How should I do this for my next scene shoot?

H

harmonica44

My next and hopefully my last scene shoot for my film. I want finish a fight/chase scene I already shot most of. I need the actors to dub their lines, during the fight, which I couldn't get the mic, in cause the camera was panning around. How do I get the actors in their mood, to get the lines, grunts, and screams to come off correct for the fight? Should I sit them down and have them do it, or would it be much better, if I had them actually do parts of the fight, with no camera, and just recorded sound with the mic close to their mouths, to make it sound more real?


The other problem I mentioned before is that it goes from room to room, and I forgot to switch the white balance as the rooms switched lights, going from one to the other for the last few shots. So I can do two things. Either keep the original shots, which will have to be switched back and loose color saturation, or reshoot all that I got wrong.

I would like to keep the originals I already have, as the actors worked very hard, and it would be hard to push them to do some of the stunts over. I was hoping to keep those stunts, and do the new shots, with the correct white balances, then cut back and forth between the slightly desaturated shots, and the new non desaturated. But would audiences find that watchable, or would it be too bothersome? I don't want to have to desaturate the whole thing, and would rather reshoot, if I can't get it all to match, without desaturation. Thanks for the replies.
 
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I was told it was on here before, but it results in slight desaturation. Not sure if anything can be done about that though. Sorry, I know I started that on a previous thread, but I thought I'd mention it in the same post with this new question, since the shoot is coming up.
 
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Don't worry about the desat so much. When you get everything in post, use all the tools available to you to make it look uniform and consistent as best you can. You'll become a good editor and an even better director for your next film.
 
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Okay thanks. I hope I can have options to give it a good look, rather than just a desaturated one. The lighting also doesn't match in a few shots. I can always copy and paste pieces of light from previous shots, onto the walls of the other shots, to make them match. There is a corner of the wall though, and I don't know how to copy and paste pieces of light and still make the corner still be there. I'll figure it out probably though.
 
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Desaturation doesn't necessarily mean "enemy at the gates" or "Sin City"... I specifically just meant a numerical depression in the channels opposing the correction... you can add back saturation once you get it there, but that has to be done gently so as not to pull up too many artifacts. converting your footage to a higher bit depth will help some - Prores 422 or cineform depending on your platform will help alot. HD or SD? If SD, you can upconvert to HD and get quite a bit of room to play with more subtle adjustments than any of the SD formats would give you (it won't be actual HD footage though)... if you're already in HD, up converting from a lower color depth to a higher color depth format will get you the same wiggle room for more detailed shifts in your color channels.

It's all math underneath. Each pixel is the result of a value from black to white (in however many steps the color space allows) in each of the 3 primary channels... then added together (light is an additive paradigm, where ink is subtractive). Adjusting red will alter the red up, and the opposite down (cyan = blue + green).

The dot in the middle of the color wheel that you're adjusting is the intersecting point of each of those 3 values. Think of that dot being connected to 3 rubberbands (R, G and B) - where every you move it, the shorter the rubber band, the higher the value that channel has.

We've still yet to see any screenies from it that could help us help you (and help assuage our curiosities ;) - if this is a marketing ploy, it's brilliant!
 
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Okay here's a link to a shot. All these takes looked fine on camera but on video they are so dark you can't tell what happens in that section of the room. Should I redo it?

http://youtu.be/Hgn7yhs5TbI

What about getting the actors in the mood to scream and grunt, when they fall, get hit, etc. Should I have them actually make the physical movements, while audio recording, to help the voice sounds be more convincing? I don't want the noises of their physical activity get in the way with the other foley though.
 
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A little bit of light from frame right might be helpful in letting the camera capture something that you can then make darker later. Youtube compression darkens the frame as well.

Throwing some additional light through the doorway towards the intruder would help us see their outline against the darker back wall better as well.

The trick to lighting is to:
A) hide the light sources and
B) use Chiaroscuro and Tenebrism to describe the environment to the viewer.
C) balance your exposure levels to create B, yet allow the camera to capture some information.

The light on the background through the door and the left side of the lady in the doorway look great exposure wise... adding light right of frame to illuminate some of those areas can help.

