using your beefy baby or combo stand commando style (laying on its side) braced over the lip of the roof or leaning out an open window works best. Don't open the legs on your stand. Lay them over out the window or over the lip of a flat roof and throw several bags of dirt over the stand. This method allows you more leeway than rigging a point since the stand can telescope out to gain some separation from the building's facade. Tilt the light down and play with the spot/flood until you get a nice cone shaped spray down the side of the building. This method makes for a great accent on the building while differentiating from your subject's light and the cooler colors.

Another way to use this is when you are shooting night interiors. Combine the sodium cocktail with a daylight balanced source on different light axis' and shoot toward your window. This gives a nice combination of sodium and moonlight accents on your window. *If your HMI isn't too green try to throw a sheet of 1/8 plus green on the moonlight source.