Painters Drop Cloth

When setting up the lighting for some of the scenes in Mental house I used the natural light coming through a window as my key. There are positives and negatives to doing this. The big negative is it can be very hard to control and will change as time passes through the day.

For the closing scene of the film we had a shot of the Jesus character looking out the window and turning to address the other patients. The lighting on him was almost entirely provided from the window and was originally too harsh. We wanted lighting on Jesus to be soft to make his character comforting so I came up with a simple solution.

I cut a piece of painters drop cloth and taped it to the window. Painters drop cloth works very well for diffusing lights and I have used it frequently to tape on windows that are providing too much light. It softens the harsh light coming through the window and helps bring a smoother feel characters faces. You just have to be careful that it is not seen in the shot.

Painters drop cloth taped to the window in front of Jesus

Signed,
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