How do you white balance dance recitals / stage shows?

[Paul R Johnson]

That's a very good 'repair' video - and it did a rather nice job in recreating detail that was just missing.

It's still strange to be having to do this when clearly the post industry have some great tools, but surely it's unreasonable to buy cameras that are so bad at capturing images in anything other than one chosen colour temp, and worst, being unable to cope with things like the light sources that areb monochromatic - the flu's, the discharges and of course most LEDs. Chris shows the amount of effort required, but we have had LED stage lighting for a long time now, and little attempt has been made for cameras to shoot it. We really do have this weird opinion that the work a lighting person puts in should be totally removed for video? One of my shows last year did over 90% capacity on a long run, and it's crazy to compromise that because Mr Sony or whoever cannot build a camera that can cope! The people who watched it live got the amazing look, and video is secondary - and in my case, it's not even publically available. Indeed, some lightuing designers do not get re-engaged if their lighting is not 'wow' enough. Their career made by how the audiences see it. A request for white light was never appreciated, and now contractually, their 'product' is protected. The audience legally will never see a white light version. Video folk have to accept this. Unless the producers write video into a contract, it cannot happen. Looking back at this year's theatre shows, we do not have ANY tungsten sources any longer. So with many fixtures offering red, green, blue, white, amber and UV, the white option probably will not even be programmed. The person sitting in front of the desk may not have even got the white options showing in the pallettes. Whenever you do have a white light for some purpose, it's often white and blue to make it very stark, by contrast to the usual pinks and blues.

A typical dance show day would start run throughs at maybe 8.30am, and the lighting designer would be creating the lighting for each number. Around lunchtime, they might start an out of sequence dress rehearsal in costumes and the lighting gets changed, often radically to cope with the mass of green costumes, which had been lit in blue or red, meaning the green was black. There would be no need to turn the white knob. It does nothing to enhance what we see - so they'll have a colour pallette with all sorts of variations of colours. Then, as happened two weeks ago, the video people rolled up half an hour before the house opened and by the time they were set up, the audience are coming in. Then they ask for a sound feed. Tjhe audio guy had anticpated it and handed over two cables and said he couldn't send them show level because people were in, so expect a lot more than what they were getting. I noted two different brands of camera, so they will struggle with matching the colour balance. They did NOT ask for lighting changes, probably because they knew they would NOT get them. We offered a cable for a video feed = composite or SDI. They only had HDMI on the nearest camera and that was further than our longest HDMI cable - so 'we tried' was the best we could do.

In the whole show, there was not one scene that had any for of white static light - so I suppose a good place to be would be in a preset in the 4-5K range, and have that on all cameras as a best guess.
I've attached a picture - a still from the video. There is not a single light that is white - none! All those colours are a good aproximation of what they looked like. Variations in pink, magenta and the blues are visible. My Pentax DSLR cannot differentiate these hardly at all.

[Christopher Young]

Paul. Very hard working off a JPG as they fall apart as soon as you touch them. All the same, It's a quiet Saturday here and the weather has been c**p, so I thought I have a play with your pix.

As you can see from the scopes, parades, vectors etc that the lighting has thrown everything out of whack. Even out of camera, a 709 image can be corrected for white balance quite easily. Here I use two splitter combiner nodes with a standard node either end. This took about a minute. This is what I do for each song in these sorts of scenarios. I create a Gallery still, which when applied to a clip opens up the nodes for fine-tuning if necessary. Not saying the sample is perfect by any means, but it gives you an idea of what can be done.

Chris Young

[Paul R Johnson]

No - this is exactly what I mean. The image you have created is not real. If the lighting designer lit it to look like the perfect video image, they'd be out of the job! This is exactly the problem. The audience did not see a stage with the colours in the processed video. The Director spent hours with the lighting designer getting the 'picture' just right. Oddly, we take pictures of the sets in white light - not the stage lit version, because that will be different every outing. The same set can look totally different when lit by a different LD.
I attached the same show, mostly same costumes, different venue to make the point. In this example, I have no idea if the colours the camera recorded are real, as I did not take the shot. The one I posted is as far as I can get, the same colour as it really was.

