Bill Davis
Forum Replies Created
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Two parts to this.
The first is the nature of the light generating technology. Are you starting with full spectrum or something less than that?
The second is that, yes, you are correct, all a filter can ever do is remove something. It can’t ADD light in a particular spectral band – only remove it.
Now lets go farther for fun.
Say you have a source like an HMI that is pretty full spectrum, but you’re shooting at sunset when the ambient light is shifted towards the warm part of the color spectrum. Adding CTO to the light, subtracts blue – and balances well with what’s in the environment. It’s not “making everything full spectrum” – it’s better matching two sources into a spectrum that’s already there. In post, if you think it’s too warm, you can correct for that by shifting towards blue and get a pretty decent natural result that appears really nice.
Now lets take the same scene and throw up a bunch of cheap LEDs that skew green. This will have actual missing wavelengths in the spectrum of light being put out. They put out WAY more green than they should – not because the green is too much, but because they are NOT generating enough reciprocal light across the color spectrum. Slapping a magenta filter REMOVES some of the green, but it does not put back any of the missing magenta. So sometimes you don’t get a clean color rendition no matter what post filtering you do. The wavelengths to make a full spectrum color shot just weren’t captured.
Today, in the digital space, smart software can take all the pixels that skew green and replace that greenishness with NOT greenishness. Which is awesome. But it takes time and effort and many of us still think that coming back with really nice looking footage “in the can” is still the best way to practice our craft.
So I applaud you for asking questions and studying up on this stuff. Even with all the actual facts accessible on your phone in your pocket – thinking about how the facts work in the real world is its own form of education.
Good luck.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Neil,
I was imagining the type of typical “Dashboard from the back seat” beauty shot that we constantly see in car commercials.
When you’re doing those, art directors like long strips of highlights rather than point sources, which means you need to bounce light off larger apparent sources so that the shiny stuff on the dash picks up larger bright strips instead of small highlights.(this is also why today, you see more car spots with the ENTIRE interior as a CGI replacement. Telling the rendering program to lose a lighting instrument but keep it’s output is only possible in virtual space!)
Your “couple in the back seat” probably needs a totally different approach.
Is there a skylight or moon roof in the limo? If so you can pull that and put a large soft source overhead and that will probably do the trick. If not, you’re just going to have to set the shot you want, then think about how to get the interior light level up without having lots of shiny spots in all the reflective stuff. Cars have a LOT of that, not the least of which are the windows surrounding everything. Sometimes small cameras on long mini-jibs can help. If the lights your using are reflecting off the interior glass, being able to lower or raise the camera a few inches might just fix a shot.
But it’s not the easiest space to get nice results in, particularly if you want to sell the idea that the car and the people in it are aspirational, beautiful and always perfectly lit.
Good luck.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
BTW,
FMC has published the Summit schedule and Friday looks VERY interesting.
Particularly 2pm and 3pm.https://www.fcpxcreativesummit.com/schedule/
FWIW.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Best money I spent last year. As to already knowing the software throughly, no matter how much you know, there is always more to learn. I’ve been in seminars about topics I know really well, but still hear that one idea or tip I haven’t considered before and it improves my work. But honestly, it’s not about the seminars. It’s about relationships. Sitting down for coffee with somebody you only know from their posts or writings, reveals far more about who they are and how they really think than reading 10,000 posts. In a sense, the biggest effect on who you are, is what you spend your time and money perusing. If you see yourself as an FCP X editor – the Creative Summit presents a very unique opportunity to dive deeper into the X community any other event. The others NAB, IBC, etc – are peripherally about X. The CS is ALL about it. And it’s unique in that way. My two cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Herb,
The idea was sorta that Apple, by devoting design resources to a patented iBag for people to use presumably to carry Apple Store purchases out of the stores, was being stupid and over thinking a problem that didn’t really exist.I was just pointing out another famous retailer for whom the very same attention to the packaging has resulted in legions of gift givers (and recipients) for whom the packaging color and style ITSELF has long been a powerful and effective brand ambassador.
A Tiffany blue box – in a gifting situation – is a thing that a LOT of people recognize worldwide and associate with high quality.
Nothing more than that.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
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What should have been obvious to me is that I posted a link to a story on local television imagining that local television was still a reliable source for news.
That was “throwback to my youth” dumb.
I should have realized that most of what I see on TV are stories I read 3 days ago somewhere on the net.
My bad.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Steve,
The OP put forth a thesis.
It had a point of view.
There’s a reasonable opposing point of view.
Having BOTH to examine can lead to greater understanding.
That’s the way debate works.
Have a nice day.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
So you are mostly lighting the surfaces inside the vehicle like the dashboard and cabin upholstery? Do you need to see the environment outside?
The biggest issue in car interior shooting is camera mounting position and movement, if required and getting broad, soft even sources in place to put soft highlights and appropriate shadows where they are wanted.
Car interior rigs can get kinda complicated for these reasons
Might be best to get some small but strong LEDs and lots of white (interior active bounce) and black (exterior cutters if you need to shoot this outside) foam-core and try an all interior bounce approach.
That’s probably where I’d start.
Good luck.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Exactly.
And what about stupid Tiffany!
Those idiots thought that standardizing the look and feel and even the freekin’ COLOR of their box could somehow have an actual effect on the perceptions of the people receiving said box as a gift.
What total idiots.
Sweating the smallest details NEVER signals a quality effort – but then as editors, we all clearly know that already.
Good enough rules.
; )
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.