Filming a self-duet and singer

[Peter Day]

I’m trying to film a guitar duet with myself, plus a singer, and have encountered a problem with the visuals. To illustrate this, I’ve set up three chairs in a row, and filmed myself sitting in each chair one after the other. The film is continuous and therefore the background is identical throughout. I’ve then chopped them up into left, right and centre.

In Reaper, I’ve put left on top, centre in the middle and right at the bottom. In File/Project Settings I’ve set ‘Video item visibility’ to ‘Items in lower numbered tracks replace higher’.

I’ve then attached the video processor to the top two tracks, and selected ‘horizontal wipe’. Using this, I can reveal the three images of me sitting side by side. But the central image has a lighter background than the other two. I’ve attached a jpg which shows this happening, with the outside wipes half-completed. As you can see, as the wipe proceeds the background changes, and the central figure has a lighter background than the other two, even though the background is actually identical throughout. It’s as if the centre film goes behind the other two and makes them seem darker. Is there any way round this? I’ve encountered exactly the same problem when trying to achieve the same goal in PowerDirector.

[jrk]

Strange. Are you sure the lighting was total consistent? Is the background actually the same in each take? It's quite hard to be sure, esp. If you're moving folks around on the "set". Thought of green-screening it? Or some other matte trick?

[Allybye]

Was the camera on auto exposure?
If so it could just be changes in either the light coming through the window blinds or the change in scene content.

Instead of a hard wipe can you wipe with a very soft edge? That might save having to do anything else with it such as rerecording or adjusting the video luminance on the already recorded central section.

Using a fixed exposure and consistent lighting at recording time is best but even then sometimes you need to match exposure between one recording and another hopefully with a split screen between one recording and the live.

[Peter Day]

For the example, I filmed me sitting in the three chairs one after the other with a continuous take, so the background throughout was identical. I then chopped the film into three bits to use in Reaper. I don't know how to do a soft wipe, but the difference in shade would still be fairly obvious, I think.

[karbomusic]

Are you 100% sure the camera exposure is manual and doesn't change? Because if not, you are the subject in the middle shot, and you are darker than the wall (which is the subject in the other shots)... and this will cause the camera to expose a touch lighter - even with a scene or matrix type metering, I wouldn't be surprised to see that small but obvious exposure difference.

Either way, you'd want the transition point to have at least some smoothness IMHO.