I'm very interested in what the software can do - but in this case, the result is not in any shape or form, what was created - it's a reimagining. It never looked like that in real life. White balance is pointless when white did not exist in the original. For this kind of show, maybe pink/magenta balancing would be better - but theatrically, white is a seldom used colour. In plays or meetings, or stage use that's being televised like maybe a politician delivering a speech - then it will be white. It's not supposed to be pretty, so then real white, and correction as in your example, is excellent and quite correct. It's just inappropriate for entertainment. It's been a long time now since white light sources were all over the stage, they've always been tints - blues, pinks, ambers. Oddly - I do get the occasional request for face light for some entertainment shows, and if we are short on gear, we will rig some Source 4's over the audience, in open white. Followspots are the other white source, and these do need balancing, but usually that shifts magenta to a purply-pink, and makes blue look a bit odd, but a pink or blue tinged face looks bad in this context. Luckily, for musicals, face lighting will usually be tints again, so in that case, pink is correct - and correcting it, wrong.

I did have to jump in once in a production meeting when a Lighting Designer was being judged based on a show video and I had to point out that in the theatre, it was extremely likely the colours were much more vibrant and punchy and not the kind in the still I attached here. We have learned to never judge the lighting by photos, unless the person who took them understood theatre. My role is not really to take video and photos, but it got added to my job when my results met Directors approval and a hired in video team didn't;t get it at all. When you take 1.5 million at the box office, you want pictures that look like what people see. We now have many photographers who take pictures all over the country who do understand the importance of pink!

Is the floor yellow or orange against the red? In white light it IS yellow, but not when the light landing on it is pinks and magentas.

[Christopher Young]

I think we are at cross purposes here Paul. Maybe I didn't explain myself too well.

Whilst I agree with your comments as to what the lighting and artistic teams have developed, that's for the sitting audience's benefit. As it should be. I've TD'd enough live entertainment shows for TV, well over a hundred over the last twenty-five years and there is no way those out of gamut color levels and saturation would ever make it on a live production. They have to be constrained to broadcast SMPTE 709 color and luminance levels.

Forgetting TV delivery. If producing for post delivery this still applies, whether it be DVD, BD or USB sticks for PC playback, none of those environments can correctly handle out of gamut levels. Including 95% of software players as they are looking for 709 VIDEO levels. Some software players do have 8-bit 10-bit full swing 16-135/64-940 selection settings, but not many. If you encode those out of gamut high chroma levels, they will absolutely be distorted on playback. That's like recording audio well into the red and expecting it to sound good.

What I was attempting to demonstrate is first come back to a neutral, corrected balance. Now if you want to introduce a bias, color correct towards, red, blue, purple or whatever color you choose you do that within the constraints of the 709 video CIE Chromaticity triangle. One should aim to get close to filling that triangle if you want good-looking results. If any of your colors go outside they won't meet any of the above delivery methods I've outlined, and you end up with horrible looking distorted colors and levels on any viewing platform. As you can see from the accompanying pix, the image you supplied has lost 50% of its information, mostly, and what's left is crushed into the red side. There is virtually no Cyan or Green channel there. It's been swamped by the overload in the Red channel. It's there, it just needs to be recovered. In recovering it within the 709 specs the colors whilst different to the image you supplied look reasonably close but more importantly are 100% legal for delivery via TV. DVD, BD, Web or software player.

BTW, all these should be looked at on a true 709 monitor or a quality TV to get some kind of subjective idea. But there again I see so many people editing video on PC monitors in Adobe RGB or sRGB space, so I have no idea how they end up judging the veracity of their images.

Unfortunately, in the production world we have to stick to the defined standards if we want our material to look good on any delivery medium. Not trying to teach grandma to suck eggs but if anyone really wants to understand the process of editing for delivery, broadcast, web, PC or optical medium and feels they are a bit at sea with it, it may be of interest to have a look here for a primer.

