I mess up shooting... can i fix in post? white balance/background

PegLeg Media

PegLeg Media

Well-known member
So i film a series of video blogs for a company and normally set up a white backdrop and shoot the speaker in front of it. I light with 2 lights blowing out the background and one light lighting the talent. I broke one of my bulbs and had to film with only 2 lights yesterday so used both lights to the sides of the camera to light both the talent and background, which kept me from blowing out the background white. They like me to add a heavy vignetting to the videos so it looks a little gray and not plain white (ex: www.youtube.com/watch?v=H13Tc6f5JBA&list=UU7MZH_4FwTX4V5BRjiJDEGg&hd=1 ). So my final image looks like they are in front of a gray background, and I am wondering if there is a way I can fix this a little bit in post? I edit with premiere pro cc and after effects. Here is a screen shot of my screw up:

mw still pic.jpg

Any other ways to make this look better if I cant get the background somewhat white? Maybe at least blur the gray since my GH4 has the pattern in the backdrop pretty sharp and visible?
 
Most likely your going to have to create a matte to fully replace the background. After Effect CC's Roto brush and refine edge is most likely your best bet, shouldn't take that long to get a reasonable matte. Then touch it up with a wacom tablet and the paint effect. Then you can put pretty much any kind of background you want. The best you could do without a matte is maybe some blurs/color correction on the sides, but I suspect it will look odd.
 
Yes and no.

A few years back when I first got my AF100, I did one of these style shoots and flubbed where my zebras were and wasn't bright enough to use the WFM... thought I'd had them set at 100%, actually had them at 80%. Big grey background. It was the day after I got the camera, and it wasn't the only thing I screwed up, for the AF, she be a cruel mistress... default Cine-D on that was and is wretched and color was horrible. Lessons learned.

There were two things I did - hopefully I don't forget as it was years ago, and I was using FCP7 so your approach may have to be different, but maybe this gets some ideas rolling:
- color corrected as well as I could to bring up levels - might not apply in your case since the subject looks good
- created a 'matte' in FCP7 by duplicating the video on one layer, hiking contrast and tweaking the levels all the way until the background turned white and the subject as dark as possible, then set composite mode to 'luma travel matte'
- result was still pale and dynamically dead, so created a third duplicate level, hiked up the saturation, and then lightly applied it as a composite soft light layer at partial opacity



The result still didn't look good, but was a damn sight better than what I brought home. Easily amongst my most embarrassing project, which you can see halfway down this page ("Michael's Video")
http://www.ameripriseadvisors.com/michael.s.hancock/

...lest I give the impression that I suck and my camera sucks and I should find work in retail instead, I did somewhat redeem myself a couple of months later and several times again as well. Same style, roughly same client, no CC at all on this one
http://www.ameripriseadvisors.com/kimberlee.a.barrett-johnson/


So the short of it, yes, you should be able to fix it, but no, it won't be as good as if it was done right to begin with.
 
Darren Levine said:
i recall redgiant having an effect to smooth out unevenly lit green screens, might be worth a look
Click to expand...

The Red Giant effect is Smooth Screen, part of the Key Correct package. And is very useful. But it also doesn't do so well on patterns, it's more about matching lighting differences. In addition there is too much gray in the folds of the clothing that almost exactly match the screen.

mw still pic 2 (00000).jpg

That's AE's roto brush.
 
thanks for the tips! the roto brush is working great, its the first time ive used it. But when I paint it on it only lasts for a half second or so, is there a way to have it go through the whole project or do i have to re-paint it over and over?
 
Yes, at the bottom of the window is a control strip for the roto brush, you can extend the segment. Though performance can start to be an issue with a very long clip. I'd recommend watching some of the Adobe training videos on how to use the Roto brush and Refine edge. Long shots can be kind of painful but it really is very powerful. Once you get it setup right, freeze it (button on the control strip) and it will make a matte of the whole video, which will then be very fast to work with. Lately I've been using it to make the starting matte and then freezing it and adding a paint effect and using a tablet to touch up the matte. If you setup your brush right you can easily adjust little errors with some paint strokes.
 
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