Theater spot light white balance and exposure issues

[commil1]

I video record shows and musicals, using two cameras: Sony HXR-MC50U and Panasonic Lumix GH2.

I have two problems when the lighting crew use spot on the main character while the rest of the stage it lit by standard stage lights:
1.The spot is much brighter than the rest of the stage and the actor’s face becomes over exposed and white washed.
2.The spot is usually a daylight type, bright white, which makes their skin color bluish purple, while the rest of the stage is the standard tungsten light.

With both cameras I can manually change the exposure and the white balance, but I try to avoid doing it in mid song or scene. In addition, decreasing the exposure or changing the white balance makes other actors on stage look darker or yellowish. Any thoughts or suggestions?

[smrpix]

This is why film and video productions carefully balance their lighting.

If you have no control over the lighting setup you have to adapt by finding good compromise settings and adjusting carefully. Manual exposure control is always recommended. In a theatrical setting some color variation is expected and will be accepted by your viewers. FWIW, Your cameras are both pretty good as far as exposure latitude and retaining detail.

If you are going to be cutting between the cameras in your final presentation you can always use use the time one camera is "on" to make adjustments to the other.

So basically, the answer is change the lighting or be diligent.

[aedipuss]

this is one time that "auto" exposure and technique might help you out. i've shot a lot of high school musical productions and my normal setup is a mix of hdv videocams and canon dslrs. when you are trying to shoot a spotlighted actor then you should be doing a closeup, as the rest of the stage as you've found out will be darker than optimal. a cam with a large lens and on auto exposure set to a single center spot should be able to quickly adjust to the added lighting if all it is capturing is the face or upper body.

[sanlyn]

this is one time that "auto" exposure and technique might help you out.

Under those conditions? No. Never. IMO it should be illegal to sell auto-exposure cameras to amateurs.

[julitomg]

I´m sure the OP will find the different aproaches to the problem useful, I´d like to share also my own experience.
I have also shot several theater plays with a combination of available cameras, lately, my usual setup consists of a Panasonic HMC40 and a DMC FZ40 (also a Panny), it has allowed me to have a reasonably efficient one man crew solution. I place the FZ40 in a position to cover the most (all if possible) of the stage, either centered or slightly opposing the other camera and the HMC40 also facing the stage but more to one side, ideally at about 45 degrees from each other. Both cameras record the whole show without cuts. The FZ40 is in a fixed position covering the whole action and I pan, tilt and zoom with the HMC40 as necessary to follow the characters´main actions. In post cut from one camera to the other "hiding" most HMC40´s reframing movements so in the final video you see mostly shots without too much movement that give the apearence of having several cams each one with a different composition.
Regarding white balance, I usually keep both cams with the 3200ºK or tungsten (little lightbulb icon) preset since most theater lights (at least where I´ve shot) not only are many times fitted with color gels but also operated from a cosole that dims them according to the lighting design which also affects their color temp. For exposure I usualy keep them in AUTO with good results more often than not (if a very specific situation arises I can always switch to manual but most times it´s not necesary)
In a spotlighty situation as the OP describes, I´d zoom in closer to the main character and depending how the auto exposure reacts to the scene I keep it that way or momentarily switch to manual to avoid overexposing the shot, obiously the rest of the frame will be quite dark but that´s the point of the spot anyway and a tighter shot will help to focus further the attention to it.
And you´ll always have the wider B (in my case the FZ40) that will probably show a slightly overexposed central character but also the surroundings being visible (unless all other lights are brought down all the way.

[aedipuss]

this is one time that "auto" exposure and technique might help you out.

Under those conditions? No. Never. IMO it should be illegal to sell auto-exposure cameras to amateurs.

weirdo. not even close to a valid response. you have no idea how fast and good manufacturers have made current cam electronics. it would take an experienced cam operator using manual settings at least a minute vs. a second by the cam to come up with decent settings and the shot would be lost. grow up.

[sanlyn]

Regarding white balance, I usually keep both cams with the 3200ºK or tungsten (little lightbulb icon) preset since most theater lights (at least where I´ve shot) not only are many times fitted with color gels but also operated from a cosole that dims them according to the lighting design which also affects their color temp.

Good choice. The color temp of stage lighting averages around 3200-3400K. The color of the gels is not the "color temperature".

In a spotlighty situation as the OP describes, I´d zoom in closer to the main character and depending how the auto exposure reacts to the scene I keep it that way or momentarily switch to manual to avoid overexposing the shot, obiously the rest of the frame will be quite dark but that´s the point of the spot anyway and a tighter shot will help to focus further the attention to it.

OMG! You're absolutely correct. Someone finally comprehends the psychology and esthetic behind that kind of lighting. Makes my day. Thank you.

[smrpix]

it would take an experienced cam operator using manual settings at least a minute

A minute to open or close the aperture a few stops?

