This interview I shot looks horrible!

Laurence wrote on 3/27/2008, 7:18 PM
I've been doing video with Vegas for a couple of years but mostly easy event type stuff. I've been using a Sony HVR-A1 which is a really great point and shoot outdoor camera, but not so good if you want to shoot indoors or use the manual settings.

I am at the beginning of doing a full documentary project basically because I have access to a really good story, so I bought a really nice camera (a Sony Z7) and ordered some lights (LED500s), then because they were backordered for so long, bought an inexpensive pair of Lowel Egos with the idea of using them for head and shoulders interviews until the better lights arrived.

Well I did my first interview for the project the other day and quite frankly, the look of it just is just awful. I thought I could augment the ambient light around the face a littel using the Egos. I set white balance manually and had a TV plugged into the camera so that I could see what I was getting.

Unfortunately the TV was on one of the brightening presets so I ended up with footage that was too dark. It looks dark and green.

I have spent a couple of days trying out different formulas of color correction and have another one rendering as I type this. One problem I'm running into is that the guy I was interviewing was wearing a white shirt and whenever I get the skin color right, the shirt looks over exposed.

Strangely, I did a different interview in exactly the same spot a few days earlier using just a little foam core to reflect the ambient light at the subjects face and that interview actually looks really good.

I did a couple of interviews last fall in the same location using a couple of work lights from Home Depot and my HVR-A1 in mostly auto mode and that actually ended up looking pretty good as well.

These will be location interviews where I really don't have any control of the ambient light. I just want to augment the ambient light and get as good a look as I can with a quick setup. I'll be doing this at a doctor's office and can't really have them bend to my schedule.

Comments

rmack350 wrote on 3/27/2008, 7:24 PM
Got an uncorrected frame grab to show?

Rob Mack
Serena wrote on 3/27/2008, 7:32 PM
Yes, a frame grab is needed for any useful feedback. Maybe creating a mask would allow you to correct the face without touching the shirt. As one who has made my fair share of errors in such situations, masking is a very useful (if somewhat tedious) way out of blunders. If you do use a monitor for setting up the look of a shot, it must be calibrated.
Laurence wrote on 3/27/2008, 8:02 PM
The guy I was interviewing was quite animated and moved around quite a bit during the interview. It is also a pretty long interview. Those two factors sort of scare me away from trying some kind of masking. I'm doing yet another render now, which with the 32bit mode color correction will take about 22 hours. After that is over I'll post a screen grab.

Are there any hard and fast rules about mixing sunlight coming in through a window along with artificial light? That seems to have been my biggest mistake. I was under the impression that "daylight" artificial light would mix well with the ambient sunlight in the room.
farss wrote on 3/27/2008, 8:06 PM
If there is absolutely ANY chance that you'll get daylight into your shot use daylight lights. In other words unless you're shooting at the bottom of a coal mine use daylight lights.
Don't feel bad, I've been caught out on this too, that's why I'm so adament about never using tungsten light sources, ever. Just in case I've got CTB gells in my car.
If you get stuck in a location with some tungsten lights, that's why you carry some daylight CFLs in your kit, although a few tungsten practicals in shot aren't too bad but do NOT white balance for them, balance for the daylight.

Bob.
Laurence wrote on 3/27/2008, 8:12 PM
OK, let's say your in a typical situation where you have outside light coming in one window, whatever light is built into the ceiling, and you want to shoot an interview in that room. You've got next to no prep time and you have the person you are interviewing for maybe a half hour. What do you do?
John_Cline wrote on 3/27/2008, 8:23 PM
Let's see... daylight through a window which probably has some sort of tinting on it (so it isn't really daylight) and overheads, which are probably some flavor of flourescent (Warm white? Cool white? Not white?) I'd turn the overheads off, light it up with daylight lights, put a white balance card right in front of his face and white balance to that. Let the rest of the room end up whatever color it ends up, at least the flesh tone will be correct.
Serena wrote on 3/27/2008, 8:32 PM
If the Sun is your actual key light (directly on the subject) you can be reasonably confident of its color temperature, but still it is affected by the atmosphere. Where your subject is in a room illuminated by sunlight, the light will be colored by reflection from various surfaces in the room. If the daylight is indirect (sky or reflected from external surfaces) then its color temperature will be significantly changed from 5600K. One reason I like to use bounce cards in this situation is that the bounced and main source is the same, and of course it's a simple and quick lighting setup. Unfortunately few offices are setup for ideal lighting, which can make shooting someone at their desk difficult. Sometimes you just have to move the desk or pull the blinds.

EDIT: generally office fluorescents tend to a green caste and can vary in color temperature between 3000K and 6500K; definitely switch off the office lighting.
farss wrote on 3/27/2008, 8:58 PM
There's another problem with office fluros, flicker. Not an issue if shooting 50i/25p in 50Hz land or 60i/30p in 60Hz land however 24p and even moreso if using a camera with a CMOS sensor and you will have all manner of nasties, like dark bands rolling up the frame.
Both my EX1 and our SI-2K and judging by posts on Reduser the RedOne all suffer from this. The V1, Z7 and S270 will also.

