How do you white balance dance recitals / stage shows?

[Patrick Tracy]

Yep, in my world of small music venues and shooting on a budget, I've found I can't rely on there being any consistent white reference. There's a lot of mixed LED and incandescent. My amateur level solution is to reduce the variety of makes down to two. My four consumer grade Sony cameras may not be great, but they are close enough that matching them in post isn't too horrible a task, as long as I use the same preset on all of them. My older GoPro has a preset that comes close enough that I can make it work. I gave up on trying to balance to a reference white because it seems to be virtually extinct in the performing arts.

[Tony Neal]

Achieving good colour for stage work is much harder now than when I started more than 30 years ago, especially recording in 4K with multiple cameras.

Adjusting colour balance on the fly is impossible with multiple cameras so I just go for an appropriate preset on each camera and resort to colour correction in post, often scene by scene, camera by camera.

Very rarely am I completely happy with the final outcome, but that is the reality with modern stage lighting.

[Paul R Johnson]

Yep - that's really the reality now. It is so odd that the camera manufacturers have really done little work on making cameras that are good for stage lighting. I've tried current ones and very old ones and Sony's seem to never really do it well, and when the BBC turn up with a Sony, you know it's going to look very odd on TV. When we first started with LED, we were still piping pictures to screens from the old SD Betacams we had back then and nothing seems to have changed since then.

[Ron Evans]

Yes I think the potential answer for stage work is to shoot RAW to give more freedom in post even for an amateur like myself. Then at least scene by scene has more chance of getting a good outcome. Still of course better with one brand of camera.

[Tony Neal]

I'm formulating a plan for my future stage work which should avoid the above problems - it goes something like this ...

I buy the first affordable 8K 50p/60p camera on the market (it will probably be Blackmagic).

I record stage shows wide with a single 8K camera, manually controlling colour balance and exposure on the fly. A couple of locked-down 4K cameras on full auto will record alternative angles for the occasional cutaway, if the results are usable.

For additional flexibility, I will record in 8K RAW (!?).

I cut all my closeup and medium shots from the 8K master so they would all be of consistent quality and (hopefully) properly colour balanced and exposed.

I tried this with my first 4K camera but the closeups were not sharp enough in HD.
8K would do the trick since my customers are not asking for 4K (most of them still want DVDs!).

What could possibly go wrong?







.

[Paul R Johnson]

Just before covid, one of my regular clients asked for the very first time for delivery on USB! I'd offered bluray for years ...... and not ONE client wanted it, so 2020 and the first HD delivery! Here in the UK, loads of people have HD TVs, and because BBC is HD on channel 101, and TV's turn on on channel 1, loads of people are watching in SD. Even worse, our National TV often opts out to the regions for news and this is still SD - nobody notices. How weird! 4K and 8K are on the horizon but you have to ask, who actually wants it?

[Ron Evans]

Simliar thoughts Tony . I currently use a GH5 and a GH5S fixed on tripods that I manage ( slightly different framing with GH5 wider than GH5S ) and my wife uses the AX100 in HD for closeups. GH5's shoot UHD 60P and AX100 HD 60P as I like smooth motion. As you say real closeups are not possible by cropping with good quality. However most of the edit comes from one of the GH5's with crop/zoom/pan. Nice and smooth much better than I could do manually and timed exactly. Like you my thoughts are an 8K RAW camera would be great for the full stage and then the GH5's could go closer in for stage right and stage left.

[Paul R Johnson]

I’m interested to see if you US folk have issues with child protection rules? Twice now I’ve been asked to remove a child’s face from the video when it’s been discovered they are subject to orders preventing “their likeness” being published. Luckily both times, the lack of definition in the long shots has made only blobbing the closer shots required? I’d not given much thought to the idea of increasing the wide shot resolution. Do you have this problem? What seems to happen is the parent/ guardian don’t tell the dance school, who don’t tell me. The schools tend to not do releases as we do for other types of video work, they just tell people being in it is acceptance. The costs, so far, of the Re-edit I’ve swallowed, but I’m thinking about a contract term to cover the costs for this as it does seem to be on the increase, or at least, was a year ago.

Lighting wise, on the colour front, I have had one client query the costume colour. Oddly, dance seems immune from face tone colour.

It was always historically difficult to use saturated colour, especially green with darker skin tones. Established lighting design practice to avoid greens because of the strange effect it has on skin appearance , seems to be easing. We now have amazingly saturated colours from LED and that strange ghostly mottling on darker skin tones seem less common. I’ve not read anything about this phenomena being less common but maybe the spikey colour spectrum does have an advantage here when the cameras and lights combine positively?