[sanlyn]

smrpix, agreed, a minute seems like getting undeserved overtime pay. An experienced hand -- especially someone who has rehearsed similar events a few times -- could do it within a couple of seconds. If you have to spend a lot of time making exposure readings, that would take for more than one minute.

[aedipuss]

guys we're talking about amateur high school productions. not pro tv cam operators. who by the way often f**k up and take way more than a couple seconds to properly adjust their cams at sporting events. ever notice all the quick cuts away from poorly adjusted cams?

p.s. a theater is completely dark where you are while you're trying to adjust your cam

[aedipuss]

oh and by the way do either of you even have a clue what is required to adjust the exposure of a dslr while it's recording video? or a hv20/30/40? i'll give you a hint it sure isn't turning a ring on the lens.

[smrpix]

oh and by the way do either of you even have a clue what is required to adjust the exposure of a dslr while it's recording video? or a hv20/30/40? i'll give you a hint it sure isn't turning a ring on the lens.

With the sony camera OP is using it's a small knob on the front. With the Panasonic it well may be a ring on the lens depending on the lens used.

And yes, I've been doing this professionally for many, many years. On my DSLR exposure can be adjusted by a thumb ring near the shutter release -- not as smooth or simple as the old days, agreed, but no way it's going to take a minute.

[commil1]

Thanks for your great suggestions. Just to put it in perspective, take a look at a trailer I made for Pippin, a musical at a local high school. You can clearly notice that all the shots of light spot are either over exposed or have unnatural purple/bluish tint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWq26CkKf1Q

[sanlyn]

That really doesn't look as bad as you described. There is such a thing, you know, as intermediate processing. Looking it over, the lighting is many scenes is uneven, e.g., less light on background or foreground figures but a fully lighted stage -- not at all unusual, but the detail in dark areas is still pretty good and much better than you mentioned). Yes, the brights are a bit washed out at times. Some of that might be fixed.

A pro shop would engage in a bit of tweaking, using lossless media from the original master and working in the original colorspace. This would entail some editing and re-encoding. The question is, what was used for editing? If you used an NLE and worked with the original lossy media in RGB without proper colorspace conversion you severely limited your cleanup options. You should see some of the crap that gets posted here, most of which is beyond hope.

[commil1]

I use Adobe Premier Pro CS4. I know about quick color correction but didn't spend the time to fix it. The high school needed to post the trailer ASAP to get more people to see the show...

[smrpix]

I agree with Sanlyn, It looks like a live stage show that was lit for stage. It could be nitpicked to death, but it's fine -- better than many.

The color correction in Premiere shouldn't really take more than a couple of hours, but no point in doing it now because you'll break the link.

[sanlyn]

Deadlines are always imperative. However....correcting color in CS4 is fine (I often use AE CS3 with Color Finesse or Colorista). But: levels correction with problems such as these require working in the original YUV colorspace before converting to RGB for NLE edits. Once levels are clipped by YUV->RGB conversion, there's no way to rescue crushed blacks and clipped brights. The original recordings were apparently h264 (?). H264 and DV are lossy delivery formats, not editing formats.

Of course, you need time to do all that.

[poisondeathray]

Deadlines are always imperative. However....correcting color in CS4 is fine (I often use AE CS3 with Color Finesse or Colorista). But: levels correction with problems such as these require working in the original YUV colorspace before converting to RGB for NLE edits. Once levels are clipped by YUV->RGB conversion, there's no way to rescue crushed blacks and clipped brights. The original recordings were apparently h264 (?). H264 and DV are lossy delivery formats, not editing formats.

Of course, you need time to do all that.

The YUV issue is fine in PP CS5/6/CC because you can use a YUV timeline and YUV filters

In PP CS4 and before, if you use "fast color corrector" to bring down "superbrights" you can stay in YUV as well as long as you use that filter first before any RGB filters . But AE (all versions) work exclusively in RGB

[sanlyn]

As you point out, AE works in RGB (I don't use Premiere, so thanks for that tip). On the other hand, the O.P. is still making edits/corrections, etc. with lossy source. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment for working with lossless. In some cases you can use a smart rendering editor to work around that, depending on how much "correction" is involved and depnmding on how much damage re-encoding would do.

Then there's the time factor....

[poisondeathray]

On the other hand, the O.P. is still making edits/corrections, etc. with lossy source. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment for working with lossless. In some cases you can use a smart rendering editor to work around that, depending on how much "correction" is involved and depnmding on how much damage re-encoding would do.

Then there's the time factor....

I'm not sure you you're getting at ?

For most people that is normal . That "lossy" source is considered the "original."

