Bob,

Thanks man! You're a genius! I think the secondary CC might cut it. I just have to watch my waveform clipping and I should pull this off "legally." How close to 110% can those teeny tidbits on the scope be before I'm in trouble?

Thanks!!!
Mov

"How close to 110% can those teeny tidbits on the scope be before I'm in trouble?"

Depends really. If the video is for the web anything goes and I leave my specular highlights at 109%.

If your camera has recorded something else way up there then even if you need strict "broadcast" compliance I'd suggest matching what the camera recorded and then deal with it as desired overall, say a custom Color Curve or Broadcast Colors FX on the Video Buss.

Having mixed whites and/or blacks is a real problem to deal with later down the track.

Bob.

Topping out at 108% specular highlights - for DVD...shouldn't be a problem should it?

I'd like to keep the walls a lighter shade of grey/white if I can - otherwise whats the point of a cyclo wall set?

"Topping out at 108% specular highlights - for DVD...shouldn't be a problem should it?"

Nothing will blowup generally however most STB DVD players seem to clamp the output at 100%. What you could do is use a custom color curve to bring the 108% cyc down to 100% and that'd bring your other whites down to around 93%. This would be better than having a player clamp your 100% whites and 108% cyc to be the same level white if that's your intent.

To do this, set your waveform monitor to Studio RGB. Apply the color curves to the track or video buss. Open the FX. Click somewhere in the workspace then click and drag the end top right node vertically down. Keep going until the waveform monitor shows your peak whites at 100%. Save as preset if so desired.

Bob.

Yes, but won't that darken my already marginally gray white walls to an unpleasing low to mid 220-range grey? How is it I see such bright, punchy, vivid whites, and colors etc. on broadcast TV?

There has to be a way to preserve the whitish "ethereal" look I worked so hard to achieve...and for which I paid big cyclo studio fees.

Thanks!
Mov

Sorry mate you're loosing me.
I was assuming you'd punched your wall up over 100% to match or to exceed the white on the subject and were worried about them being over legal.

To answer your more general question remember it's all relative. I used to wonder how some TVCs pushed out gorgeous reds that looked way out of gamut. The trick is nothing much was done to the reds, instead something was done to everything else.

Bob.

Bob,

What happened is that the cyclo studio was lit from above with only 2 large cylindrical lanterns (6K each) and a small bank of diffused spots – as such the lighting was imperfect and somewhat “center-weighted.” The area of the studio we painted and utilized was approximately 32’ wide by 22’ deep. Our subject and props were relatively centered within the space making best use of the overhead lighting respective to our subject; the rear wall was significantly closer to the subject/props. The rear wall being closer to both the subjects and lighting appears brighter in shots where it is included verses flanking shots which include the more distant side walls. When I cut the side wall shots together with the rear in V5, the light falloff is rather discernable. My intention (and thanks to your brilliant suggestion) was to closely match the gamma of the flanking wall shots with that of the rear.

Originally, I bumped up the contrast and saturation globally to compensate for the gamma differential, but after rendering to MPEG-2 and burning to DVD I realized I blew out a lot of highlight detail and my levels were “illegal” as well. After I more sanely & conservatively tweaked my saturation and brightness, the light falloff was offensively apparent in the flanking shots.

I was able to sample a nice section of the flanking walls and create a clean mask; I bumped up the gamma just enough to make the cuts appear tonally similar in SCC.

I have rendered the adjusted footage to MPEG-2 and it doesn’t display any artifacting on PC playback; I’ll burn a disc soon enough to see if it looks ok on TV.

Here’s a shot of the cyclorama studio in which I shot; you should be able to more clearly visualize what I have experienced: http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/543/studio1.jpg

If I were to do this again, I would hire a lighting crew to properly dial in the grid so as to assure perfect lighting in all directions regardless of distance. My current budget just didn’t provide for it – next time for sure, plus a new HD set-up!!

Mov

I'm only guessing as I wasn't there on the day and I've never tried to pull that look off myself as much as I love it, my favourite music vid is Lady GagGa's Bad Romance, just for the look!

Seems to me that the space lights in that studio are wrong. They're too big, too low and there's not enough of them. They're putting most of their light down onto your subject and not the cyc. So you've got too much light on the subject relative to the cyc.

My cheap suggestion on the day would have been a half to one stop silk over the subject, much cheaper than putting more light onto the cyc. Should have been pretty easy to hang that from the grid just under the space light.

