What can I do about this ND filter problem for a scene shoot?

[Mark Suszko]

Light the talent with HMI’s or additional sunlight bounce, to reduce the contrast ratio and allow you to bring the sky back down.

Or, optimize exposure for the scene and people, and let the sky blow out …and replace it in post. That happens a lot more often than people realize.

Adding shutter can work like adding ND… up to a point, then you get motion artifacts.

Substitutes or quasi-substitutes for ND filters include ND gels, scrims, and black panty hose stretched over the lens or better, the back of the lens.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, but we are just shooting outside, and I wasn’t able to get all the equipment I wanted. I don’t have a bounce, or ND gels or anything that can help compensate.

As for letting the sky blow out, and replacing it in post, what I do about people’s skin being too bright though?

[Ryan Elder]

Especially since once the skin is overexposed to a certain level, it can’t be brought back down after.

[Todd Terry]

This is a non-problem with an easy solution. You can certainly, of course, get ND (or any other filters) in any size imaginable delivered by the next morning to just about any location in the world from the usual vendors… B&H Photo, Adorama, Filmtools… any of the usual pro cine sources.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

Bounce cards are cheap: a roll of aluminum foil attached to foam core boards from the dollar store. Or just the white foam core itself, at shorter distances. Or a mirror. Or a sheet of rigid, foil-faced insulation foam from a home improvement center, that’s 20 bucks. You can’t say you can’t afford bounce cards; that’s too easy.

You can moderate the light on the talent by flying some white cloth overhead… if you can’t afford real diffusion fabric, there’s a look-alike material sold in the gardening section of home-improvement stores by the 50-yard roll, much cheaper. Or go to a sewing store or even Walmart and get some white organza, maybe a dollar a yard…. Make a rudimentary frame from plastic pipe or wood strips and attach it to some stands, or to two stepladders, whatever’s handy… to make a shady spot with diffused light for the talent to stand in. You could hang netting off the back of the overhead scrim to bring the background down a stop or two. Again, sourcing the cloth from the same places.

Use your creativity when you don’t have money.

Expose for the person and their skin to look correct, and let the sky blow out if you have to. Then replace it later. A very blown-out sky lets you get help from a luma key to replace the sky. Better yet, adjust your framing and camera angles to avoid the sky in the first place.

[Blaise Douros]

I’m starting to wonder if this guy is just trolling.

[Todd Terry]

Yeah beginning to think the same.

This ND story makes no sense to me. Filters are readily available. And if they are a must-have, why try to figure out a way to half-ass it without them?

Maybe it’s not important, after all it’s only the film’s principal photography.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Blaise Douros]

I mean, in what universe can you not just go online and buy the dang ND filters you need? Perhaps, like Ulysses Everett McGill in “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” he finds himself in the position of “Well ain’t this place just a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!”

[Todd Terry]

I fully understand, because I, myself, am a Dapper Dan man.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, but what if in two days the sun is so bright, that I can’t expose for the skin to be correct? This happened on a shoot before where I had no ND filters and the sun was so bright that I couldn’t get the exposure down enough for the skin to be correct, and it was still overexposed, even at the camera’s lowest setting, without an ND filter.

What then?

As far as getting fabric to hang over the actor goes, that only works if the actor is standing still. This scene involves the actor having to do a lot walking and running, so he will run past the fabric in no time though. So I am not sure if it will work though.