Edit a 1080 24p Uncompressed Day-for-Night Scene in Apple FCP HD

Director Nick Vallelonga wanted a dark, mysterious night interior. Unfortunately, time and money dictated this scene be shot in the day. And the location had nothing but white walls. You can use paint settings on your camera to add depth to less-than perfect location shots. DP Vladimir Van Maule captured the HD footage with the Panasonic VariCam at 720p into the Panasonic 1200A deck, which removes pulldown and upconverts to uncompressed 1080/23.976 PsF on the fly. He used the VariCam’s paint settings to record the scene with a rich cobalt hue.

Once inside FCP, we exaggerated all available highlights to get a more moody look. The ambient daylight and white walls made this scene dangerously flat—not mysterious at all. Though you could use Final Cut’s array of shape and gradient generators with transfer modes to create a vignette effect, you tend to get banding in subtle shades of gray, which often translate to your picture. To get around this, use the Stylize/Diffuse Filter set to Non-Directional, repeat edges On and set a very low radius.

STEP 1: Create your project and preferences

STEP 2: Make it moody

STEP 3: Emphasize the highlights

For something like the "Stairwell Shot," shown below, use a diffused diagonal Highlight generator with a Multiply composite mode to emphasize the Highlights along the banister and create a shadow along the white wall on frame right. In this case, Final Cut’s Shapes and Gradients can be a useful tool—it’s a good way to brighten or darken areas of the frame.

STEP 4: Create a high-contrast look

To create the high-contrast de-saturated look we decided on, we used Apple’s Color Corrector 3-way Filter. To do this, raise the Whites level control while lowering the mids, blacks and saturation level.

STEP 5: Welcome to the night

The final clip is a dark, mysterious, complex day-for-night scene created on a very tight budget.

YOUR GUIDE

Ian Vertovec, Online Editor/Colorist, PlasterCITY Digital Post

Project:
Choker, an HD Indie thriller

Source Material:
16 x 9 uncompressed 1080p HD

Support Gear:
Panasonic VariCam; Blackmagic DeckLink HD; Huge MediaVault 320R

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