Ooops - that looks crap! Thank goodness for Final Cut

OK, so we've all made a real hash of something on a shoot. At the risk of making myself appear to be a bumbling fool, I've listed a few things that I have screwed up, and some ways I have found to correct the problem later.

Being able to fix problems in post-production is an important part of being a one-man-band reporter. If you are gathering large amounts of material in a hurry, mistakes happen.

For example, on a shoot for The Newshour, I managed to smash the XLR sockets from the side of my Z1U, rendering all external audio devices useless. Unfortunately, this was at the beginning of a day's shooting. In order not to have to call it a day, I rigged up a laptop next to each interviewee and recorded the sound from their lav into a piece of audio editing software. I then later married up the picture and sound in Final Cut, reducing noise where necessary. It was time consuming but meant the day was not a bust. It's a good example of having to think outside the box when things go wrong.

Here are some less dramatic problems that you might only notice when you get into the edit suite:

1) Wonky picture.

Here is an example of an interview I did where I was simply not careful enough to make sure the tripod was straight. You can see the result in the shot below. It's a very basic mistake.

The solution here is to use Final Cut's wireframe function to straighten the shot. Pull the picture clockwise or anti-clockwise to correct the unwanted tilt. 

In this case I lined up the edge of the blinds with the side of the screen, making sure they were exactly parallel.

You may need to zoom in on the shot just a little if you have had to make a large correction and part of the frame is now black.  On the right is the result.

A small zoom shouldn't impact your image quality too much. If it does, you can try to sharpen the picture a little. Don't overdo it because it will look grainy.

2) Shot washed out.

Here is an example of a standup shot for PBS' Judy Woodruff in Miami. It was one of those classic Florida days where the sky was gray and everything looked flat. 

In the original shot on the left, the colors were washed out and the backdrop looked a little too white.

The solution here is pretty easy. I simply used Final Cut's 3-way color correction function in Video Filters. It is my favorite color correction tool in Final Cut. I simply boosted the saturation slightly to bring out the colors, and reduced the whites to give the background a slightly less burnt-out look. Here are the before and after shots:

If you face a problem where a reporter or an interviewee has their back to a very washed out, white background, it is far better to shoot so the subject is too dark and the background isn't too blown out. This is far easier to correct then when the subject looks fine but the background is too hot.

3) No depth.

Here is an interview I shot with a University of South Florida professor in Tampa. 

The room was very small and there was no room to give the interview good depth. The solution - fake it. 

I created two layers (one layer is the backdrop shot without the interviewee in front of it) and used Final Cut's Gaussian blur function to blur it and create the effect of a shallower depth of field. The result is below.

You can't fake a depth of field with only one layer. It's not possible as far as I can see.

4) Mic hiss.

So you accidently used the auto levels function on your camera and the sound came out too low. You boost up the sound in Final Cut but you hear a hiss. Yuck. Now, I really dislike Final Cut's noise reduction functions. So I export the sound to my PC and reduce the noise using Adobe Audition. I then export an .aiff file and reimport into Final Cut. If anyone knows of an Mac application that can do this as well as Adobe Audition, I would love to hear about it.

These are just a couple of things that can go wrong - believe me there are many more. If you have any disasters you want to share, and ways you fixed them in post-production, please share.