By The Rev. John Jackman and Bruce A. Johnson, September 9, 2004
Summer weather is great for swimming pools and barbecues, but presents two drawbacks for production work: heat and harsh noontime light. We don't have any solutions for the heat, but we do have some solutions for harsh summer sunlight.
Summer sunlight produces excessive contrast and annoying shadows. You have a light source that spends most of the day too high in the sky to provide aesthetic lighting for an interview. But the sun will not still its course just because you have to shoot an interview at 11:00 a.m.
Modern broadcast cameras with digital signal processing provide some measure of mitigation. You can use auto-knee (what Sony calls DCC, or Dynamic Contrast Control) to knock down highlights a bit, and black stretch to boost the darker shadows into an acceptable range. Although these features may-and we emphasize may-let you create a properly exposed picture within legal limits, these technical marvels don't change the fact that your subject's eyes are hidden in dark, inky shadows and her nose caret (the yucky triangular shadow under the nose that runs across the mouth to the chin-very local news).
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| A reflector on an exterior shot can improve an image's look immensely by adding fill light to a subject's face. But the light can be hard on the talent's eyes.
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To set up a professional and aesthetic shot, you need a method of rearranging the existing sunlight. There are basically two tools to accomplish this rearrangement. The reflector and the scrim (or butterfly, taken from butterfly netting) are two tools you can use to rearrange that sunlight. A reflector can either cast fill light into a subject's face or can be used as a key light.
It doesn't matter whether you're using a circular folding fabric-and-hoop unit, a sheet of foam core, or the rigid 4 x 4-foot reflectors used in the film business-a reflector can dramatically improve an image. But reflectors are pretty hard on the talent's eyes.
Bruce has his talent close their eyes and then face the sun before they get hit with the reflector. This lets their pupils contract before being exposed to the reflected light. Make sure to warn talent not to look toward the reflector, and keep it far enough off-axis from the camera so that it isn't in the center of their sight lines.
Another approach is to soften the sun's intense light with diffusion fabric. This is usually done by stretching artificial silk or other semitranslucent white fabric over a frame, mounting the frame on stands, and placing the whole assembly between the sunlight and the talent. This setup is generally known as a butterfly; if the frame has dark translucent fabric on it, it is often called a scrim. Both fabrics slightly reduce the intensity of the sunlight (usually 1/4 stop to 1/2 stop) and diffuse the light. The result is a subject bathed in softer light and an image with reduced contrast.
In today's market, you can find several brands and configurations of butterfly kits, ranging in size from small 48 x 48-inch frames to gigantic 20 x 20-foot frames. The biggest frames are usually found on a lighting truck and with a full crew, so we'll stick to discussing the smaller units (4 to 6 feet square).
The venerable Scrim Jim from Westcott (www.fjwestcott.com) is available in several sizes and with 1/4-, 3/4-, and 1 1/4-stop fabric. A 6 x 6-foot Scrim Jim kit with several rags (fabric covers) will set you back about $700. Matthews Studio Equipment (www.msegrip.com) makes a number of frames and a huge variety of fabrics for use on those frames. The Matthews frames are a staple of the film industry and are more durable than some other brands, but that durability comes at the expense of higher weight and cost. A 6 x 6-foot Matthews frame kit and a couple of rags costs a little under $1000. A less-expensive option is the Photoflex LitePanel (www.photoflex.com). A 39 x 72-inch frame bundled with both reflective and diffusion fabrics can come in at well under $400.
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| By combining a butterfly to diffuse harsh sunlight, a white reflector for a key, and a second gold reflector as a kicker, you can get a balanced image in bright summer sun.
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As with most lighting gear, diffusion screens don't require rocket science. Handy folks can certainly roll their own from PVC or some sort of pipe and a locally available fabric such as white organza. The trick is to engineer a reliable method of mounting your creation on light stands. In addition, you need to be handy with both pipe and a sewing machine because you'll need long, straight seams along your rags. And a home-built unit sacrifices easy assembly and well-engineered adjustable mounting mechanisms.
