DV Overexposure

[Gohanto]

I'm shooting an outdoor scene in the middle of the day for a rather experimental film where I want to have most of the picture overexposed and blooming as a way of making a character appear angelic and perfect. My thoughts were trying a full pro-mist filter and overexpose in-camera to get a real blooming of the whites, or to film the scene without the filter, don't let anything over expose, and then play with the levels in post (After Effects specifically). Since I'm filming on DV with a GS-500, I'm a little scared of what'll happen with overexposing as my experience had led me to avoid it in the past.

I'm somewhat going for this look...

although with a few highlights on the character himself as well.

Any advise?

 

[element80]

Test. Get a stand in, light a scene, and shoot it both with normal exposure and with the hot highlights through filtration. Even try some other techniques. Make the adjustments you want in post, and figure out which works best for the look you want. Maybe you'll end up with something totally different that that picture you posted, that you like better. That's what testing is all about, trying different techniques and seeing which one gives you the most desirable results.

 

[StephenDurden]

I know it's probably a bad answer to this question, but I would do it in post-production using After Effects or something like that. You may overexpose your footage a little (I'd say one stop, not more) and then play with some effect in post. Filtration is another good tip, though I don't know which kind of filter you could use right now.

EDIT: element80 is right anyway. Testing is the best option for EVERYTHING in filmmaking, I believe.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You're shooting in video so it's easy to just set-up the shot and try the effect in-camera and look at it on a monitor.

Any diffusion will help increase halation effects from overexposure.

 

[MarkG]

I'm not sure where that still comes from, but it looks a lot like the Glow effect in Fusion; I'm sure After Effects must have something similar.

 

[lotrfan]

Well I'm not sure how close this would come to the effect you're looking for, but if you shoot your talent in the shadow of a building or something and expose for the subject, then the background will naturally become overexposed. I'm not sure how it would look with the filter, but another option you could try is adding the glow effect in After Effects and tweak it so only the brighter areas glow. Either way, test it and see where it takes you. Hope this helps!

 

[StephenDurden]

If you don't pay attention to the "flashing" could be anything similar to this?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm not sure where that still comes from, but it looks a lot like the Glow effect in Fusion; I'm sure After Effects must have something similar.

The still is from "War of the Worlds" and the halation is from a Classic Soft filter on the camera, plus the hot backlight.

 

[MarkG]

Aha, maybe that's the effect Fusion was trying to copy .

 

[Gohanto]

There's a somewhat similar scene in Catch Me If You Can (streets all overexposed behind the main character) and I read that all the outdoor scenes had water sprayed on the ground before filming. So is that probably what makes the street so reflective in the screen shot above?

Also, anyone know how well this works on concrete instead of roads?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You can't imagine the difference between sunlight glaring off of a wet sidewalk versus a wet asphalt road?

Also, remember that those movies were shot on film -- getting hot glaring sunlight areas to burn-out (i.e. clip) is a lot easier when you shoot in video.

 

[LeZombi]

You can get this effect by doing some 3 way color correction in post. But you must have your subjects in a darker area as in the still. Correctly expose your subjects leaving the background a bit brighter. Up your whites and mids and pull down your blacks and you will get this kind of exposure difference. Now for the soft blooming you can get this effect with Magic Bullet by adding one of the diffusion filters. Such as Basic White Diffusion.
Hope that helps.

 

[bmoede]

DV exposure

DV exposure

I ran into this problem shooting interviews in high sun in Wyoming last year. A solution I used, shaded the primary shooting area with a large blue tarp from the hardware store to diffuse the sunlight on the subject. Then I lit the subject using a 600 watt quartz video light. Although the background was still overexposed a little, it did not blow out completely.

 

[adulojujohn]

creating glow or an angelic image outdoor

creating glow or an angelic image outdoor

i think u shld try shine on after effect, it has worked for me

 

[Guest]

Doing it in post

Doing it in post

I think you guys have great ideas, and what you can do in post these days is absoultely amazing, but I really have to say its the wrong way of attacking a lot of these situations. Getting it right in camera and not leaving it for some else to fix is a lot more fullfilling to me and not to mention it will more than likely be much much cheaper. I think a lot of younger artists are well versered in many aspects of cinema and its great if you can do it yourself in post, but I don't think this is good practice for real world filming. I would say practice and screw up now in the camera since its only video and you actually see what you get and then you know how to do it for film and on major features like this from War of the Worlds. Thats my two cents take it how you will and good luck

Chris

 

[Alessandro Machi]

You can't imagine the difference between sunlight glaring off of a wet sidewalk versus a wet asphalt road?

Also, remember that those movies were shot on film -- getting hot glaring sunlight areas to burn-out (i.e. clip) is a lot easier when you shoot in video.

From the DP's point of view this is very true, but form the telecine operator they might be able to pull a obscene amount of dyanmic range out of a film image and in essence actually have more choices of how the scene looks when it is blown out.