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Maybe you can use black garbage bags to control the sources more, if they are out of frame. 5-1 reflectors are pretty inexpensive, or you can get unbleached muslin from a fabric store, or use a shower curtain for diffusion.
Nice! I gripped on a short film where we had to rig Quasar tubes to a chain link fence, and we used zip ties. A bit different than rigging to a concrete wall obviously, but I thought I would just throw the tip out there.
Perhaps some stills of the look you are going for versus what you have been getting could be useful for us to break down. I don’t think there is a formula or secret per-say. A lot of it comes down to preference, experience, and what the commercial calls for. Maybe for the fill side, rather than using a light you can use a bounce board.
Typically I like to have a key that is soft and use a 6×6 Magic Cloth or 216, and will either try to double diffuse or book light it. Since you were working against an open door, you probably needed most of the output you could get from the 1200d, which prevented you from softening it more. Are you controlling your lights with floppies? That may help with the hard shadows behind talent. Also I’ve found that the more lights I had, sometimes can work against you, adding double shadows and complicating things.
Rather than bouncing off the ceiling to lift the level, have you tried going straight through diffusion on the background or bouncing?
I’ve heard of softening filters used for some beauty work, where you can use something like ProMist or a UV filter with vaseline on it to take some of the sharpness out of modern lenses. Also, for working in tight spaces, recently I bought the Aputure F22c and it’s been great for a decently soft source when working in small spaces. I often pair it with a roll of 216.
Thank you. Do you have a standard process then, when exposing film, like taking multiple readings around the set and setting the lens to an average of those, depending on what you would like?
Would I expose skin tones similarity to how I would digitally? Or should I mostly stick to slightly overexposing?
Making sure the light and diffusion is far away from the wall can help, using flags like 4×4 floppies, I’ve heard of some cinematographers taping duvetyne to the ceiling to stop any bounce light. Making the light more from the side versus frontal can help.
Also, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr-ejgcbBVE
