brightening up dark footage?

[Darth Sway]

Any ideas on this? We shot some footage that looked OK on the LCD of the camera but when we brought it over to the NLE it was very dark, we could barely see the actors. I remember watching an extended scene in Silence of the Lambs. The one at the end where Lector was in the tropics on the phone. The untouched footage was very dark, but in the movie it looks great. How would any of you brighten up footage? If I'm an idiot let me know :laugh:

[Kirk Gillock]

After Effects has a lot of color correcting options. The first thing you can try is adjusting the brightness and contrast. If you don't know how to do that then we'll need to start with the very basics. Let me know. You can also use color finesse which is available in some versions of After Effects. Can you submit a grab so we can look at the footage you shot? It would give us a better idea of what can be done.

good luck!

[Barry_S]

Using the curves conrol, you should be able to boost the gamma *without* throwing away data. Trying pulling the mid-top of the curve up and to the left. Pull the lower part of the curve down and to the right. This should increase your gamma and keep your blacks. The chroma in DV is highly compressed, so don't be surprised if you see some noise come up with the gamma. Experimenting with the gamma curve can usually help, but not eliminate this problem.

[Scottdvx100]

Your editing software probably has some basic color controls. Levles filter has control for gamma and high and low exposure.

[Matt Grunau]

In addition to using levels, curves, and things like that, sometimes you can just stack the footage on top of itself in your composition, and by using modes like Screen, Add, and other "lightening" blending modes get good reults without actually affecting the video itself in any way. You can even use combinations of blending modes with differeing levels of opacity to mix it up.

[johlan]

My advise is to go with the levels tips, curves are cool to, but if you lack waveform monitor and are insecure go with levels.

Johlan

[Darth Sway]

Well heres a frame from the footage.
Test (http://www.liquidpolymereye.com/test.jpg)

[thisiswells]

link doesn't work.

[Darth Sway]

sorry the webserver my site is on was down.

here (http://www.liquidpolymereye.com/images/test.jpg)

[J.R. Hudson]

I'd say your screwed

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/6898/dumbass0nj.jpg

[Scottdvx100]

And that looked ok on the LCD? Hard to believe. Take a moment now to adjust the LCD to match real output so it doesn't happen again.
You either need to reshoot or go with a very stylized version. (high contrast, gray scale)

[Darth Sway]

Well we're not using that cam anymore... But yes it looked fine on the cam for some reason. It was a Digital 8 MM cam. We've moved to MinDV and yes we're reshooting that anyway. I just thought I'd ask for some input here.


Thanks

[thisiswells]

It IS possible to make good images from underexposed images, within reason. Here is an example.

Original:
http://homepage.mac.com/thisiswells/groundbreaking1.jpg

For this image, I cranked the gamma curve and boosted the green channel saturation 200%.
http://homepage.mac.com/thisiswells/groundbreaking3.jpg

The net result? A range of tones similar to 16mm (obviously this shot has chroma bleeding..)
http://homepage.mac.com/thisiswells/grab.jpg