Glare in the backround of an interview

Question

Problem #1)
I filmed an interview with a white sign directly behind the subject, my fist mistake, with the lights on the subject there is a bad glare on the white sign in the back round. Is there a way to tone down the glare in the background?
Problem #2)
I filmed an interview outside and the subject is too bright. How do I town down the brightness/glare from the sun on the subject without making the background to dark.
Problem #3)
I filmed an interview with a lamp in the background. The lamp didn't look so bad on the camera screen but on my computer the lamp is a white hole and your eyes are drawn off of the subject and towards this lamp. Is there a way to only tone down the brightness of the lamp and leave the subject alone?
If you can help me with any three of these problems I would very appreciate it. Thanks for your time.
Andrew

Answer 1

You can try Color Correction, Levels and various image control filters all day and never get what you think you should. Your main problem is that your exposure was established by the brightest object in the shot and those pixels are gone, totally burned out. Video has no lattitude so your blacks are also probably gone, smooshed. You might be able to pull out some shadow detail if your camera has the ability to record deep blacks as real pixels.
This is a process of either finding a magic filter and settling for what you get with one try or going deep and figuring out how to correct the mistakes form the field.
Open the manual to the pages that explain how to use and how to interpret the waveform monitor display. If you do not understand video, this will take you several hours of study, it's confusing and geeky and you cannot confuse waveforms with histograms or you can't work. The waveform is your guide to adjusting contrast, reducing white peaks, and boosting blacks.
The easiest solution, honestly, is to reshoot. Use a light meter or learn how to read your zebra stripes in the camera and disable the auto iris. Bring a reflector or lights. Videography is hard.
bogiesan