[Ron Evans]

The dance school I am aware of require parents to sign release for school publicity photos and the recital. As to costumes this is important for parents as the costumes are expensive and they want to see the colour as they see it. I also spend time making sure these costume colours look like I see them. Not always possible if lighting guy is not aware of the importance of not using alternate colour for scene. Dance school are picky about that lighting. Very important to kids and parents. I went through that with both my daughters who danced. Long time ago they have their own teenagers now ! It doesn't seem too important if the whole scene is RED with black costumes and all the detail is gone from faces because the camera has no resolution left, just red blobs with black spots ! Teens seem to like that for some reason ?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

For children never had a problem with dance recitals but educational programs a few parents would not sign a waiver so I had to make sure they weren't included. This used to be less of an issue when distribution was only dvds. Now when I do digital download/streaming I always make it private access only through links sent to parents. Some schools would only allow physical media to be sold, no online distribution. You could also send the dance studio your distribution practices to insure their child's privacy to allay their fears.

As for LED lights especially heavily saturated colors things often look weird and there isn't a lot you can do about it.

[Paul R Johnson]

I suspect many LDs would consider the amazing colour palette now a real boon. We have Lion King = so that's amazing sunsets with reds and yellows, and maybe pinks and oranges, then of course we have selections from Wicked - so that's mega green. We can have lava and volcanos, we can have good vs evil, we can have storms - moonlight on the moors, emerald city, and amazing Samoiloff effects - which dancers love. Costumes that can go from monochromatic to snowy scenes. We can have rainbows, and all manner of mixing effects. Keep it coming. I've done two now with LED screens as background - which is stunning.I'll dig one out if I can find a suitable one.

[Brian Drysdale]

Just as an aside:

https://www.provideocoalition.com/un...trum-accuracy/

Regarding theatrical LED effects colours, it may just come down to what looks, good on the monitor. Which could prove difficult if you've never seen the show before. It used to be the case that a 3200k preset did the job. RAW sounds like the safest method, assuming it's an option.

Resolution can change with colour there's a reason why why the use blue when shooting on film and green when shooting on video for traveling mattes or chromakey..

[Steve Burkett]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

Here in the UK, loads of people have HD TVs, and because BBC is HD on channel 101, and TV's turn on on channel 1, loads of people are watching in SD. Even worse, our National TV often opts out to the regions for news and this is still SD - nobody notices. How weird! 4K and 8K are on the horizon but you have to ask, who actually wants it?

National TV is dying in the UK. Every year, audience numbers dwindle. Many of us watch content via Netflix, Amazon and the like. Regional news not being HD is an embarrassment. When I do watch BBC1 it is via iplayer and still get the musical montage when the news switches to regional. What a joke.

The BBC have introduced 4K and HDR for some programmes via iplayer and they look fantastic. Even just for HDR alone. At some point SD needs to die. When you have >40inch 4K TVS in nearly every home, watching at a resolution geared more for 14" 4.3 TVs is just wrong.

[Steve Burkett]

I don't do stage shows that often, but shooting RAW does help a lot with changing lighting. I've got 2 cameras that shoot RAW now, one is 6K, the other 4K. I plan to add a third at some point. Even hybrid cameras now offer a RAW external output. These days I spend less time worrying about white balance and it does make shooting a little less stressful.

[Paul R Johnson]

Originally Posted by Steve Burkett

National TV is dying in the UK. Every year, audience numbers dwindle. Many of us watch content via Netflix, Amazon and the like. Regional news not being HD is an embarrassment. When I do watch BBC1 it is via iplayer and still get the musical montage when the news switches to regional. What a joke.

The BBC have introduced 4K and HDR for some programmes via iplayer and they look fantastic. Even just for HDR alone. At some point SD needs to die. When you have >40inch 4K TVS in nearly every home, watching at a resolution geared more for 14" 4.3 TVs is just wrong.

I've always been pro-BBC, and considered the li once fee trivial compared to what I pay the streaming services, but no more. My BBC viewing is dwindling making value for money poor. Their current stance on commissioning PC programmes is shocking - if it ticks the boxes it gets made, even if the programme is simply awful. Realism isn't even aimed for. For instance, if you are shooting a drama, with drama budgets, it's unforgivable to put two actors in a car with green screen rear view and have a crew member or two jump up and down on the springs, or use green screen in such a newbie-youtube way. The way they assume being a graduate means straight into top jobs and your education experience = life experience sucks. Quality, that has taken time to develop gets thrown away. They don't need real cameras, grip kit and expensive camera ops and directors, the runner with the iPhone gets the job, and it's so obvious. The fact they can still get more viewers for a Dad's Army episode from the 70s, than a brand new programme just gets ignored. How many of today's programmes would even be able to be shown in 50 years time? None, probably. Even TV centre - the centre of BBC TV's history now is home to ITV productionion. Madness!