Bob.
busterkeaton wrote on 3/27/2008, 9:00 PM
Sometimes we forget how powerful the sun is. Lowell Ego lights are pretty small and it's asking a lot to balance them with the sun.

John's suggestion of using only the sun and bouncing the sunlight back towards the subject is a good one. Something else that may help is if you get some white curtains/cloth and use them on the windows and diffuse the light coming in through the window.

A suggestion I would make is that if the story is good enough to film, then it's worth doing location scouting and some test shooting, both for what the light situation is and for ambient sound.
johnmeyer wrote on 3/27/2008, 9:34 PM
As for correcting what you've already got, Color Curves is the only tool I can think of. It can let you leave the almost-blown-out shirt alone, while raising the levels of the intermediate and darker areas.
JackW wrote on 3/27/2008, 10:45 PM
Outside light coming into the room, with incandescent room lighting: hang a black tarp or blanket over the window and light the interior. It's a lot easier solution than trying to gel interior lights, or gelling the window. Or, if you can, turn off all the interior lights, use the window as key, bounce light off foam core for the fill and back light.

Jack
goodtimej wrote on 3/27/2008, 10:56 PM
Maybe with the blown out shirt and good face color situation, you can just put a broadcast colors filter on the output and that at least doesn't make it glaring. Its the face that is most important at the end of the day isn't it?
rmack350 wrote on 3/27/2008, 11:43 PM
A point about that. There are some things that people know what color they are. We know people are people-colored so if the office stuff has wierd colored light on it...who really knows what color that stuff is? Make sure the people are the right color.

Rob Mack
rmack350 wrote on 3/27/2008, 11:54 PM
There have been times when I've been able to go with the window light and relay a reflector into the room to bounce more fill. It's hard, though. Best done with a big chunk of mirror (like 4'x4'), a grip keeping it focused (because the sun moves all day long), and radios or cell phones with unlimited minutes so you can tell the grip where to focus (because they may not be able to see through the window).

Other times I block the windows and go with what was in the kit (tungsten, usually). If I'm lucky, I light with HMIs and some daylight flos, but if you're in a room with a lot of glass it all shows up as reflections.

Office windows usually have a greenish tint to them. HMIs inside may need some green to match.

Rob
Jay Gladwell wrote on 3/28/2008, 5:46 AM

Buster, color temperature is what it is. If the lights, whatever they are, are balanced with the sun, size makes no difference.

I use the Egos on a regular basis, and they balance with the sun just fine.


Laurence wrote on 3/28/2008, 6:04 AM
Jay, a couple of questions:

How do you set your Egos?

How do you avoid them being overpowered by the ambient light?

You posted a frame a while back that looked pretty darned good. Was there much ambient light in that room?
rs170a wrote on 3/28/2008, 6:52 AM
...hang a black tarp or blanket over the window and light the interior.

As long as there's not a whole wall of windows, that's my working method as well.
I light the person (3200 K) and don't worry about other light sources such as fluros.
As long as the face looks OK, minor colour differences in the background can be tolerated.

Mike
Jay Gladwell wrote on 3/28/2008, 7:17 AM

Laurence, the Egos are usually five feet or less from the subject (depending on framing).

You need to remember the Egos are not pumping out all that much wattage. So it is possible that the "ambient" light (a relative term) was overpowering your Egos. That may have been what Buster was referring to. If you need more (stronger) light, move them closer to the subject.

In the shot I posted earlier, there was a considerable about of ambient light (even with the blinds closed) coming from large sliding glass door directly behind the camera and one good sized window to camera right (again with the binds closed). This was a very small kitchen in the client's condo.

Again, it would be helpful if you could post a frame grab.


baysidebas wrote on 3/28/2008, 8:41 AM
The best tool, bar none, to help you achieve the best video quality for your interviews is http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/onlocation/?xNav=PPOLAdobe OnLocation CS3[/link]. I've put some 1600 interviews in the can over the past 23 years, but it wasn't until 8 months ago that I discovered OL. I could kick myself for not having explored its possibilities earlier, when it was called DVRack [from Serious Magic, maybe that was the reason, the name didn't inspire me to try it]. It has improved my productivity and ensured that the video I shoot is the best. Try it, there's a free trial version available. If you don't get hooked on it, I'll eat my Countour Shuttle.
rs170a wrote on 3/28/2008, 8:54 AM
The Art of Shooting the Video Interview.
I've learned a lot from this guy over the years.

Mike
GlennChan wrote on 3/28/2008, 10:35 PM
To get the white balance right, try using the normal color corrector and using the mid and highs eyedroppers on something that should be a neutral color (e.g. anything grey in the scene).

Then add a secondary color corrector filter, and set that to de-saturate highlights. Use the reset to none preset first.
Then set saturation to 0.
(?can't remember exact names here) then turn on limit effect, luma -->
set high to 255
set low to something like ~210
Play around with the low and smooth sliders.

There's also other ways to fix things, but I'd try that first.