AVCHD is a "low cost" acquisition format. Not everyone can justify the expense for use external recorders, or pay for the storage space for uncompressed or minimally compressed captures . If you want to nitpick, even uncompressed HD-SDI or HDMI captures are "lossy" because they are not raw feeds from the sensor (They are subsampled 4:2:2, and have
been debayered, processed in camera with other filters)

If you convert the AVCHD to uncompressed, you would have to re-encode anyway assuming you're not delivering uncompresed material. So you incur the same re-compression losses

Native color correction will essentially yield the same results on AVCHD footage than if you convert that AVCHD to some lossless format first . (There will be slight chroma upsampling differences depending on the method and intermediate you chose)

BUT - In the OP's case PP CS4 has a well documented , known AVCHD chroma upsampling bug that has never been fixed as far as I'm aware (It upsamples progressive AVCHD as interlaced, so you get chroma notching artifacts). So beware. In that case, using an intermediate can be helpful and recommended

[sanlyn]

Thanks for more clarification, pdr. Worth keeping in mind. Maybe that's why the color in the O.P.'s linked sample looks a bit weird to me.

[julitomg]

oh and by the way do either of you even have a clue what is required to adjust the exposure of a dslr while it's recording video? or a hv20/30/40? i'll give you a hint it sure isn't turning a ring on the lens.

With the sony camera OP is using it's a small knob on the front. With the Panasonic it well may be a ring on the lens depending on the lens used.

And yes, I've been doing this professionally for many, many years. On my DSLR exposure can be adjusted by a thumb ring near the shutter release -- not as smooth or simple as the old days, agreed, but no way it's going to take a minute.

I don´t see the point in arguing about this. I think both aproaches (at least for the type of videomaking we´re discussing here)are basically correct (and also, depending on several factors both can be flawed to a certain degree)
aedipuss is correct when he mentions that modern camcorders have quite good auto iris (both in response time as in metering system), just remember old consumer camcorders of the VHS/8mm era, compared to that, newer cameras are vey forgiving. Of course there are situations where you have no choice but to do it manually, but nowadays it´s not a life or death issue anymore (remember we´re not discussing Hollywood technique)

Thanks for your great suggestions. Just to put it in perspective, take a look at a trailer I made for Pippin, a musical at a local high school. You can clearly notice that all the shots of light spot are either over exposed or have unnatural purple/bluish tint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWq26CkKf1Q

commil1 I just saw your video and agree with sanlyn and smrpix , it´s certainly not that bad, I mean, the spotlight situation, who did complain about it? the school (if they hired you), some kid´s parents? (they can be pretty obnoxious "oh no, my son´s face is too dark/bright, how dare yo!, he was at the background disguised as a tree but he´s my son!")...just imagine that you actually bring the exposure of the kid singing the solo down to the rest of the frame, and then yo correct that "bluish" hue..ok..it blends well with the rest of the picture but..wait!..the whole effect of the spotlight is completely lost! then what was the point of using one? there was a dramatic need for it and then you ´d have to put up with the complaints of whoever designed the lightning for the show.
I´d be more concerned with some less than smooth camera movenments, I think you need to practice those, do you have a good fluid head? is your tripod sturdy enough? (light weight ones are harder to control)

[sanlyn]

Agreed. this kind of shooting situation can be trying when you don't have time to prepare, don't have time to tweak the product, and all that. Given the circumstances I'd say it's nice work.

Playing with the sample now and learning a few things myself. OMG, UTube does know how to screw up a piece of video. Their low-bitrate block noise is horrible. What a shame, doing that to decent work. Gives bad press to the word "digital".

[sanlyn]

Thanks for your great suggestions. Just to put it in perspective, take a look at a trailer I made for Pippin, a musical at a local high school. You can clearly notice that all the shots of light spot are either over exposed or have unnatural purple/bluish tint.

The spotlight "tint" is usually not tinted. I assume you know what gels are. Frommyour video, I'd say the director is fond of blue, green, and yellow spots, mostly blue. I see he likes purple, too.

Trying to get a little practice in learning some masking plugins and seeing if any data can be retrieved from the bad exposures. Uneven and unpredictable lighting conditions are one thing, but oversaturation and pumped contrast are usually not present during stage productions. The image below from the video is typical of most of the shots. All Adobe high-end NLE users are intimately familiar with Adobe's histograms and graphs. In the histogram of oversaturation and high contrast below, everything to the left of the left-hand wall in the histogram is either corrupt or destroyed.

[Attachment 21270 - Click to enlarge]

An attempt to retrieve a little low-end detail from the video fetched this sample of the kind of noise in the shadow areas (luma exaggerated here for demo):

[Attachment 21271 - Click to enlarge]

Spent some time on the first 43 seconds of the vid tying to bring up video luma and chroma levels to standard spec. The worst part was fighting thru UTube's low-bitrate artifacts, especially i8n the super-blacks. For mid-size HD, this should be interlaced:

pippin_revisited_43sec.mkv, 52MB, 1280x720, 10Mbps, NTSC: http://www.mediafire.com/?hibbgn3cd7klw0s