Parc Entertainment - A Video Production Company

This question came to me recently:

My videos have been oddly yellowish. I read somewhere about ‘white balancing.’ I have a Sony Cybershot. Do I white balance on the camera during filming, do I do it during editing, if so where? Thank You so much for your help!

Although our eyes can’t perceive it, certain light sources give off a particular color temperature. These varying degrees of color are represented on the Kelvin scale. Tungsten bulbs burn at about 3200 degrees Kelvin, while sunlight burns at about 5600 degrees Kelvin. However, the color temperature of the sun doesn’t stay constant. It’s constantly changing as morning turns to afternoon and as afternoon turns to dusk. Our eyes can automatically compensate for this change in color temperature, but video cameras cannot. So, they need to be calibrated every time the light source changes. Otherwise, the footage can come out with an orange tint, blue tint, or even a green tint.

Calibrating a video camera to ensure correct color representation is called white balancing. Many cameras come with preset white balance settings for different shooting situations - indoor, daylight, cloudy, etc. However, conducting a manual white balance on your camera is the best way to ensure that all colors within your scene are represented correctly. There’s a great tutorial on color temperature and white balancing here. You can also read my production tip for shooting under fluorescent lights, which pose a different set of challenges.

To white balance, turn your camera’s white balance setting to manual. Then, hold a plain, white sheet of paper in front of the camera and zoom in until the paper fills the screen (make sure you hold the paper under the light source under which you will be filming). Then (this is true of most cameras with manual white balance), press and hold your white balance button until your camera confirms that a proper white balance has been set. Then, you’re ready to shoot. Just remember to re-white balance every time you change locations and lighting setups. Read this post for tips on how to adjust your white balance to a warmer or cooler tone.

While in college, I majored in film/video production and minored in art with a photography concentration. When it comes to sketching/drawing, I am capable, but by no means am I an expert. That’s why, when it comes to storyboarding my projects, I am much more comfortable writing out a shot list with simple diagrams. Drawing storyboards is just too time consuming for me.

Pre-visualization is an excellent tool for any video/film project, including marketing/promotional videos for a client. To have the ability to show a client what your vision is (rather than describe it) is a huge plus. That’s why my eyes almost popped out of my head a few months ago when I ran across a storyboarding app for the iPhone. It’s called Hitchcock and it’s from Cinemek. The app allows you to create professional storyboards by using the phone’s camera. Simply take a photo, add in camera directions, and lay it on your timeline. You can even insert music and other audio if you’d like. Once the storyboard is complete, you can export it as a pdf and email it to your client or others on your crew. Take a look at the demo below.

Hitchcock in action! from cinemek / Hitchcock on Vimeo.