Cinematography-Theory-And-Practice

danger here is your background: since the exposure will be a coupleof stops down, it is critical that you not frame the shot so that the hotbackground behind the actor will be in direct sun and thus severelyoverexposed. (Figures 7.36 and 7.37).A variation on this is garage door light (Figure 7.38). This is openshade with the darker interior as a background. It can be both beautifuland dramatic. It doesn’t have to be an actual garage door, ofcourse; the key is that it is open shade with a darker backgroundsuch as you would have with an actor positioned right in a large openentrance such as a garage door. Also, a good deal of the light on theactor is being bounced off the surrounding landscape or buildingsand also the ground level surface in front of them, which gives thema nice underlit fill. All of these methods are simply ways of dealingwith the fact that sunlight is often too harsh and contrasty.Sun as BacklightIf all other options are unavailable, an alternative is to turn the shotso that the actor has their back to the sun. This does two things: firstof all the actor is lit by the bounce off the surroundings. In mostcases this is not quite enough, but the addition of a simple bounceboard (foamcore, beadboard, or a folding silk reflector) helps. Thisinvolves working with the director to adjust the shot. Rememberthat shots rarely exist on their own; they are usually part of an entirescene. This means that thinking it through and planning for the sunangles must be done before starting to shoot the scene. Once youhave shot the master for a scene, it is often not possible to cheat theactors around to take advantage of the sun’s position, although forsome close-ups it may be possible. It is also important to think aheadabout the sun’s movement, especially if the scene is going to take along time to shoot or there is a lunch break during filming.Figure 7.34. This grip is standing byto shake up the reflector board. Thismeans he re-aims it for every shot.The sun moves surprisingly fast andit is usually necessary to re-aim thereflector for nearly every take. Thisreflector board also has a layer ofCTO gel on it to warm up the backlight.lighting basics125