Light is a cone with dark edges and a bright middle (from most light sources that have a reflector). Point the center of that cone at the parts of the scene you want the most light on, and point the edge of the cone on darker parts... this allow you to cheat your lighting a bit and use a single light as a multi-purpose tool.

Keep the lights a bit higher than your subjects so the shadows from them fall under the bottom edge of the frame to hide the shadows, and therefore the source of the lights. I personally like:

- a high value rim light on the "broad side" (camera side) of the subject
- a correctly exposed key light on the "short side" (opposite the broad side) of the subject.
- fill the subject's broad side into the "look" that I want (nearly even for comedy, dark but visible for noir)
- at that point, you will light the background to either make it darker than or brighter than the subject (darker subjects want a lighter background in the Chiaroscuro world, and vice versa)... putting the subject and background at an even value will make it difficult for the viewer to distinguish a point of focus for their attention.

You are painting with light (good book as well), the lighting fixtures at your disposal are your brushes, color temperature is your paint. Create your world.

The images you've captured here are not bad, they just lack some definition in the darks (probably lots of youtube compression)... There should be a way to sample the colors in whatever NLE (editor) you're using... go by the numbers on those. 85% is "correctly exposed lighter skintones" 65% is for darker skintones. 0% is black and 100% is white. >100% or <0% is missing data.

When correcting, stretching a 10% black to a 12% is doable, but pulling it up to 50% is only showing data in 1/5 of that range... so it'll look like crap. It's easier to make smaller adjustments and to darken in post than to lighten... shoot with that in mind.
 
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Okay thanks. I don't want to light from the doorway though, with the woman in, because doing that will change it too much, which will means I will have to redo too many of the shots. I can light about four feet behind the intruder, but cannot when he comes up to the door, otherwise it will intefere with the continuity of all my good takes, where it's not too dark to tell what's happening. As much as I want to, I also don't, cause I would have to ask my actors to reshoot the thing!

Thanks I will try to restore with your instructions on After Effects. My next shoot got delayed now, for a few days so maybe I have some time, if I work fast to figure out your instructions, and see what can be done. Then that way if I can fix those dark shots, and fix the desaturation in other shots from incorrect white balance, I will then only have to reshoot very little! I had a DP who had done many good shorts and has awesome lighting, who said he'd do it, but he backed out just before production unfortunately.
 
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Sure. I don't want to reshoot at this point if I don't have to, since my actors from the start, have already done a lot. But I have a lot still to figure out in after effects, and still not sure what's 'tweakable', and what's not. I am trying to what you said, about brightening and recoloring the exposure now...
 
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Okay Thanks. Yeah I know. I just don't want to call the production finished, only to find out later that something is not fixable. But I don't know what I need to reshoot specifically either, and what is fixable and not. I've been looking at some of Andrew Kramer's videos, and other videos, but they don't help my problems specifically. For example, adding noise to make all the footage look the same. The noise on after effects is a much different looking noise, and makes the movie look synthetic. I need realistic looking camera noise, to sell the movie to an audience. That's just one example.
 
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It's not a question of matching. Even though the grain can be matched to the same amount, the grain itself just looks different, if added to the non grainy shots. So is adding grain effective, when the grain itself switches looks in between shots?

Should I edit the movie before or after I change the shots in After Effects? Or should I change the shots first, then edit? I would have to put the whole movie in After Effects, which means I would have to be careful to only change one shot at a time, and leave the rest on touched. What about that clip I posted the link to with the intruder in the house? I need to know for my actors, if After Effects can fix that. Otherwise I might as well just reshoot everything since I have no idea, how far After Effects can go. Still trying to figure it out. I have one more shoot date left, then it should all be done, but I need to know whether to call it done, since I don't know if After Effects can fix what I have.
 
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Okay. I will edit the whole movie first I guess, I just hope that a few months down the road, when it's completed, I find out that After Effects cannot fix one of the problems and it has to be reshot, even though the actors have all moved on, and look different, etc. I would like to edit the movie as soon as possible get on on here for critiquing, but I got a lot to learn.
 
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