As indie filmmakers, we're used to working in tight spaces -- bathrooms, cars, your own studio apartment, so we know that, sometimes, the locations we need for our scenes just aren't conducive for simple lighting setups. Luckily, The Slanted Lens recently pulled off a little bit of cinematography acrobatics for a shoot they did inside a cave at the L.A. Zoo, and they've shared a tutorial to teach us how to use two reflectors to double-bounce natural light around a corner.
In many cases lighting is pretty straight forward, but challenging lighting situations do tend to pop up every now and again, and knowing how to approach them beforehand can save you and your project a lot of time and money. And though you may not be filming scenes inside a cave any time soon, the concept of bouncing light is still a key cinematographic move -- certainly one worth learning and practicing.
The lighting setup for The Slanted Lens' shoot is made up mostly of reflectors that bounce the natural light from the outside of the cave inside. They use a LitePanel and a light/reflector combo for fill lights, but what they do with two reflectors to double-bounce the natural light outside the cave is pretty awesome. By bouncing the light off of the hard side of one reflector and then off the soft side of the other they're able to create a great key light from natural sunlight that illuminates the inside of a cave!
Here's the lighting setup used in The Slanted Lens' shoot.
Now, check out the tutorial to find out more about the tools used, as well as the concept of double-bouncing light.
You're probably not going to have to shoot in this exact same situation, but you could come up against an obstacle like the one in the tutorial -- requiring you to double-bounce (or Indiana Jones-style bounce) light from a source that can't reach your subject.
Link: Using Double Reflectors to Light a Cave -- The Slanted Lens
[via Filmmaker IQ]
