Removing a Shadow

[Patrick Gantry]

I'm making a short film which calls for a shot of a person's shadow disappearing. Both the shadow and the person are in the shot. I know that you cannot truly remove a shadow without removing the source light (which I cannot do because it has to light the person). My idea is to throw some light onto the shadow itself, to make it dimmer. If I make it dim enough, it will not be exposed. The problem is exposure. The subject needs to be shot at an f/2.8 or f/4.0, but the shadow needs to have as small an aperture as possible. If I put more light on the subject, it only makes the shadow darker, so I really can't close down any farther. I've experimented with masking to shoot the shadow side of the frame and the subject side at two different apertures. I was wondering if anyone else has any ideas. I'm shooting on 16mm Vision2 200T.

 

[ralck]

One thought would be if the camera isn't moving, could you film it twice with the person and then without the person, then cut the without part into where the shadow is?
Sort of the idea of where they film a person twice on two sides of the frame and then put them together to be a clone/twin of the person.

I'm not sure if the shadow and person are easily separated in the frame like that, but might be worth a try?

Of course, I'm not sure how your editing it, since this is a lot easier on a digital environment than film (are you converting to a digital format to edit?).

 

[Patrick Gantry]

Yes, it will converted to digital files and edited on FCP. I believe that using filming it twice at two different apertures is the way to go. Thanks.