I use Broll footage for shots like this. You might get close but is close good enough? Broll has saved my bacon several times, I always try to get as much footage as I can you just never know when it will come in handy. Plus the time saved in trying this and that is huge...Edd

SussexJohn:

My shot is of a speaker standing against a marque (white tent) wall which is backlit by the sun, but the speaker is in a poorly lit spot so is very underexposed.  My current attempts at colour correction result in a grainy image of the speaker, and an overexposed background.

Two questions in one - what techniques do other use to correct a very underexposed shot - e.g. someone standing in very low light

and

Is there a way of fixing the background in one version of a clip and the speaker in another version and then combining the two versions?

If I could understand the solutions to these situations, I would make a big step forward in my work.