Chris Young

https://www.thepostprocess.com/2019/...full-vs-video/

[Ron Evans]

I agree Paul. Theatre is illusion. Follow spots of course tend to change the image but are usually used sparingly these days and the contrast between just them on a dark stage and then full lighting is part of the illusion. Used within a scene will highlight the lighting difference and of course is deliberate. My wife and I try to remember particular colours when I edit. I have the difference between the AX100 she uses and the GH5S and GH6 both V log set at between 3700 and 4000 depending on venue, to give some guidance if I need to change anything. I too use Resolve these days so easy to make minor changes but I find most of the time with GH6 Vlog Colour Managed to rec709 it is pretty close at the white balance settings I have been using. There may be a white wash for actor curtain at end of show in some cases.

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

No - this is exactly what I mean. The image you have created is not real. If the lighting designer lit it to look like the perfect video image, they'd be out of the job! This is exactly the problem. The audience did not see a stage with the colours in the processed video. The Director spent hours with the lighting designer getting the 'picture' just right. Oddly, we take pictures of the sets in white light - not the stage lit version, because that will be different every outing. The same set can look totally different when lit by a different LD.
I attached the same show, mostly same costumes, different venue to make the point. In this example, I have no idea if the colours the camera recorded are real, as I did not take the shot. The one I posted is as far as I can get, the same colour as it really was.

Is the floor yellow or orange against the red? In white light it IS yellow, but not when the light landing on it is pinks and magentas.

Your last sentence exactly. Whatever the color, if you don't want it distorted, it must meet 709 spec for all delivery mediums bar HDR deliverables. But then that's a totally different kettle of fish. Whatever the colors are or were, the colors in this shot fall within spec. The luminance levels of those colors were a bit over, but easily corrected. See CIE Chromaticity pix.

Chris Young

[Ron Evans]

I can see both your points of view. Video signal must be in spec as Chris says but that does not mean white balancing out the stage colours. By all means bring levels within range but maintain the stage colour. Clearly those initial scenes from Paul were clipping/overloading. Shooting stage shows is not easy point and shoot !! However making white look white in editing when the audience saw pink is not the answer.

Also see Chris point of viewers both on TV as well as PC monitor/tablet/phone these days. They will be different so who to edit for these days ?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

This is a subjective topic that most theater videographers have to face.

The color for most low budge performances will never be right nor will people buying the video ever complain. I try to be faithful to the lighting design of the performance, meaning if a scene was intentionally yellow and you white balance it you undoing what was intended. Most often I'll ask for the whitest scene or curtain call lights and white balance to that. If the show scenes are mostly color you just let it be. But if the light color is unintentional like they have spot lights that are warmer I'll correct that. I do think it's important to try to get the white balance as close as you can in camera because if you're filming 8bit and the colors are way off it will look bad trying to fix it in post.

There isn't much you can do with the problem cameras have with over saturated led lighting. It results with loss of detail as if it was over exposed. You can reduce the saturation but there's not a lot to be done.

I spend most of my time working on the things I can control: Audio levels, Multi camera cuts, and exposure.

[Paul R Johnson]

I suppose the snag really is that everyone needs to be on the same page. The video people working hard correcting what they see as a mistake and the theatre people furious at the distortion such ‘repair’ causes. Last night’s Elvis show did have one common colour temp, the colour of the follow spots, but the follow spots are fitted with a magazine of warm and cool tints. CT blue actually being one of the,, mainly because I wanted a very light blue, and the lighting designer/operator swapped between an amberish pink and the blue on different songs. The vertical sun strips are actually white but 3200k white, so look warm on an LED rich stage. The blinders are also white, but a different one. This is a really useful discussion and while I suspect there wont be an absolute agreeable outcome, the different views will come in handy when discussing aims with producers. This was the last night of the tour, so the producer was actually there and interfered pretty well constantly. I was sitting the furthest from the stage and the sound level peaked at just over 107dB, so God knows what the folk at the front got! Nobody could hear themselves think on the comms. Anyone pressing their mic button killed everyone stone dead.