As for cameras, I don't know if simply going to a prosummer HD camera would gain you that much. A camera with more latitude would have been my choice. On a tight budget and if you didn't need to deliver HD I'd have gone for a DigiBetacam camera. If you had more money to throw around an SI-2K or 35mm. Good glass that'll help avoid flare might have been a consideration as well.

Bob

I agree that the lighting was sub par, but with the simple SCC gamma key I dialed in the look just fine. I don't think hanging silk would have compensated for the light falloff which was my primary problem. In fact, the light was barely adequate to where I had to open my iris nearly full-wide - had I lost any of the subject lighting I would have had to step up the gain which would really have caused problems. I had an arsenal of stand-mounted spots and softboxes from which to choose if I wanted to bump up the lumens; I specifically chose not to impose glare/bounce back and overcomplicate the lighting which could have opened another can of worms. The subject lighting as it worked out looks reasonably natural and I wouldn't have messed with it. The cyclo effect is more a means to achieve atmospheric cleanliness than a major theme in this production; my objective is to keep the focus on the subject and completely eliminate clutter and distractions. The clips I have tweaked seem to do the trick; I’m not making a trendy music video, just an exercise product demo /workout video which will include nice graphics and an info/graphical overlay (similar to “Slim in 6”) which will bump up the production nicely.

Camera wise I own an XL2 and it seems to have done the job; I’m familiar with it and I know how to achieve a nice look with its robust custom adjustments. Canon glass is good stuff and I had no flare issues whatsoever. How bad can the XL2 be; it purportedly is one of the most popular cameras used for “Indy” films in recent history. My budget didn’t provide for renting or purchasing beta equipment for this project and I didn’t have the luxury of time getting used to new gear when paying big bucks for a studio.

My future HD camera will not be prosumer by any means; I've had my eye on the PMW-EX3 and I may go that route or better if this project works out. Then of course I will have to invest in a new production HD monitor, PC, software, HD Juice. etc. etc. For now I have a hell of a lot of editing to do to get this project finished and on the market!

Mov

Lighting Infinite White by D. Eric Franks for the next time you do this.

Mike

Rs170a -

I appreciate the info, but this instructional is for a small DIY type setup with a single plane shoot (straight on). My shoot was in a large studio using over 270 degrees of field with overhead grid lighting; this setup I’m afraid has nothing to do with what I've done.

I still have 2 day's shooting remaining at the studio some time in July; while I'd love to make mid-stream improvements to the existing lighting, I cannot. The entire project must look identical from segment 1 to segment 100. As I previously stated: using a simple SCC gamma key (props to Bob) I flawlessly tweaked the flank wall shots to match the rear wall shots - why would I need to overcomplicate what already works at this point? That said, if budget were a concern in the same scenario in the future I could ostensibly use the identical lighting set-up and tweak in post on the cheap with little effort.

If I ever need to shoot a video in this studio again it would indicate my first product was successful and I’m on to my second; I would not think twice about hiring a crew to light the set to perfection. This particular studio has all of the lights on hand, they however will not allow videographers to work on their 3 phase grid without proper licenses; I’m sure as heck no electrician. The few hundred bucks I’d invest would be well worth it on any future project should one come about.

Quite frankly, my wallet is more concerned about my next generation of HD gear than paying a lighting crew anyway!

Thanks for the info; it was an interesting video.

Mov

they however will not allow videographers to work on their 3 phase grid without proper licenses; I’m sure as heck no electrician.

What country are you in?

As far as I know, there's no licensing required anywhere in the US. However, a stage may have a specific policy regarding scissor lifts or setting up an initial camloc distro run, since these aren't foolproof. Generally, there's no real stage certification except for whatever training a union might have given (San Francisco's IATSE 16 is pretty good about this but other locals may vary)

It sounds like this stage is set up for you to walk in and then flip switches for the cyc wall lights. Unfortunately, if you stayed at the same aperture throughout the shoot and their walls varied then they aren't really ready to sell this as a flip-the-switch setup.

One thing you could possibly do for the next round is just drop a single or double into all of your floor lights and open your iris a half or full stop. The ratios will be the same on the subject but the backdrop will come up by that much. Then maybe you can trim the output on their cyc and space lights to get the walls closer together.

Or just correct it in post. :-)

Another thing to consider if you're going back to this stage in a few months...someone may change or fix the the wall lighting setup between now and then. It might be better, it might be worse. From the sounds of it, though, the stage manager may not know anything about lighting and will be afraid to let anyone change anything at all, ever.

Rob Mack