Multi-Camera White balance for theatre dance?

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firehawk

Veteran
Hi everyone. How do you white balance match multiple cameras for a theatre event like a dance? Is it best to temporarilly move all cameras close to the stage, turn on the lights to the event level and then white balance on a card located on the stage? Save the setting and then move all cameras back to their positions?
That's the only way I can think of to do it because some cameras are otherwise way too far back to zoom in on a white card.
How do you white balance for a football or basketball game?

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
don't forget the lighting may change DRAMATICALLY for a theatre performance. It might be worth attending a tech rehearsal to see what lighting changes they have organised.
 
Yes I know on many performances the lighting changes a whole lot throughout the event. So how do you allow for that? My panasonic cameras seem to get thrown off fairly easily shooting indoors if on auto white balance and you can see it change before your eyes.
If the lighting is a simple on/off setting then does my above procedure work okay?
If it's a dramatically changing bright/dim and multicolor changing lighting setup what's the best way to sync for that?
I'm using ag dvx100b with some agdvc60. 29.97 480i widescreen (squeeze).
 
I typically use in-camera wb presets when filming theater performances, you'll find that the Tungsten preset is the one you'll want. I stick to that preset, even if they start adding colored lights for special effect.
 
Back in the day we would put all cameras up on a chip chart, do a split screen and look at a waveform monitor to match cameras. With awb things are a lot easier. However, record some grey card footage at the head for each camera incase you want to adjust in post.
 
I've been reading posts for several hours about this and it seems mixed. Some say manually white balance on stage at the beginning while others say put it on a tungsten preset and let the camera handle it.I think I will try the tungsten preset mentioned above.I've been playing around with it at the house but not yet at a theatre. Past performances ww got on stage and manually white balanced all cameras and locked the setting. Seems to work okay but since I'm so new to this I figured there was a better way. The main concern I have is if I select the tungsten preset Will the color change back and forth in a camera making it not match the other cameras. I learned a while back not to shoot in auto white balance indoors because the color would change back and forth during zooms and such and post would be a nightmare having to continually color match the footage over and over again as the cameras changed. I don't want to get into anything like that again.
 
If you use the tungsten preset it will not shift back and forth, but remained locked at that setting. If you do a custom white balance on all cameras at the beginning of the show that would work fine, though it is easier to just set it to tungsten and not worry about it. My best advice would be to attend a rehearsal and try the different methods to see what you like best.
 
Thanks again. I intend to try it during rehearsal. It sounds like the best thing to do and will set all the cameras to the same color. The same should be true for outdoor events , right? Except use the daylight (higher Kelvin) preset?
Thanks a lot. I can't wait to try it. Color matching cameras has always made me nervous during theatre for fear of messing it up. I always want the shots to look the same.
 
firehawk said:
Yes I know on many performances the lighting changes a whole lot throughout the event. So how do you allow for that? ...
If it's a dramatically changing bright/dim and multicolor changing lighting setup what's the best way to sync for that?
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Click to expand...
Why do you need to change white-balance to accomodate lighting changes? Think about it. Let's say the dance opens with the stage lit neutrally and you have white-balanced the cameras for it. White costumes appear white. Now suddenly the stage is washed in red light. OH NO! All those white costumes appear red! But wait, isn't that how they're supposed to appear? The reason they washed the stage with red is they intended to give everything a red cast. If you change the white balance NOW for the red-lit scene, you're trying to undo the lighting director's vision and make those costumes go back to looking white again. Same with level changes ... when the lights are dimmed it's because the director wants that scene to be darker than the others. Changing iris (unless it's so extreme the scene get's too dark to be usable) is trying to undo the director's vision of the work. So white balance and set exposure on the base level lighting and let the colour casts and brightness levels created by changes in the stage lighting as the performance unfolds come through as the visual dramatic effects the director intends them to be.
 
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Steve's spot on here. I'm a lighting designer as part of our business, and the dance show we just completed did not have any white lighting in the rig at all - not a jot! So any attempt to adjust to white is pointless. All you have to do is make sure the cameras are the same, and the tungsten preset works for me - as long as this does produce the same colour. Sony tungsten always looks a little bluer to me - If you really want to be a bit 'absolute' - build yourself a box with a white source inside, and lots of diffuser and take it around to all cameras and white balance to it. However, I've never found a need. Whatever you do will have some moments of different colour balance from your cameras, if I design the lighting. I'm a great lover of asymetric colour - so I'll perhaps for a ballet have a deep blue stage, but have steel blue from one side - especially if moonlight is the intent - so cameras to one side have a different blue. Perfectly normal. I'm also using more and more LED sources, as they're getting brighter, and these have lots of output in the UV range, making some costumes fluoresce in a special way - very nice. I'm also guilty of turning off my video head and putting on the audience head - so I'll saturate the stage with reds with yellow highlights - I may or may not put in warm face lights - and for dance especially there will be lots of sidelight because dance really needs this, and perhaps less front light than the video people want. Many times I have video crews in, and the better ones never ask for changes - which are usually impossible anyway, with the entire show plotted and 'done'. The tiresome ones who have no understanding of theatre ask for changes, usually less saturated colour and more brightness. They don't get it.

