The ragged edge and videography

With a histogram like this, you'd think I was shooting outer space.

In preparation for color correcting I've been looking at our footage on various scopes. The outdoor stuff is fine but the indoor stuff is really underlit. I didn't realize it until now but I lit the interiors film noir style. There are only two colors—light and dark. It's actually shocking on a vector scope—most of the footage is down near 0-20 IRE (7 IRE is video black). I consciously took the left-leaning histogram approach (see prolost.blogspot.com for a good overview of the left- vs. right-leaning histogram debate) but I probably went too far! It's interesting because I started comparing my footage with commercial DVDs and realized how brightly lit they are. I've always thought of Moulin Rouge, for example, as being somewhat moody and shadowy but compared to our footage the thing looks like a sitcom. Anyway, in true putting-your-head-in-the-sand fashion, I started using the RGB parade scope because the levels look much better than what I see on the vector scope. (BTW, my sole training using a vectorscope occurred when I worked at the cable TV station years ago. One day the engineer hooked a vectorscope to my graphics computer and said "make sure your whites don't go above this line!")

Actually I'm not too concerned. I'm sure I'm going to lose some quality when I push up the levels but I realize that I've been Marlon-Brando-ing my way through everything anyway. One of the reasons why I've been so enamored with the idea of obstruction is that it's what I generally do even with technical things. I get into trouble and then try to fight my way out. To me it gives things a kind of rough edge that I like. When I say rough edge, I don't mean compression artifacts or such. I actually hate poor picture quality. I mean that my projects tend to have the look of someone struggling to make things work. I'm sure the final movie will have an unprofessional unevenness with some things out of focus, some things struggling to stay within the scope, some things a bit grainy. To me, that is part of the performance that keeps things alive.