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Filed under: Cameras •Lighting •Post Production •Production •Training •

Lighting Simply for the RED

This is the first shot in the piece, and the last shot we executed. During location scouting I noticed that the main living room window faced due west, and figured that I could use that to my advantage as the day wore on. I made sure that we scheduled our biggest shot for this room, the final shot of the piece where the actor heads toward the front door, first—so that we didn’t have to block out a lot of unwanted sunlight.

For this shot, done late in the day, I used the sunlight to my advantage: we hung an 8x8 grid cloth across the front of the window and used the sunlight to create a big, soft but directional source. A silver card provided the final touch by putting a highlight into the left side of the chair arm. The background was lit by ambient light.

I like grid cloth a lot. It’s very soft and has almost no specular quality to it, which means that it yields soft light with no hard light mixed in. An example of a soft diffuser that lets some hard light through is poly silk: the fabric itself lights up and creates a large source but if you look through it toward the light you can see a substantial hot spot where the light is. That hot spot will create a hard shadow.

Sometimes I like a bit of specular light. I frequently use a 2x3 or 4x4 silk next to the lens, filling actors from the key side, because the specular light will create a nice hit in the actor’s eyes. But in this case I wanted a nice smooth solid source. Why? I’m not sure. It just felt right.

If you like shots containing plants, you’ll love the next page…

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