Blowing out the windows

[George]

Dear Roger, dear valued forum members,

I am currently planning a feature with lots of scenes shot on location in old mountain huts with small windows. I would like to achieve the feeling of harsh exteriors and dark interiors and therefore burn out the windows from time to time. I have heard about quite some different ways of trying to do this and also have seen mixed results. Putting diffusion on the windows or placing the bounce directly in front of the window so you literally look onto the muslin/ultrabounce/etc. I have also heard about blowing out the windows in post, but that does not feel like the right way to do to me.

What are your experiences with that?

Thank you all and kind regards,
George

Topic

[dmullenasc]

Lots of ways to make a window hot or burned-out… you could just light the interior at a level that the exterior view is many stops overexposed.

Or you could dirty the glass (if there is glass) and hit it with a bright light from outside. Or use a very light diffusion gel like Hampshire Frost, again, hit it with some light.

A net stretched on a frame outside a window will also help wash-out and blur details. And you can hit the net with light to wash-out the view even more. Or you could just put a frame of white outside the window and light that for a white background.

[George]

Thank you for your precious thoughts, David! I should have added, that I also have to light the rooms from the outside, as they are quite small and have low ceilings. And we should be able to move around quite a bit, not 360 degrees, but handheld and lots of long shots.

[dmullenasc]

In some ways, it’s easier for you that you want burned-out windows… because you can expose the interior mostly with natural light coming from the windows (and whatever you add) and let the view be overexposed.

You didn’t say whether the huts had glass on the windows. And if you wanted actually whited-out backgrounds or just very overexposed but with some detail.

[Author]

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