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Is there anything that cannot be fixed in post?

H

harmonica44

I am editing my first short film with real actors, but have not done any post work yet. I got the Adobe CS5 and am learning it. There is a lot to learn and how to use it but I would like to reshoot what I have to now, with the actors and locations still available. The locations looking very much the same and the actors looking very much the same. I don't know if I have to reshoot anything cause I don't know what's not fixable.

For example, I found out that if the lighting is darker in some takes, then in others, within the same scene, I can just use AE to change the colors, thereby making all the takes in a scene look like they are lit the same. Or if some of the sound is too quiet I can use the audio programs to bring it up louder. Or if a take isn't as in focus I can use AE to make it more. But is there anything that I can't fix, so I know that it needs reshooting or rerecording now? For example some of my sound is a little hissy and muffled. Can I clear it up? Or anything else that's good to know that cannot be redone? I've looked it up but couldn't find many websites that went into such specifics. I know it's a dumb too general of a question, but my actors need to know and I really don't know what to tell them since I have a lot to learn yet about the progams. Thanks.
 
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Okay thanks. I will see about doing that and figure out how to letter box it. I will still have to change the ratio first, before letterboxing, since there are a lot of shots where I don't just want the middle of the screen. Some shots I want the top half, some the bottom. It all depends what I want in the shot. So after I crop all that, I will put it in letterbox.

What about zooming in post to fix that continuity error? If I have to zoom in and go lower than 720p, to say like 690p, then that means I would have to release the whole thing in 690p as a result, right? Maybe it's not worth fixing the error then if the whole film has to be downgraded as a result...
 
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Harmonica,

I agree with some of the other posters that you may want to "tweak" some easy/obvious problems, and then call this short film COMPLETED. Nothing is perfect, surely not the first project.

Congrats! You shot something and you cut it together! This puts you way ahead of many other aspiring filmmakers. And, you are actually quite lucky because you have the material., and you recognize it has problems.

After you call the film DONE, go back and look at all your takes and put aside a couple examples of each type of problem you find (Pooly matched lighting, color issues, bad audio that needs balancing, bad audio that needs ADR, and so on). Now, takes these examples and just workshop these as a separate exercise. I do not suggest you go back and fix your entire short (you finished it, remember?). By taking on these example exercises, you'll learn how to fix a broad range of issues in post without needing to fix the (possibly) hundreds of shots in your film. Learn from it, and move on.

Now that you've finished learning how to fix these issues in post, you need to think about how to avoid these problems in the future. Make a list of the issues and write down how to avoid them. Solutions will be found on the internet, this forum, books and most importantly your head :)

One more note: On a feature film, most reshoots are conducted to address story problems, not technical ones. The assumption is that the crew knows how to avoid most of the obvious tech issues. The "fix it in post" problem arises when the on-set solution takes too much time, and a Producer needs to drive the shoot forward.

Information is free and although I haven't been on this board very long, I see there are dozens of members here who can point you in the right direction.

Again, congrats.
 
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I would also recommend you set aside shots you thought worked really well or cut together really well, analyze those too to see not just what is broken, but what works well and why.
 
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Okay thanks. I actually just thought of another scene I want to add to make it better! Wish I thought of it before. I guess I could ask the actress how she would feel about doing a scene I hadn't thought of before but wish I had. This would definitely be the final scene though. If not then that's fair of course, since it wasn't in the script.

What about with the projector moved all the way at the back of the theater in the projector room, will 720p, look good then?
 
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Okay cool. Perhaps in the future they will make a DSLR where you can shoot 60 or higher fps at 1080. A bit of my footage I think is too dark that it cannot be brightened in post, to see what's there. You can tell what's happening the foreground, but the background is completely black. If I can't bring it up, I guess I could make the other parts of the scene, darker, to go with it. I'll try brightening the foreground first, to match the rest.
 
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Harmonica,

I haven't read this entire thread, but you brought up another interesting problem with increased frame rates & low budget filmmaking:

Many indie filmmakers shoot under existing lighting or simple lighting packages (limited by time & budget). Higher frame rates require more light (less time to expose/capture each frame). Shooting high speed (24fps+) makes indoor, stage & night photography much more difficult because you'll need to add more light, everywhere. We shot some high speed minuatures on a Phantom and I literally had to wear sunglasses when I stepped out onto the set.

... just expanding the discussion ...

EDIT:
Low Speed Photography: I once filmed some night shots over midtown Manhattan (helicopter). We didn't have the right film stock to expose the buildings, so I shot at 12 FPS. Yes, when played back the cars move too quickly but this usually slips by the audience (by choosing takes where the traffic is standing still). You'd be surprised how many films use this technique.


Rok :hmm:
 
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Yeah I noticed when my 60fps stuff is darker. So when the movie switched to slow motion shots, all of a sudden the room is darker. But maybe I can fix this with after effects, and try to make it all look the same.
 
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I read on this thread that shots with blown out whites aren't correctable. I may be wrong, but I believe that's not true.