Last night the video crew were very positive - F4 almost throughout, and even the deep colour scenes caused no problems. I'm certain the colours one particular camera saw were very different from their others - that's dance!
 
Thanks again to everyone for all the helpful advice. So far it seems the panasonic spotlight setting works well for iris and it sounds like the indoor tungsten preset is the easiest way to color match the cameras. Luckily all the cameras shoot the same so long as they are all white balanced the same but autowhite balance usually caused big shifts in color throughout the event as the cameras got confused. (which I know is a no-no) I may not have explained myself very well earlier. I wasn't trying to change the color of the event. If they pour on a colored light for everything to be a certain color, I intend the footage to reflect that. I just want all the cameras to match on that color so I don't have to keep color matching in post over and over again. Like also mentioned before, I've noticed that in the past, sometimes the placement of cameras make the color appear different. For instance a high camera looking down on a colored stage looks a little different from a floor level camera shooting 45 degrees off the stage because that camera can't see the stage floor, even tho both cameras were white balanced on the same card under the same light before the show.It's certainly a learning process and boards and people like you guys sure help out a lot
 
I suspect we do everything in our power to make lighting as interesting as we can. It's actually getting even sillier as now we're often selecting lighting kit for what it looks like in shot. The latest batch of big budget moving head LED fixtures can have the LEDs on the front display crude video - so symbols and patterns can be seen on the front of the units - and nobody worries too much about using the light for illumination. Fans and spreads from behind are a common tool, with haze in the air - because they look nice. They create big coloured splodges on the floor which frequently don't look good at all, but it's the in the air look that's important.
 
Well, above all else, auto white balance is your enemy here. It seldom works very well even in "normal" lighting situations, but where there's colored light deliberately introduced on the set and things are changing rapidly, it will just utterly ruin your footage. There is always at least some hope that a camera which is operating at a slightly "off" but at least stable color balance can be fixed in post to match the others, but if the AWB is constantly changing the camera settings, then you are pretty much defeated before you can begin. So switch off the auto white balance, find a fixed 3200°K setting if you can, and go with that (with an expectation that you will spend some post time color correcting the footage).

In a "real" production the way I am used to doing them, you would have all the cameras feeding into a video switcher that could create split-screens (usually top and bottom of the screen) of the cameras while they are aimed at the same grayscale chart and color chips under the real-life lights. Then you use the shading controls on the camera (or its remote control unit in the switcher rack) to really get them reproducing all colors and tones the same, while watching a waveform monitor and vectorscope as well as the picture display to line them right up on top of each other. These days, unfortunately, that kind of switching and monitoring capability seems to be all but forgotten except in studios and on large-scale EFP shoots where there is a semi-trailer control room. It's ironic because the cameras themselves are more accurate and stable than ever before, and include built-in monitors and controls that allow them individually to produce very well calibrated exposures -- but it's harder to match multiple cameras to each other than it was in a traditional studio decades ago.

- Greg
 
Thanks again and also for the insight into how a real setup with a real budget would be like. For what I'm making on this deal, it really only justifies a one camera shoot, lol, but I just won't deliver that kind of product. Parents work at jobs that may need corporate work and they have kids that have weddings so it may pay off in the long run. I'm glad everyone has been so helpful with me posting such a rudimentary question here.Lighting is a craft that I respect and it's interesting to hear about these new techniques and technologies. My goal (besides all cameras matching) is for the video to faithfully represent the intended vision of those peole that plan the event. The color, the emotion, energy and style, while producing a keepsake for parents to remember and be proud of their kids.
 
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The auto exposure will cause you some trouble in post as well, as the different cameras will be set to different exposures all the time (and none will do well with spotlights). In my experience, different exposure settings on the cameras make matching really hard… it seems to effect how colors are rendered as well as luminosity. ..
 
I set all the cameras to the indoor incandescent setting and rolled with it. The cameras color matched remarkably well. So well that I believe the difference in models perhaps caused the only difference. The hostess had on a bright red jacket which appeared a little orange on the two identical AG dvc60 cameras but more red on the AG dvx100b which was much closer to the stage and on ground level which may have made some difference too. Color matching seemed interesting because trying to make the jacket match the red seemed to affect the black background darkness too. Is that what you were talking about in the previous post?I think I will use the preset on future events. Thanks to everyone for helping me.
 
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