Noisy Footage - Lighting an interview

T

taras4444

Well-known member
Hey guys, just a quick one - in a film im working on we need an interview set up for some segments, and I wanted to create a lighting set up that gets the actor to pop from the background (but leaving the background darkened for that moody feel). Yet with my af100 and voigtlander 25mm (opened quite up), and a three point lighting set up (two soft boxes and an arri 650) i found i had terrible noise in the background of the shot. The links below, my waveform is showing it is slightly overal underexposed, but his face isnt bad (in the first shot) i didnt think, and when I light everything up more he looks too light, and the mood is lost.

Is there something I'm missing, how do people usually get that noise free, clean yet darkened background in interviews?

ps- my iso was only 500 and i black balanced between each shot as I was getting frustrated!)

Here's the noisy video of mine:

https://vimeo.com/66661032

And here's a video id like to emulate for the interview look -

https://vimeo.com/8985600#at=0
 
I'd say you'd need to sacrifice one of those lights on lighting the background, as you have no contrast seperation between that and the subject.

ie. your background is underexposed, hence noise, macro blocking et all in that blue shadowed area behind his shoulders.


...my 2c
 
Constructive thoughts, for whatever they're worth to you:

- In both noisy samples, your backlight is too strong. Note either blowing out the side of his face in sample#1 or casting a strong collar shadow around his neck on sample#2.
- There's no background light. Unless you're going for a black void background, backgrounds need some light
- in both samples, your key is very far to one side and the other side doesn't have much fill. IMO a bit too much ratio unless you're going for a super-dramatic, edgy look
 
just a thought: why not shoot green screen and then drop a moody grain free background in? Then you have the freedom to properly expose your subject as well as having almost indefinite grading control in post- but I know nothing-(well after all these years I expected to know more!)
Cheers!
Rod.
 
If there's not enough light to properly expose a background, there definitely won't be enough light to properly expose a green screen.

Get some more background separation (as in, roughly twice the distance from camera to subject) and throw a little low-intensity light on the background at an oblique angle, re-position your key closer to 45 degrees, and get a little lower ratio on the face. I think you'll be pleased with the result.
 
hey guys thanks for all the advice, I'm going to redo it this weekend and ill keep you updated. (as for camera settings i used barrys preset clean look), so it was my bad for the background under lighting, didnt expect it to be so noisy! I'll move the key around a bit (though it is suppose to be a little edgy), and i'll throw some light on the background and move the back light further away, hopefully he'll pop out nicely :) Thanks again!
 
If you don't want to reshoot you can clean it up with Neat Video. The plugin is amazing and that kind of noise can come with some settings on the AF
 
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