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Activity Forums Cinematography Tips when shooting interiors with mixed light

  • Tips when shooting interiors with mixed light

    Posted by Cody Walters on December 19, 2013 at 8:17 pm

    Hello,

    I wanted to see if anyone had any tips or techniques when shooting in a heavily mixed light environment. I’m creating a promotional video for a new building and will be showcasing the different spaces and amenities. I’ve attached a screen shot to show the amount of natural light verses the fluorescent lighting inside.

    I’ve had some success color grading and using secondaries to remove the blue cast, but I’m curious how others may approach this.

    Thanks,

    Cody

    Cody Walters replied 12 years, 4 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Mark Suszko

    December 20, 2013 at 2:46 pm

    You’ve done a good job so far using the color correction, don’t know that there’s much else *to* do unless there is ridiculous money available to throw at this.

    Too much window to gel them all if that’s a traveling shot, or an upper story with no outside access. Cheaper then to gel the overheads and make everything a daylight color balance.

    If I had nothing but time, for fun I might shoot locked-off shots at night and in the daytime and composite between them. I don’t think that’s very practical.

  • Richard Herd

    December 20, 2013 at 5:04 pm

    Making sure skin tone is accurate. White balance frequently. And it’s down and dirty, but useful to print out a RGB CMYK and a gradient on a piece of paper and film that like a color chart at each lighting set up. This way in post you have a color chart to guide you.

  • Mark Suszko

    December 23, 2013 at 10:35 pm

    The last time I shot a chromakey setup, I finished it by shooting a macbeth chip chart in the same lighting, with the same lens settings. I took that into Final Cut and color-corrected that against the built-in scopes. Then I pasted the adjusted properties onto my green screen footage, and WHAMMY: I had the most perfectly exposed-looking and correctly saturated green screen footage I’d ever shot. Applying the keyer to that was literally a one-click-and-done operation, got awesome results.

  • Cody Walters

    January 7, 2014 at 1:42 pm

    Mark and Richard, thanks for your insights on this. I figured this was about as best as I can get it. This project won’t allow for gels on the windows, unfortunately.

    I like the card print-off idea. That should help with the coloring. Thanks again for the tips guys!

    Cody Walters
    Houston Video Production
    Houston Wedding Videographer

    Final Cut Studio 3
    Adobe CS6 Master Suite
    Panasonic HVX-200
    Canon 7D, 60D

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