Okay, here it is - my secret weapon for fixing "Oh, shit!" moments with white balance and underexposure...
I am a better editor than I am a shooter - as a matter of fact, if it weren't for my post work, my shooting would be about wedding-and-bar-mitzvah quality instead of corporate video quality. But my bread and butter is corporate videos, so when my client recently asked me to save them some bread by shooting their first ever video in-house, instead of hiring a shooter, I was a little panicked but exhilarated with the challenge.
I shot the scenes that we were lacking using the company's already-purchased Canon XH-A1. The camera takes a nice little picture but is notoriously dark like it's predecessors in the beloved Canon XL and GL lines. My budget only allowed for a simple Lowel 3-point light kit, so when I got on-location and saw that the room that I would shoot in would backlight my subject with overcast-sunlight, I knew that I would have my work cut out for me in post.
This $99 set of filters is a miracle! I never fear footage anymore because I can accomplish all kinds of rescuing with this amazing set of filters. Today, I will only be addressing the subject of saving underexposed and poorly white-balanced shots using Joe's Filters.
Here is a still of the original footage.
Now, I had intentionally underexposed the image to maximize the number of pixels that I could work with - pixel-data is like foreskin, it's easier to take some away than it is to put it back. And nothing will kill your pixel-data faster than overexposure. If you have to pick one or the other, go for underexposure.
Alright, let's double-click our clip and use Joe's Filters to save this footage. From the menu bar, select as seen in the image below.
The great thing about Joe's Sampled Color Level is that it acts, as it were, like an after-the-fact White Balance, Gray Balance and Black Balance. The White Level, Gray Level and Black Level each have a dropper tool that you can use to select a color from the canvas to be defined as white, gray or black, respectively.
I uncheck the filter while I pick the white level to change the overall color temperature of the clip. The same principle applies here as white balancing a camera - to warm up the image, pick a blue-white color in the image and then check the checkbox to turn the filter on and you should see the image instantly "warm up" as the colors are forced warm. In this case, I used one of the daylight-balanced whites that is spilling onto the windowsill through the window located camera-right.
Now my image has shed it's daylight-blue bias for a sexy tungsten-temperature. Technically, you can change the white balance in a similar way using the Final Cut Pro "3-Way Color Corrector" but my success with this method has been sketchy at best because I really needed a way to change not only the value of white but also to push the black colors and the grays dynamically. That's what makes Joe's filters so cool - after picking the white, gray and black level, you can use it's sliders for Hue, Saturation and "B" (for the life of me, I can't figure out what "B" is but it seems to be a master slider that controls how much that color level is effected by the other sliders).
Once I have a white level, I turn off the filter and select a gray from the original and turn the filter back on to see how it changes it. Often times, this is a color from something that the subject is wearing, or out of their skin tone. Changing the gray level seems to effect skin tone dramatically so finding something like their clothing to adjust it against is helpful. Once again, there are sliders to fine-tune the adjustment once you have picked the color, itself.
Then I choose the black point and use it to create some contrast. In this case, I used a jet black in the subject's hair. The end result is a warm, high-contrast image that is still a little dark but whose colors are looking a lot more consistent.
Now, let's pump up the light in the room with Joe's Levels. Think of it as the levels filter that your FCP should have come pre-built with. All of the same principles apply.
Now, my image looks very contrast-y - almost too much. So, I give it a Joe's Gradient that creates a vignetting effect on only part of the screen, these are the settings to put the gradient on the bottom left corner, creating a nice depth beneath the table stowed in the corner.
Next, I notice that my image now has a lot of red in the skin of the subject and also there are white bright spots all over that are bound to push my footage out of broadcast compliance which means bad things once this video goes to DVD or Web. Joe's Broadcast Legalizer fizes all of that:
Last, but certainly, not least, i take a look at my footage on a color-balanced monitor and realize that the footage has a little too much red in the subject's skin, making his complexion look awkward. I add Joe's Selective Color Correction and sample a patch of the subject's face and destaurate slightly. Here is the original compared to the final:
I hope that this helps you to rescue some footage with Joe's Filters!
