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On Set Monitor Color
Hello all. I am running into an issue with the color reproduction of on set monitors. Here is the setup. Cameras- hpx370 with standard lenses, monitor- nec p552-avt LCD monitor, tungsten studio lighting. When shooting the monitors colors are way off. Now i know why and when i set the color correction on the actual monitors to either 3200k or 4300k i still get incorrect colors. Unfortunately i do no have a color corrector to run the monitors through to do it right so my plan would be to use a filter on footage thats played on the monitor. My question is, what is the process of making this filter in photoshop or after effects? Is it just an orange layer on top of footage? Does anybody have outlined details on what to do?
Also the other ideas was to use half cto orange in front of monitor but it creates a glare.
Any help is appreciated.
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3 Replies
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I’ve had frequent instances of this problem. Ideally, the solution is an RGB color corrector inline with the video feed to the monitor. Unfortunately, as you say, this is not available to you. You correctly note that no available monitor tweaks (“warm” color temp settings, or, on some monitors, being able to change Blue and Red gains) are able to do the job even close to being satisfactory.
If you are feeding graphics made in a character generator and/or Photoshop, you can apply a bit of orange/red mask overlay to all of them, determined mostly by trial and error. Of course this won’t help with moving footage. The other method, if you have enough switcher available, is to do a very transparent matte key, again, of orange/red color, on a spare M/E or keyer, and feed that via an AUX bus to your monitor. You have to use a combination of scope and your eyes to determine correct values of color, saturation and transparency of the mask. If you have multiple monitors, it will be true that the settings for one will not result in correct color on the others, especially if the set monitors are from different manufacturers or are different models or ages.
There is a very nice tutorial on how to do this- Monitor Pre-Correction Methods -from Xintekvideo, a manufacturer of color correctors made for this purpose. -
Or you might just try putting a sheet of 85B or similar gel over the monitor to bring the color temp down. Rosco has a variety of gels just for this purpose.They also have the ND variety as for use over exterior windows when shooting tungsten inside.
E=MC2+/-2db
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Scott mentioned he tried that approach but had glare issues. Wonder if there’s an 85-ish clingy film, like e-film or auto glass darkening film. I did use some gel to correct on set rear-screen projection with some success. Took a few tries with different combinations of colors and densities to get an acceptable look, though.
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