Rick Wise
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COW Coin
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I’m sure they ARE looking for a pro editor. It’s a school, and these are hard times. Face it!
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
The easiest way to find all the Vegas mentions is to do a search. However, there’s really very, very little that’s specific about Vegas problems other than Vegas didn’t export clips in a form that ProTools will read. ProTools is common in pro audio suites, so if you are going to sweeten the audio in ProTools, probably Vegas is a poor choice as an NLE.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Apparent nothingness. In this case, seamless white. Usually shot on a stage with a cove, so the floor slopes up to meet the wall in a seamless continuous sweep. When properly lit, floor and walls are all the same white nothingness. In the Apple case, it is possible that behind her is just a white wall since the shot is cut at her waist. In general, you want the wall far back from the subject so, as with green screen, you light the subject with one set of lights, and the wall/floor with another.
If you need to to see the floor too, then space lights, preferably through silk, are a common solution. If you don’t know what space lights are, do a google search. Equally, you could have done a google search for “lighting limbo”. Lots and lots of information there.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
There has been a lot of discussion about LED lights here recently, or else on the Lighting Forum. Do a search for these posts.
In general, the LED lights you covet are very, very expensive. Given your plans, a small DV lighting kit based around a Lowel Rifa light would probably be more suitable and affordable. There are some cheaper LED models coming on the market. From everything I read about them, they need to be diffused and also gelled with 1/4 or stronger minus-green to remove a green spike. As with any lighting, the “look” depends on where you place your key, how it balances with the environs, how much fill you use, etc. The actual lighting units are far less important than your skill at seeing the light, and acting to shape and use it well. Just as, it’s not the camera that makes a great film, but the mind behind it.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
You would not use gels or filters. In post you would turn the color to b&w. On full-up cameras, you can turn off the color, but not on most consumer or prosumer cameras. If you are shooting film, you would have to use b&w stock, or else, again, shoot in color and turn the color to b&w in post.
Note there was a post about this topic recently, and one person wisely pointed out how if you put two colors together that have the same b-w intensity, they will look the same and not separate. One way to check for this is to use an external monitor and turn off the color entirely.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
I’m pretty sure she is shot against “white” limbo. No green, no problem. Note that the white is not 100%/clip but rather a very light, perhaps slightly bluish gray.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Michael, I think you overlooked the “but” in the quoted sentence. The writer and you agree: using lights with green spikes works just fine to light a green screen. Using those same lights elsewhere, you probably want to add minus green.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
One thing you can do to help the footage you’ve already shot is to buy the Mercalli stabilizing software for either $59 or $119, provided you are PC based. Works incredibly well. (https://www.prodad.de/gb/mercalli_std_details.html)
After that, in the future, there are various solutions: some people like to use a monopod which they can drop down for long takes (but it adds weight to the camera): some people invest in a shoulder-mounted camera; some people invest in various support rigs, the most thorough of which is the Easy Rig.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Have you tried removing the green spike from the FloLight LEDs with some minus green gel (majenta)? Probably 1/4 will do the trick. It’s far better to have a properly balanced light, but the gel will at least help and make it possible to use it.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
If you are going to protect the hot spots (such as the bride’s dress) manually, be sure to set the zebras to 100. Anything brighter than 100 will clip, loose detail. If you are getting zebras all over her dress, iris down (go to a higher number on the iris; the higher the number, the smaller the opening in the lens; an f11 is one stop smaller an opening than an f 8. An f 2 is pretty wide open, while f 22 is almost closed shut.)If there are just a few zebras on her dress, you are probably all right.
As I said, at least start in the auto iris position. On better video cameras you can toggle this on and off. Toggle it on, look at the picture. Then toggle it off and open/close the iris a bit to see if you like it better. The trouble is, the viewfinder is pretty low resolution, whether the sideboard LCD or the actual finder. Very hard to accurately judge exposure this way.
With all you have to do, and given your lack of experience, I think you are asking for extra trouble to try to adjust exposure manually except in extreme conditions, such as everything in the frame is “hot” except the bride and groom who are covered by a gazebo/roof. In such a case, you’d be better to let the hot part blow, and expose more for the bride and groom, though in such a case I’d underexpose them a little bit. This you would have to do manually. Alternatively, you could tighten the shot enough so that the couple fill most of the frame; in that case the auto iris will probably give you a decent exposure.
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com