Captain’s Blowout fixer

Original footage without filters.

After applying filters.

Recently, while working on a project I made a big mistake. Recording an interview with a hot light the last thing that went through my mind was using powder on the subjects face to cut glare. Especially since she had just applied her own make-up. Powder is not something that I carry with me, but after the trouble I went through to fix this issue it is something that I will carry in my gear for now on. Setting up and conducting this interview I did not pay close attention to the way the light was falling on my subject’s face. I was more focused on what was being said. It wasn’t until later, closely reviewing my footage that my jaw dropped with shock. “Holy crap” my subject had bad highlights and looked unpleasant, sweaty. I knew that this footage wasn’t going to be acceptable. And there was no way that I was going to be able to fly back down to LA to reshoot. “How the hell am I going to fix this?” The search was on to find a filter, or a trick, anything to save my ass. I spent many hours searching the internet for “fixing hot spots in FCP 7” and a myriad of other words and phrases that might reveal a possible fix. After sifting through many links for free and paid plugins & software, forums and blog posts I found “Captain’s Blowout Fixer” originally created to fix blowout skies in video footage, it was rumored to work on hot spots on faces as well. It is free so I gave it a try. I also tried paid plug-ins trial versions. Captain’s blowout fixer worked the best. Once loaded into FCP 7 the plug-in appears under the filters menu. A pull down menu in the pallet reveals a collection of different choices and slider bars. I must admit at first it was a little overwhelming. I did have to research how to use the plug-in and what each slider did. In the end it was confusing. I resorted to experimenting with each slider and option until I came to result that I was happy with. To reach the final result I combined Captain’s Blowout Fixer with Looks Magic Bullets and the FCP 7 3-way color corrector to a satisfactory fix. In the end what I saved myself in money to avoid hiring a digital make-up artists to fix this, I lost in man hours and sleepness nights trying to figure how to solve a problem that could have easily been solved if I had an assistant double checking everything, or had a make-up artist to do what they do best. Luckily I found a plug-in that did a pretty good job, and was free.