[Ron Evans]

I am with Pete most of the time. I just watch particular colours that I know the Panasonic's have difficulty reproducing like deep reds. Not always but for certain costume materials and lights they tend to orange. Those I correct by memory or cross check with the AX100 that does not have that problem !! I also record to my Ninja V 's from the GH5S and GH6 so can check false colour for exposure also have the exposure metering on them set for highlight too.

It is always a compromise as the recording will never have the impact of the live performance even in HDR. I do record V Log so can get a rec709 and HDR output from the timeline.

[Christopher Young]

In no way do I see it as a "repair" when sticking to a standard. As most decent stage lighting outfits will. All the big rock concerts with fantastic, great lighting design and effects abide by these broadcast standards. And in no way does the visual experience suffer for those at the concert or those watching at home or later on a DVD or BD.

I TD'ed A Guns N' Roses concert video OB with awesome lighting design some years back and believe me we couldn't put a show like that to air with non-legal levels. The TV links and transmitters cannot handle it. Have a look at what serious lighting designers do. The biggest problem I find with a lot of stage lighting people is they have never been taught to light for video, only a sitting audience. In cases like this, we tell clients, when booked to do their video coverage that if they want top quality lighting for both the sitting venue audience AND video coverage, for broadcast, or for sell through media, they should book a good qualified lighting designer who knows how to light for both stage and video at the same time. They do exist.

I explain to the client, why are you going to all this cost on the production only to jeopardize your sell through media revenue by having lighting that is going to cause issues for the video side of your productions. One large theatrical company we contracted to for nine years, shooting between fifty and sixty-five concerts a year in the largest stadiums across Australia had disc sales in the order of 5-7000 per concert. They discovered if they had decent lighting design that the video post-production costs went down. As far less time was spent on trying to beat the shows into shape for broadcast and sell through media. Out of all the shows, a number of two-hour specials events were made for TV from all the competing regional events. So costs were important.

For illustration’s sake, I've grabbed a still frame from a lighting training video, which has some examples in it of stage concert lighting design. I threw this onto a Resolve timeline and what did I find. What I expected. Legal levels for video, even in their training videos. And yet great lighting design and effects for concerts. And I mean big concerts. They are Martin<dot>com. Also below is a link to a good lighting BTS from ARRI showing how you can use the wildest outrageous colors and deliver awesome lighting design and effect but still remain within the accepted standards.

Also, I had a tweak on the Elvis pix. Whilst keeping a similar feel to the lighting design, it can easily be brought into legal shape. This what we have to do when we are confronted with out of gamut stage lighting for video productions. See sample pix.

Chris Young

ARRI Lighting Showreel – Behind the Scenes - YouTube

https://www.martin.com/en-US/markets/entertainment

[Paul R Johnson]

Chris - I think we are agreeing and yet disagreeing. As I've said, if you light for video, then the LD will probably spend most time watching the output on a screen so your quest for legal colours, in a proper space hold very true. My beef is that if I have maybe 80 shows for a real audience, then spoiling what the creatives have spent hours on for a one show video recording is not acceptable. If the video was for people who had seen the show, would they expect the recording to be what they saw, or a different version? I find it very odd that camera manufacturers have not realised that their cameras cannot record what the eye can see?

The snag with dance recitals and stage shows is that they are not planned with video in mind. I also doubt that broadcast standards really apply to a DVD run with a few hundred copies?

This topic has been viewed by at least two top class Lighting Designers for the stage and they 100% agree that the traditional 'More Pink" request is the way it is, and a stage lit for broadcast would be viewed by producers and directors as sadly lacking. We have stages with sets newly painted to make the colours pop, and the costumes have been designed for saturated colours making them really go wow. The LD's main job is to make these components scream out in a riot of colour. I'm old enough to remember the BBC descending on an Opera - as in Glyndbourne or D'Oyle and really struggle with their contrast. The popular Lighting Designers for opera frequently used a 5K Fresnel upstage as a very strong backlight, and picking out faces was really hard for the cameras, so a TV LD came in a re-lit the broadcast shoot, bringing in much more front light. The Theatre LDs hated the mangling of their show, but liked the re-light the relight fee they got.

