Direct Sunlight

[kaos1000]

Mr. Mullen,
In my lighting studies, I have noticed that, in direct sunlight exteriors, some DP's will create shade to remove the harsh shadows, and some will put the subjects back to the sun and (I am presuming) bounce light back in to handle the contrast/shadow issue.......

What are the pros/cons of each approach?............

is this purely an artisic decision?

thank you very much for your input on this.


kaos

 

[Lazlo]

I'll be interested to see what Mr. Mullin has to say, but I think it is a purely artistic decision. You can't really STUDY something like that, or you probobly shouldn't. You should take a camcorder out and put it on a tri-pod or something, and film yourself or someone else from these different angles so you can see what they look like. I've been shooting a lot lately, and I've found that books can only take you so far. Its one thing to have the knowledge, and quite another to apply it. I'm having trouble applying what I know. That's why I recommend you get a head start on that aspect and you'll be way ahead.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hopefully the reasons are dictated by the story and the artistic effect you want to create, but the truth is that there are a lot of practical reasons, mainly dealing with time-of-day continuity.

The sun changes position and color all day long, so if you have a single scene that will take all day to shoot, or a couple of days to shoot, you don't want too obvious a direction to the sunlight because it won't match in all the shots. So it may help to shoot the master when the location is shaded (by a building, let's say) and then when the sun moves overhead, you start to shade the area with a large silk or something.

Or it may be simply that you shot the master in the morning under the current "June gloom" overcast conditions and by the time you moved to the close-ups, the sun has come out and now you are silking it to match the earlier shots.

It can work the other way as well -- if for artistic effect, you want to sunlight effect, you may start out lighting the overcast shots to look like the sun is backlighting the actors and then hope for the real sun to eventually come out.

Another issue is when the scene is supposed to look late afternoon with the sun out but low in the sky, so you silk earlier scenes and light or use reflectors to create the effect of a lower sun.

If the story does not suggest one type of weather or time-of-day condition, you sometimes go with what nature gives you and simply work on matching that throughout the day. It's often a good idea not to get too clever trying to alter what nature is giving you.

I did a scene outside in a basketball court area and it was a nightmare to shoot because the director wanted most of the scene covered by a 360 degree pan between four people passing a ball between them in a circle. So there was no way to light or silk or do anything but hold a white card out and do an f-stop pull as we panned from full sun to full backlight and inbetween. And then ON TOP OF THAT, clouds rolled in and out and we went from overcast to full sun sometimes in the same take. Can't say it was my best-looking scene... I would have been luckier if it were an overcast day.