As someone whose posted and shot more stage shows than I care to remember the very thought of blue gells makes me shudder, try deep blue gels and dancers all decked out in white satin.

"Areas I need to work on

Seems to me you need more light and adding gels is a bad step. Video cameras have the poorest response to the blue end of the spectrum. If you want to fight the noise first you have to have enough light so the camera is not adding gain.

Regarding 3). The moon is a point light source and not as bright as the sun by a large amount. Under moonlight our eyes are close to their limits so shadows are very harsh. If you want to light with an artifical moon then a Lunar Light will do exactly that but with only one outdoors it's a very harsh light. You really need to add fill to bring the shadows up enough for your cameras to see something. I'd add just enough, not as much as one would normally use of course.

Bob.

Thanks Serena for the feedback

That silvery look is what I am looking for, to be honest I didn’t think of backlighting the scene at all
That’s already an improvement

Thanks for the link..interesting read and has got me relooking at my options

Bob the test that I shot I did on a black backdrop outside

The band members had black kit with dark jeans etc so I added one light high up to rep the moonlight no gels ,tungsten

The footage is uncomfortable besides being underexposed the talent or subject matter almost pops out of the darkness, originally the vision I had.
But instead of drawing me the images made me uncomfortable so instead of a romantic number I have a scary head bang feel.

Its not easy the only way I am going to get it right is by getting experience and good advice

Be warned, I'm not much chop at this creative stuff :)

but ...."instead of a romantic number I have a scary head bang feel" well yeah. Guys dressed in black with deep shadows in moonlight. Sounds like Hitchcock to me :)

Moonbeams on water? Put the band somewhere, not floating in black limbo. We're scared of what we can't see, for good reason.

Put them in a field, big lights. Put them on a pontoon on a lake, one big light for the moon. Put some chinese lanterns around for some fill. Cheap enough I'd guess.

Bob.

On the contrary Bob from your help you have given me in the past you are very creative

I think you have it right there about the disposition being in limbo

Already I feel a lot more positive moving forward on this project

Most of the AVCHD cameras today are TERRIBLE in low light. The only exceptions being the top of the line Canon Vixia, Sony and Panasonic HS100 (I own the Panasonic). In the case of the Panasonic, you MUST keep it off automatic and manually adjust the iris - you can get some gorgeous shots free from noise that way. In all cases, you MUST go manual on all AVCHD cameras and editing those will be a tiny nightmare since AVCHD is still a young format and is highly compressed. You are MUCH better off using HDV.

Personally, I would rather use my Canon XH A1 for any of what you mention. As long as you light your scene well enough for your taste, keep the gain low, turn off AGC on the Canon and ride your iris, night time footage looks amazing.

Mike

It's not a trivial effort to "keep the gain low" on the Canon consumer camcorders. Spotlight mode sets the gain at 0 db, but then you have no control over a lot of other settings. You can also use the "lock the exposure" trick, which has been thoroughly discussed at Canon-specific message boards like www.hv20.com. There seems to be a fascination with 0 db gain on these cameras, but you can usually get a decent video at somewhere between 3 and 6 db of gain, in low light.

You basically have to add ambient light, so you don't underexpose at these low gain settings. You didn't say anything about how much motion there will be in the shots, or whether you are shooting at 24p, 30p or 60i. 24p is not as good with motion (more blur), but you get slightly better performance at low light. The amount of motion and the frame rate will limit the minimum shutter speed that you can effectively use also.

If all else fails, you can try to remove grain in post, using a plug-in like Neat Video.

Are you shooting a live performance where you would have no control over the lighting or are you doing a music video shoot where you have total control over the lighting.

If it's the later the solution is use more light. Then you can bring in down in post if you would like.

Do you know of the technique of shooting Day for Night?
[IMG=http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/Climax.JPG]

You will want to research that.

shooting
day
for
night
shots

I've had good results using the noise remover plugin-in from New Blue's Video Essentials II. Of course, if at all possible try to keep the gain as low as possible.

Great contributions so far from our creative community.
There is a chapter is John Jackman's book "Lighting for Digital Video and Television".
It is entitled Lighting Darkness which could be of help.
He also mentions "The Craft of Lighting" at DV.com.