[Chris Wright]

polarized lenses will reduce glare(ie. white light bouncing off objects) by only accepting direct light. It will reduce the required dynamic range of
cameras and make skies a little bluer and not as washed out. Sometimes you don’t want this, ie. you want special reflections off objects. It’s a double edged sword.

And also there’s a difference between local contrast and global contrast. Local will increase the difference of mid-tones without changing the max,min white or black values.
Global contrast, changes the floor and ceiling values, ie, increasing,decreasing the dynamic range. You should always try to light soft enough that you don’t lose your global values then add local contrast in post. Never blow out your highlights or shadows because you’ll never get them back. Post grading is always smart. Like they always say, “get it in camera first.”

You can use curves to drag the shoulder down so it looks s-shaped. It will make the remaining pixels burn gradually to white. It’s a taste preference.

[Chris Wright]

i humbly disagree with sticking to one specific lighting technique, although your thoughts do protect the user against the limited dynamic range video has to film. don’t forget polarized lenses, you’ll get a few extra stops.

You can still contrast the heck out of images. example: cowboys vs aliens. It’s not the contrast that gets you. It’s dv’s encoding that enhances edges with dark black lines. although you’re right to some extent, if the video has a sharp cutoff to white, it’s going to scream video. you can steal some of the curve with a gradual decay to white.

[Chris Wright]

an interactive after effect file is worth a thousand words. it’s linked in my previous post.

the order in my comps is
find edges
shift channels alpha from luminance
fast blur the matte
all above alpha inverted footage with smart blur

[Chris Wright]

video looks like video because of the edge sharpening.

the comparison examples tweak the gamma and brightness and contrast. There’s basically no white-whites. You can do that in curves or levels.

you could try the find edges filter in ae, then fast/smart blur from the alpha matte. further tweaking with levels on the alpha matte.

I actually made an old AE project that has sliders. It was originally made to reduce the look of DV film but should do the same trick.

ae cs3
https://www.mediafire.com/?79mnjvs99pp61si

[Chris Wright]

Easeus Data Recovery Wizard can recover flash cards and we use it at work.

[Chris Wright]

add a keying-linear color key effect
eyedrop the brightest key color white
set its matching softness 0%
add a matte choker effect

[Chris Wright]

with usb devices in windows, you can right click safely remove hardware in the taskbar.

[Chris Wright]

virtualdub’s logoaway

[Chris Wright]

try a pink tint at 9%.

[Chris Wright]

here’s an idea, imho

since the original scene was shot so it was night, very dark, only the 2 actors and 4 ft of water was visible, you could cheat, well, every thing. Put them in a pool at night so only they and a little water is visible.

Remember, the “camera only sees what light shines on”. Then in post, simply do a quick day for night bluish tint. make sure it’s 30p or 24. 60i would look too fake imho.