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An oft-heard expression is “Don’t worry – we’ll fix it in post”. Post- production techniques are invaluable, but they do not invalidate another often repeated axiom – “Garbage in, garbage out.” And, in the case of live production, the results are immediately obvious to your audience … for good or for bad.
For these reasons and many more, it’s important to control the visual quality of your work all the way through the production pipeline. Adequate lighting, good cameras, and high quality connections are critical, but there are other things to consider.
Human vision is remarkably adaptable. In one study, participants equipped with inverting lenses initially
saw everything upside-down. After a few days, people reported
that things appeared right-side-up again.
Even when things are
dramatically wrong our brains compensate to a
remarkable degree. Have you ever looked at a television in a store without noticing anything untoward, and then realized that the colors on another unit nearby looked much better?
This built-in tolerance makes it difficult for us to judge whether the blacks in our video productions are really black –or just dark gray; whether reds are purple or tinged with a slight greenish caste, and so on. What we really need is a reference for comparison – just as we find it easier to pick the best-looking display from a row of television sets on a store shelf.