It's safe to say there are a lot of terms that get thrown around on a production set, many of which people just coming into the industry will never of heard before. Luckily, we've been in the production industry long enough to know what these words mean, and better yet, we're going to explain some of them to you!
So... Want to impress you boss on your next production? Keep reading...
White Balance
Starting the list off simple with 'White Balance', which is super easy to understand once it's been explained to you.
White balance is essentially how warm or cold your RAW image/video is going to look. A lot of the time we'll aim for a very natural white balance which matches what the human eye sees. However, there are specific situations where you can use white balance to completely change how a scene is interpreted.
White balance is measured in a unit know as Kelvin, with the higher values being warmer (i.e. 7000K) and the lower values being cooler (i.e. 4000K).
Modern day cameras have a lot of preset white balances to assist with balancing colour. But it's always best to understand how this is affecting your image encase someone on set asks you!
Dual-Native ISO
We've spoken before before about ISO and how this affects the footage from your camera, however, would you believe us if we told you there was even more to learn about ISO?!
With the advancements we've seen in consumer and professional grade cameras, more and more people now have access to 'Dual-native ISO'.
In simple terms, this means there are two pre-determined values within the camera which will produce clean and noise free footage. On the Sony A7 Siii these values are 640 and 12,800. 640 would be used in daylight and situations where you have more than enough light available to control your footage. Whereas 12,800 would be used in situations where there is little to no light available without adding a ton of digital noise.
Pretty neat right!
LOG (S-Log, C-Log, N-Log)
And last but not least we have LOG. This is the most common video recording format for productions, however, it's not the only format.
If you notice someone isn't using LOG this isn't a bad thing, but just ask their reasoning as to why!
LOG is a video file type which helps to maintain as much dynamic range as possible within the clip. This means when we come to colour grade the footage we have so much more information to work with in the shadows, midtones, and highlights.
And there you have it, three term which will knock the socks off your producer next time you're on set!
Comments