For current touring music shows, front light is minimal, back light excessive - so the beams do the work. That's very video unfriendly too.

You mentioned a 'standard' - the trouble is this is NOT a theatre standard, but a video one, and we don't light for video, we light for the audiences - A few LDs do TV and theatre, but most are one or the other.

Even the manufacturers know the difference - Arri never had much of a theatre presence. An Arri 1.2K sitting side by side with a stage type Fresnel light the stage very differently. The TV Fresnels are very punchy, while theatre Fresnels had a lovely soft falloff at the edges, making blending with another very invisible. I've put my old tungsten Arris in the theatre and 4 of them do a pretty patchy wash on wide.

At some theatres, if they schedule a press call it is quite likely somebody will ask for removal of strong colours and the addition of white. Some theatres will not do this without permission from the LD. Some say yes and trust you won't make their designs look terrible, when in the press. Others just say no, and contractually they're able to do this. Costume designers have similar clauses about their work being seen in daylight sometimes. I've got a fixed opinion. I do whatever the client requests. This includes a show video that reflects as close as I can manage, what it looked like, and that is why I have the cameras I have. A common type of image that does it's job. I'm not concerned about the legality of the product in conforming to the standard, or sitting in the little shapes on the vector scope. It's not ever going to be broadcast. It's just annoying other cameras I have record it so it looks different.

[Ron Evans]

We are all going over the issue that existed between someone recording for broadcast ( or mass distribution on disc ) compared to recording for archive the actual show as close as possible to what was seen by the audience. legal rec709 cannot do this. Maybe even BT2100 cannot do this either but closer. Todays cameras, even cell phone cameras have a much bigger range than the displays. So how this output is recorded is important not to destroy the image. This is one of many that discuses the issue of rec709 compared to BT2100 and the transform issues.

Color Space Basics for Video - YouTube

Resolve has the advantage of camera recording in a log format to get max range of the camera then fitting that into the reduced range of rec709 for instance. However as this video shows there will be some colours etc that are just not possible and be legal in range. I record V Log on my GH5S and GH6 so that I can have rec709 or HDR output. There is a big difference in experience in colour and specular highlights not so much just brightness. The HDR image gives some of the "punch " of the live performance just not there in rec709 and of course a greater colour range.

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

The snag with dance recitals and stage shows is that they are not planned with video in mind. I also doubt that broadcast standards really apply to a DVD run with a few hundred copies?

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

You mentioned a 'standard' - the trouble is this is NOT a theatre standard, but a video one, and we don't light for video, we light for the audiences - A few LDs do TV and theatre, but most are one or the other.

No offence intended, but broadcast standards do apply to DVDs Paul, as they are designed to work within the ITU Tec 709 color space. All lighting, even the great sunny outdoors with its massive dynamic range, still has to fit into the 709 space.

You are producing video. A video reproduction of a stage show. As video producers go, isn't it our responsibility to span the gap between the live show and distribution media? Whether it's one DVD or thousands. Yes it is our responsibility. Going outside the DVD standards produces overly saturated images that overload the image processing circuits of the DVD player or TV if it has a built-in DVD player. The same goes for SDR BD discs. Would you ever master audio CD's with massive distortion? That sounds terrible on playback? The answer is no... one would hope not. No need to do it in either on the video or audio on your DVDs? Distorted video levels whilst not as painful as distorted audio levels are still distorted. So why not pay the same attention to the video component of a production and minimize the video distortion introduced during the recording session. If the venue you are shooting in doesn't light for video, then it's up to you the producer to ensure that your post-production takes that into account when processing the signal. Just as you would a massive dynamic range outdoor shoot.

