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Polarizors only kill reflections at a specific angle and besides, you generally want the exposure at night to capture low-level practical sources in the background, you don’t want to use a filter that reduces your exposure. You have to first think of it as if there were a mirror there instead of a window, you want to be at angles to it that only reflect things that belong in the shot, so if you need light in a certain area, you work with the set dresser to get practicals where you need them. Then when you do have to shoot more directly into the glass, and the camera & dolly is reflected, you have to hide them with black, maybe black on the wall behind them and black on the dolly or tripod, black on anything bright on the camera, cover any LED lights with black tape, crew wears black, flag the light off of them, etc. And keep in mind that you may see in reflection where your black area begins on a flat wall so it has to be done neatly unless that whole area is flagged off from light.
No, the colorist shouldn’t alter the color and exposure to neutral as a starting point, they should start with what the cinematographer created. If the scene had an 18% grey card in the shot under light that was intended to be of normal exposure and neutral color in the scene, sure… but that never happens!
Now I’m talking about the coloring the final cut. Sure, a test with a grey card or scale in it where the cinematographer says “time to grey card or scale”, especially when the test is comparing multiple types of cameras, etc. then yes.
In the days of film, I’d shoot a grey card or scale at the head of a scene and tell the dailies colorist to time for the card so that they would know what the neutral starting point was to judge my footage — otherwise if my footage was deliberately orange or blue, etc. they might correct it back to neutral without any reference frame. But generally that approach isn’t done with digital since we have some sort of LUT as a starting point for dailies and monitoring.
