glowing stage aliens, please help!

[jamezgreen]

Hello, I'm new to the forum, this place is great!

I have a dilema with a shoot we just did with 2 DVX100a's. From the very back of a large auditorium we shot a play where very strong lights were constantly changing. Often times the characters on stage were literatly "glowing" either red or blue depending on the scene's lighting. So frustrating! I had the iris on manual and would stop the iris down very hard to try and combat the "blow-out" but even with less light I still had severe contrast problems on both cameras. I also played with color temp, chroma, ped, but i'm not tooo familiar with these settings (under the menu, scene file settings). Is there any way to lessen the blow in post?

Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated. I'm new to the industry but I'm stumped! Thanks.

-James

 

[TeleDan]

Hi James,
Welcome to DVXuser. Stage lighting can easily exceed the dynamic range of the DVX. Primarily you need to expose for the highlights and let the shadows fall where they may. Be sure to use the zebras on the DVX to help you determine when you are overexposing. If there are a lot of brilliant highlights or white in a scene, I might let small portions go into overexposure to get a better overall balance in the scene but that's a judgement thing. Along with this I will often put the knee setting on the camera to 'low'. Refer to Barry's book as to the pros and cons of changing this setting.

For me, an invaluable tool for stage performances is a laptop running DV Rack. Not only does DV Rack do a better job at identying small overexposed areas, I use the waveform display to judge the overall brightness level of a scene. In addition, I use DV Rack to record direct to disk and save logging tapes later although I still run a tape just in case. The main limitation of DV Rack is that the attached laptop limits your movement if you're not set on a tripod.

As for rapid and dramatic lighting changes, depending on important the shoot is, I will usually attend a dress rehearsal to not only get a feel for the blocking but also to determine exposure settings for each scene. I then make up a scene list that I refer to during the production so I have a good idea of where to immediately go with the iris as the scene is changing.

-Dan