Correcting heavily underexposed footage?

[Graham Quince]

I’ve had this problem a few times with friends’ footage. I’ve found the best thing to do is to play to the footage’s strengths. Tweak the brightness and constrast to get decent black, and then cheat.

Basically, make it look intentional, stick an effect on, or add fog in the foreground. As the guys above have said you can’t do too much to the original footage, so it’s best to distract the viewer from it. Maybe you could add a neon sign in the background, or some foliage in the foreground… that sort of thing. Obviously you have to add fake noise to the object you add, but because the viewer now has two or more things to take in, while listening to the actors too, the ‘nasty’ footage is minimised.

Just an idea.

Graham

http://www.qcit.com

[Brett Holmes]

I have found the lights in after effects can correct some of the footage. Especially if you have the optical flares plugin by video co pilot.

[I.g. Romov]

You know, you search the Inet and all too many times you get outdated useless stuff. However, sometimes you hit paydirt in posts that may be old but are still good. Couldn’t believe the difference this simple method made in some pretty badly underexposed material. Followed it with a little remove noise and some tweaks to get a reasonable result. Thanks for the tip, Chad!