You'll need to add some of your own practical items to a diffusion kit: heavy twine and light-duty tent stakes. These fabric-and-frame gizmos are essentially large sails; the slightest breeze can produce spectacular unplanned motion. Unless you are taping in a studio or on a perfectly calm day, you need to tie down the butterfly with the twine and stakes.
Bruce remembers working a New York City morning show remotely at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center in Orlando, FL. A 20 x 20-foot butterfly had been erected to lower the light level on the hosts. The winds, quite calm at first, slowly began to pick up as the show progressed. Grips piled more and more sandbags on the legs of the stands. Soon, grips, production assistants, and just about anyone else off-camera got hastily recruited to keep the butterfly from flying into the Epcot lagoon. By the time the show ended, the butterfly had taxied for takeoff several times.
In practice, a butterfly is only half of the solution. A butterfly won't do anything about the level of light falling on the great outdoors behind the subject. A butterfly by itself generally results in a nicely exposed subject and an overexposed background.
We've seen several recent national commercials that exhibit this problem. One of the commercials is for a life insurance company and features a family in the woods camping. In the background, we see overexposed Mom and kids putter-ing around the tent while well-exposed Dad in the foreground talks about the great deal he got on insurance. What was the crew thinking?
What they should have been thinking was either, "Why don't we put a net behind the talent?" or, "How can we get a bit more light under the scrim?" At Bruce's Epcot shoot, the set under the butterfly was lit with 5000-watt HMI lights. Another option is to do under-the-butterfly lighting with reflectors. At the minimum, a silver reflector shining key light into the subject's face lets you expose both background and foreground properly.
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| Carefully positioning your subject in relation to the sun can help you achieve proper exposure on the subject and still have the background a stop or so darker.
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Just because you're outside, don't forget the basic lighting techniques you use in a studio. Another reflector added as a kicker from the rear can greatly improve many situations.
Here's a method of setting up an outdoor interview that hits all of the marks. On the subject's face, use a key light that lights the eyes and provides that all-important glint in the pupil. Use enough fill light to prevent the picture from looking like film noir. The background should be about a stop lower than the subject in order to focus the viewers' eyes on the subject of the interview. This isn't a difficult setup, and the steps are simple.
Find a location where the sun can act as a backlight or kicker on your subject. In this orientation, the angle of the sun will place in shadow the background (building, trees, whatever). Place the butterfly between the sun and the subject. Then use a reflector as a key light, placed slightly above the subject's face and off to one side.
If you've positioned the subject so the sun is acting as a kicker, the reflected key light comes from the opposite side. That is, if the sunlight is hitting the right side of the subjects from the rear, then the key should be positioned to shine into the left side of the face.
If your background is an open field, this "shadowed side of the building" approach doesn't work, but you can still get a nice picture in summer sun by using the same general technique. And then you can get back to the barbecue.
You can make your own workable butterfly without too much work. It won't have the finish or features of a professional butterfly, but it can work. Building the frame is simple. The tough parts are fashioning an adjustable light-stand attachment and fastening the fabric to the frame. Here is an outline of the basic approach.
For any frame over 2 x 2 feet, you will need two light-stand attachments, one for each of two parallel sides of the frame. For each attachment, find tubing that will fit on your light stand and cut a section about 3 inches long. One inch down from each end of the section, drill a 1/4-inch hole and a matching hole in the butterfly frame.
With good epoxy, glue a 1/4-inch fender washer on the outside of the frame and the facing piece of the mounting tube. The fender washers provide friction to keep the frame angled where you set it. Connect with a 1/4-inch bolt that's long enough to go through the whole assembly with about 1/2 inch extra. Put a regular 1/4-inch washer and a wing nut on the bolt. Repeat on the other side of the frame.
For the fabric, use white organza and hem it on all sides. Double hemming is recommended. You can sew tabs of hook-loop fastener (e.g., Velcro) or install grommets in the hem and use heavy twine to tie the fabric to the frame. Using the Velcro or twine approach lets you adjust the fit of the fabric to the frame. You can also sew tabs or sleeves of heavier fabric to the sides of your fabric, but those approaches require careful sizing to ensure a taut fit on the frame.
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