Behind The Curtain – Live Concert Grade in ACES

LED Stage Lighting – A Colorists Worst Enemy!
I thought it was time to go behind the curtain again and share another story from my suite. This time it’s a live concert music video.

I had a lovely project that was shot brilliantly on some excellent cameras but I got a little adventurous with my look and had to backtrack.

The director wanted something filmic and cinematic so I decided to use film emulation and go for a printy look (surprise surprise!) but totally forgot about the hazards of LED stage lighting.

It’s much easier to check out the video below for the full story but essentially I stupidly fell in love with a look on one shot in the whole video.

It was right in the middle of the lighting being perfect for good skin tone, good separation and a lovely atmospheric feel.

My mistake was that I was too busy looking at one single shot and about 5 seconds later the lighting completely changed.

The extreme magenta lighting was clipped very badly by the LUT and I had to jump over to ACES to save the day.

I didn’t have to use ACES but I knew the Neon Suppression LMT would save the day in this situation and still give me a nice contrast curve on the image.