Help fix this DARK footage.

ryan brown

ryan brown

lOwEr CaSe Member
Last straw, I just fired my cameraman. Everytime I can't be on a shoot, I get the footage back, it looks like crap, and there's always an excuse.

Their excuse this time? "They shouldn't have gotten married at dusk!"

My reply? "Your f@#kin fired."

I'd like to see what others can contribute with an attempt to brighten up this footage. I know it's not going to look great, but I'd like to see what you come up with. I'm working in Final Cut Studio 2, and I also have AE 7...

Raw, straight from camera at it's worst, darkest point:

1192485139.jpg


I've pulled out the "G-Levels", and played with curve's, gamma, and plenty of other things. I've done some other experimenting in FCP itself, but it's not looking so good. The noise just gets out of control.

Again, I'm not looking for a miracle, just the best way to save as much of this footage as I can.

Thanks gents,

-brown

also posted in FCP section of the forums. Sorry for the double post, I'm just trying to get as many ideas as possible.
 
Tried this with After Effects CS3. It looks a little better:

test.jpg



If you throw Magic Bullet on top with some diffusion you might be able to mask even more of the grain. It might start to take on a Super 8/home movie look which could be desirable.


Marco
 
Attempt

Attempt

Here's a try using magic bullet... although AE will have a less noisy result.

About all you can do is embrace what you've got and go for a look that hides the noise or at lease makes it look somewhat intentional.

There are several noise reducing plug ins out there... maybe try some of those???

1192491624.jpg
 
I've had this happen a few times. I suggest with the 3-way, bring the blacks up a touch. for me this helped the noise from getting too ridiculous. you should also have your shooters have a scene file ready for this kind of situation in the future. especially the master ped setting. it's a lot easier to deal with this kind of light if the blacks aren't crushed in camera. and I've had to give up shooting 24pa at a lot of weddings because of low light. usually have to go with 30p, and 1/30th shutter.

oh and besides the 3-way in the grab, I also set the gamma correction filter to .8


1192540493.jpg
 
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