My last couple of blogs have all been about lighting and that is because I believe it is so important and its something that a lot of low budget film makers skimp out on. I myself have been guilty of not giving it all the attention it really needed or deserved.
Now mastering lighting conditions inside is a challenge in itself, but lighting outside – that’s a whole new ball game in itself!
Keeping in line with my love of soft lighting, I want to be able to achieve a nice soft look outside even in the daytime, even at the height of the sun’s power.
Enter the power of diffusion through the use of scrims. Interviews are pretty much head and shoulders and I’m a stickler for the rules. Below I shot 3 different sized shots, 1 at 35mm, 1 at 50 and 1 at 70mm all on my Canon C100 with my Tamron 24-70 f2.8 VC. This is my go to lens no matter what shoot I’m on and I do like a nice bit of shallow depth of field.
To achieve this look my settings were f2.8, 1/50, ISO 800, 6 Stops of ND, Wide DR 24MBPS LPCM. I shot them in Wide DR because in all honesty, speed when editing is key over LOG. Especially when I don’t have an overblown background or any harsh shadows (don’t make more work for yourself than you need to).
Showing you how this was done was 1 scrim on a boom arm which covers head and shoulders of the shot – which is all I need to light. Then to give a little bit of fill (admittedly not a lot but just enough) I’ve got another reflector, this time on the white side because a silver reflector at this time of day would just be cruel to anyone’s retinas.
That’s all for this blog. Make sure to check out the video below and to hop over to my YouTube channel.
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