Shooting a stage in dim lighting

[Martin Gaxiola]

On a related topic – I just completed a somewhat dimly lit dance show and the videographers that I hired locally did a horrible job with the footage. They used 2 – Canon XLH1s and 1 – Sony V1U and shot in HDV 1080i60. I have always used Sony Z1Us for my previous shows and had some great footage in the past that looked exceptional and made post-production very easy.

As I digitize the tapes right now, all of the current footage is grainy and one cameraman did such a horrible job with white balancing that the entire tape is very dark, even in parts where the whole stage was lit up. He also had a difficult time with the manual focus.

My main question is: Using FCS 2, what is going to be the best approach to get all of the footage to look the same in terms of color balance and light exposure? What is my best resources online or elsewhere that will give me the best pointers to try and fix all of this.

Mac Pro dual-quad Xeons, 8GB RAM, 1 – 500GB HD, 1 – 750GB HD,
Mac OS X, Dual – 23″ HD Apple Monitors