From the course: Lighting Design for Video Productions

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Working with natural light for exterior scenes

Working with natural light for exterior scenes

From the course: Lighting Design for Video Productions

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Working with natural light for exterior scenes

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For this scene, the script calls for a girl watering flowers with a white picket fence in the background. The location we had available was back lit by the sun. We could have easily moved the subject, but obviously not the fence. So we had to work from that specific angle. We were shooting at midday, and with fast moving clouds. That created changing moments of bright and flat sunlight. This is certainly not the ideal situation, but it's one we often encounter when shooting exterior scenes with natural light. First, we started by using only the rapidly changing sunlight. When exposing properly for the girl's face, the background was completely white. We couldn't even see the white fence. When exposing for the fence, the girl's face was totally black. We then added a reflector to fill in the shadows in her face and add a little sparkle to her eyes. The face was fine, but the top of the girl's head was so overexposed, that it had no detail left. So we added the screen to get rid of the…

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