Dealing with direct sunlight in Sicario?

[andrewdko]

Hi Roger,

I was wondering how you like to deal with direct sunlight, specifically in the wide exterior shots in Sicario. Do you diffuse the light in any way with big frames? Are you using large bounces to fill in the shadows?

I would love to know. Thanks for your time, and appreciate all you do.

Examples:

Topic

[Stip]

I’m not Roger so I can only guess but looking at the hard shadows there doesn’t seem to have been diffusion. And I would imagine the relatively bright sand bounced the sun enough to not use any additional bounce. Obviously, I may be wrong though.

[Max A.]

This scene was discussed a lot in the old forum that unfortunately was lost. If I remember correctly, Mr. Deakins purposely wanted the harshest of direct sunlight so no diffusion was used for the scene, also I seem to remember that other than bounce light to “fill” shadows, sometimes Mr. Deakins used black clothes and negative fill to reduce the “hot-fill” coming from the light and bright floor.
But, of course, Mr. Deakins can be more precise and talk about his process for that scene, mine is only a memory I have of that scene from the old forum.

I wish you a nice day,
Max.

[andrewdko]

Thanks guys for the responses.

Ah, so the old forum is completely lost eh? Damn, that’s unfortunate. Yeah I was wondering why I couldn’t search for old topics cause I was sure this was discussed before.

[Roger Deakins]

I was using black duvetyne on the ground more often than large bounce sources, though there were some of these on some shots. It just depended on the angle of the sun etc. ect..

[andrewdko]

Roger Deakins wrote:

I was using black duvetyne on the ground more often than large bounce sources, though there were some of these on some shots. It just depended on the angle of the sun etc. ect..

Ah, I see. Thanks so much Roger!

[Author]

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