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Hello Roger and all friends on the forum! I’m very sorry to have so many questions these days. But it really excites me to get answers from people like you and Mr. Mullen! I really want to know everything! I would like to ask everyone. What are some good ways to control soft light? I know that Roger is very fond of using soft reflected light for illumination. But if it is not well controlled, it will illuminate everything on the screen! It will make the picture very ugly! When I browsed your previous Q&A, you said that you would use something like a louver, similar to a grid. Can you ask about the specific operation method? Especially when shooting scenes with a large shot size. If there is no good shielding, the picture will look bright everywhere. I use these pictures from “Empire of Light” as a reference. When the characters are perfectly illuminated, the tables, backgrounds, and sofas around the characters are not illuminated in the same way. What did you do at that time? I also want to hear Mr. Mullen’s method of controlling light and shadow, and from everyone! Thanks again to this website and everyone! Sorry, English is not my first language!
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You may do an internet and/or forum search if you don’t get a reply, your question has been asked and answered quite often
You control soft light through placement/distance (i.e. fall-off rate), flagging (including light control tools), and to some degree, art direction (a dark wall will need less flagging that a light one.)
There are pros and cons to using grids in front of lights. They are fine if the subject is centered on the soft light but they may fall-off too quickly as they move forward and back. And if it is an overhead soft light, often you want the subject to be nearer to one edge so that they are more 3/4 frontal top lit, so a grid would be cutting off too much light that is ahead of their position. A skirt might be better in this case.
Roger has talked in the past about using vertical flags as louvers rather than use a grid.
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