Manufactures know the limits of their camera technology and are always striving to increase the dynamic range so that it can be brought into the existing 6 stop 709 standard, which we are stuck with. Until everyone goes HDR 2020 with it's up to 15 stop range, we as video producers have to coax whatever we record into the existing standard forced on us by that thing sitting in our lounge rooms, the TV. Or forced on us by the video players on our PCs which are expecting 709 video levels. This is why such techniques as photo stacking is used to capture more dynamic range into the limiting 709 space. It's an imperfect world. But if in the course of our production work we don't adhere to the standards set for video delivery, we are not doing a very good job of it as "professionals." We are no better than a sloppy plumber or electrician.

Everyone will do as they wish and see fit, but I will never employ a video editor who doesn't work to the standards set by the industry. Well, that's not strictly true. One of the best editors I ever employed to produce TV shows was visually one of the most artistic I've ever seen. Standards? He didn't even know what time code was used for on multi-camera synchronization. But once he learnt the technical side and the standards to work to, he became a maestro. He is now one of the top editors at Channel 10 in Sydney, entrusted with some of their biggest budget productions.

Until we reach the point where cameras can process light, its range and color like the Mark 1 human eyeball, the best optical device so far, photographers will struggle with photo stacking and us videographers will struggle with cameras where the current technology cannot cope with the lighting ranges we encounter whether it's daylight or artificial light or a combination of both. Hence, the development of LOG and RAW recording to be able to capture greater range.

This massive light show, link below, was not at all impacted at all visually for the attendees, or those watching the live stream on TVs or PCs by having to work within legal levels. Really there is no excuse not to do so. Just saves so much time, money and drama. And in the long run with the added bonus of no colors looking horrendous to assault your eyes. Look at the level grabs below.

My last words, as I'm becoming far too boring. I guess what I'm trying to say is that sadly though, whatever we capture with, using LOG, RAW or the humble old 709 encode we have to massage it into the existing standards if we want it to look as good as it can get.

Chris Young

Reverze 2020 | Sub Zero Project: Rave Into Space LIVE - YouTube

[Paul R Johnson]

Trouble is Chris, that the producers want the look the show really had. Otherwise, how can they compare the success and sometimes, even answer questions. As in, "could you tell me the colour of the fabric you used in the ballroom scene, my daughter wants this for the bridesmaids?"

My job is to capture as close as I can, what it looked like to the audience. That's it really. There is also a show recording of the audio, and if we apply the same technical standards to that, the dynamic range is too high and the sub bass in some parts excessive. Squash the range a bit and trim off the bottom end and we have a much better studio version that you could distribute. However, the extra subs the show had in the sound budget, and the deliberate punch in a few sections wouldn't be noticed? A nice audio recording, but lacking the scaryness of giant footsteps and the shock of a big crash?

In a controlled production designed for broadcast, or other home/consumer chains, these features would have been production meeting removed at source, not deleted later.

When you shoot in a studio for these kinds of products, everything is controlled from the first rigging onwards. You really cannot change the aim at a late stage. It actually works the other way around, when you use video screen technology in a live show. It rarely works. One just recently being tried out by a well known scenery production company had them digitising their real scenery and cloths, and then them supplying a hi-def video wall for a theatre. The idea to be able to have their scenery and their complete show 'look' when there was no storage and flying capability. The result was er, not very good. Bright, vibrant and totally and uttterly different from the stage lighting look. The two looks fighting with each other, not complementing each other. The best they did was to hang a black gauze in front, with the screen at the lowest setting and it still looked wrong.

I suspect that until we can do lighting to the broadcast spec in a theatre, and spoil it for the audience and they get used to it, we cannot have one size fits all. My organisation is very pink orientated as many shades of it as possible. The repeated cry from all the directors is MORE PINK! Add some, and they are happy. Remove it, and get the sack! This section is all about weddings, recitals, plays, performances - very few people working in this area give any thought to colour gamuts and broadcast legal colours? Kind of not what we do normally. When we have to, we consider the resulting colour pallets bland and boring. TV, I'm sure are happy with what they do, and would resist any attempt to saturate colours - they'd consider that just crazy! I have to smile sometimes in the studios when despite the abundnace of able kit, the blues are not quite blue and the reds are not that red. It's just a little 'dull' in real life but the monitors love it!