Normally when doing color correction at 8bpc, once white reaches absolute white, you're done. There's nothing more you can see. But if you switch to working at 32 bpc, you can adjust to get colors that are brighter than white, and can therefore cull the information that's in the shot and adjust accordingly.

There's a good tutorial at videocopilot.net that show how to do this. The tutorial shows the work with a photo instead of footage, but the idea is still the same.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/introduction_to_hdr_and_32bpc/
 
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You can use 32 bit color when working with stuff inside AE and do some cool stuff with it, but if your original footage isn't 32bit as well there's no data to cull out. It's all solid white.
 
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Yeah, the data has to be there to use superwhite - anything above that in camera is a null data set, 105% becomes 100% and there's no way for the software to discern that original pixel color from another (although I just came up with a brilliant solution that I want to approach someone about using the alpha channel of the image to store clipping information allowing for desaturated but gradated clipping :) )

Wow, my head hurts a little bit.
 
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To make slowmotion play as slowmotion:

right click clip in project window. (Where all the folders and files are.)
Choose 'Interpret footage'.
Set fps to 24.

Your 60fps will play slowly as 24fps.

-------------------------------------------------------

Edit first. Maybe crop a shot by zooming in to make the edit work, but no other post 'things'.
After locking the edit you can start worrying about brightness and colors.

I know you want to learn things fast, but it took me some time to learn After Effects.
So every second you now spend with fixing a 'problem' before you have an edit, will only delay your edit more and more, because you haven't mastered the software yet.
Edit is first and you'll see 1) progress and 2) what really needs to be done and what is just too must trouble for a detail.
Progress keeps your crew and cast happy.
Endless AE tweaking before anything can be shown is not.
 
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knightly said:
Yeah, the data has to be there to use superwhite - anything above that in camera is a null data set, 105% becomes 100% and there's no way for the software to discern that original pixel color from another (although I just came up with a brilliant solution that I want to approach someone about using the alpha channel of the image to store clipping information allowing for desaturated but gradated clipping :) )

Wow, my head hurts a little bit.
Click to expand...

Maybe that's the trick RED uses with HDR?
 
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WalterB said:
To make slowmotion play as slowmotion:

right click clip in project window. (Where all the folders and files are.)
Choose 'Interpret footage'.
Set fps to 24.

Your 60fps will play slowly as 24fps.

-------------------------------------------------------

Edit first. Maybe crop a shot by zooming in to make the edit work, but no other post 'things'.
After locking the edit you can start worrying about brightness and colors.

I know you want to learn things fast, but it took me some time to learn After Effects.
So every second you now spend with fixing a 'problem' before you have an edit, will only delay your edit more and more, because you haven't mastered the software yet.
Edit is first and you'll see 1) progress and 2) what really needs to be done and what is just too must trouble for a detail.
Progress keeps your crew and cast happy.
Endless AE tweaking before anything can be shown is not.
Click to expand...

For sure I have only been tweaking what I have been keeping. I wanted to know what could be fixed while my actors were still available and interested. I just went over some of the last shots, and I think that they are too dark to be recovered though. Not sure. The bigger of a screen I play them back on, the darker they are. The actors faces are grainier, like very dark with a lot of red grain. You can't see their eyes clearly at a lot of points. And there is one time where the audience needs to be able to see an object to see what's happening with it, but you can't see it cause the area is all black. Can this be recovered and brightened, or does this have to re-shot? I will go through everything again, but so far this is the only time that it's all black and can't see what's happening. The whole shot is not black, but half of it is, where the key thing is happening and cannot tell.
 
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Sounds like you are going to struggle to fix those black areas in post. Even if there is some very dark information in there it'll be horribly grainy / bandy if you bring it up.

You should always try and expose so that nothing is clipped at the top end but your darker areas are still well exposed. This is often not entirely possible when in high contrast lighting, but it's something to aim for. You can balance out very bright light sources (eg daylight) with artificial lights or reflectors.

It's much easier to make something darker in post than it is to make it brighter. As long as you haven't clipped the top end you will be able to reduce the brightness with no negative effects. But if an area is very dark, even if its not clipped to black, bringing it up will usually show up a lot of banding / grain / artifacting because there is far less precision at the lower end of the range.
 
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@walter: Kind of, the HDR uses 3 separate video streams at different exposures to take the highlights from the underexposed, the lows from the over exposed and all the rest from the normally exposed one.
 
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Well I will see if the actors want to reshoot it. It's hard to tell cause right now I don't have the type of computer to support After Effects, so I can't tell how grainy it would be. I am working of a cheaper computer, till I get the new one, which I should have later this week.

However though, when I was shooting these shots that are too dark, I could still see it a lot better through the camera's viewscreen. When it is blown up on my 17'' current monitor screen, it is too dark to see. Could it just be the monitor, or is it normal for footage to be darker, the bigger it is blown up?
 
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That would be from the monitor being poorly adjusted. Trust the scopes for exposure, the numbers don't lie. Then adjust your monitor to show what the scopes tell you (if you don't have a meter to accurately set your monitor).
 
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