Overexposure

What this is about

Clipping is the one exposure error with no repair in the grade, so the set treats it as a hard limit. The operator watches zebra at the clipping threshold while shooting; the DIT confirms on the waveform, because a single clipped colour channel can hide inside an area that still looks fine. Costume and production design are part of the fix: a garment swapped from bright white to off-white in prep saves the gaffer an hour of flagging.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Clipping is irreversible: once a channel reaches maximum, there is no detail left in the file to recover.
• One channel can clip while the other two survive, which shows up as a colour shift rather than a white patch.
• Bright but unclipped is not an error — highlights near the top with detail intact are normal in log.

With TillyGen

When TillyGen's location notes flag a bright window, the schedule reserves rigging time for gels or ND before the first setup is lit.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.