Moonlight Interior Help

Hello Sir Roger!

First of all, thank you for providing this forum. I have learned immensely from it, as well as from your work.

A scenario I recently came up against that stumped me was a night-time interior in a small house where we had to film in the day for logistical reasons. We had to block out all the windows, but I wanted to try to get some kind of moonlight shafts coming through, and we could not really figure out a good way of creating that effect in the situation. We built a tent outside the window to block the light, but because of that, we could not move the lights very far back. A panel light didn’t give the effect of beams at all, and point lights we had were either too narrow or made unnatural-looking shadows due to the placement.

I have been trying to figure a way to achieve a more natural effect in that scenario, but it seems to me that moving the lights farther away may be the only answer. Maybe a panel light that is “harder”, or perhaps bouncing a super strong fresnel into a bounce could work? I want to do some testing but also wanted to see if you had any wisdom to share.

Thank you!

-Jeremiah