Re: white questions

Setting the face at 70 ire is old school. With the new HD cameras that are so good at reaching into the blacks, we set faces at 45-55ire dependind on whether high key or low key. This automatically allows more detail in the highlights because you're stopped down a little more.

As far as whites, it's really a matter of on one hand not clipping the video so that it interferes with the auto circuits of home televisions and/or distorts the audio and on the other of holding detail in the white areas. When shooting white limbo's (like the eHarmony ads or the Apple PC vs. Mac commercials) the whites are at 80 ire, yet they look really white. Where you want to hold detail in whites, like a chef's jacket, so you can see the wrinkles and textures, this is where you have to be careful with the exposure.

I agree with the previous reply that zebras can be very useful in determining the exposure and where the clip occurs, but only if set to 100 ire. In the case of a face in front of a bright object, obviously the face is more important and unless the background is critical in the visual context it's ok to let it go "detail-less" by overexposure, as long as you're camera or NLE will clip it to make it "legal".