Bounce Cards and Reflectors

You don't need a truckload of lights to illuminate your scene. A common and easy solution for shedding more light on your subject is to use a bounce card or reflector (Figure 4.7). These are either pieces of cardboard, cloth, or wood colored white, gray, or silver that are used to reflect light into shadowy areas. You can buy inexpensive flexible reflectors that twist into a compact circle for storage. You could also create your own reflectors white poster board covered with aluminum foil on one side, for example.

Figure 4.7. A bounce card can be anything that reflects and directs light. In this case, a piece of foam board is being put to good use.

Have someone hold the reflector, or mount it on something, and aim its reflection as you would with a fill light.

Tips

• Bounce light onto a person's face, but don't bounce it into their eyes. Yeah, it's a mean thing to do, but more importantly (for our purposes, anyway), it makes him squint, which hides the eyes, which are often the most compelling part of a person being interviewed.

• iMovie includes an effect for adjusting the brightness and contrast in a movie clip, but it won't fix a poorly lit scene. In fact, cranking up the brightness often washes out the image, because the setting is applied evenly throughout the frame. See Chapter 13 to learn how to apply effects in iMovie.