Jay: Hi, I'm Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens, we're out in the desert, we're in Bombay
Beach taking some pictures of a spaceman in abandoned buildings because it's just
a lot of fun working with direct sun which is always fun to do.
You can get some really interesting results working with direct sun.
Let's get started and see what we can do!
That's good Lars.
Kirk: It's hot in here.
Jay: Some guy is gonna pull up, "Get outta my house.'
So we're out here in Bombay Beach.
It's a city off of Salton Sea and way south in California.
A lot of people left this area, and they just...they didn't...they don't pay the taxes on the houses.
The houses eventually go back to the government or the bank whomever I guess.
While Lars munches on his Nutter Butter's in the background, I'm taking pictures of
the astronaut here.
You know lighting here is pretty easy because it's basically right over my shoulder.
If I'm not careful my shadow gets in it but it lights him, it lights his face, it's very
broad.
I mean you can work in direct sunlight pretty easily, but you've got to use it almost like
a key light.
So this is like an overhead straight in.
It's going to just light him up and is a little flat but overall it doesn't look terrible
on this especially because it's turned the building's turned just a little bit so I get
a bit of shadow on the side of the building.
But I use my tool shift lens so when I tilt them in this flat situation, it's a flat surface
I can throw this way out of focus on the right-hand side and be able to shift that plane of focus
so it's going not straight to the camera like this but it shifts like that.
And that sends the focus off those two different directions, allows the stuff that's really
close to me on this right side to become very out of focus.
And you can see the trailer, it just kind of isolates him this doorway.
He's already isolated because of the door and now we isolated by focus which is really
an easier thing to do with the tilt shift lens.Now you can do this effect in Photoshop,
but you can also do it with a tilt shift lens.
So letting them fall partway into shadow and partway we're going to reflect a little bit
light up in his face and that looks pretty cool.
Lars is putting a reflector in there.
That's opening up his face which is cool.
So Kurt come right up to this glass here, back up a little bit right there.
Lars: I would say 50% of a cinematographer, photographer does.
50% of their job is good locations, and if you have an interesting location either our
production or design or this natural beauty here, it makes our jobs a lot easier.
You can drive around till you find something or you can hire some great people.
This was very lucky and very free for us and it's really cool.
Jay: So I've just turned around completely, flipped around and looking directly into that
sun back there and got him in the doorway as a silhouette it looks fabulous.
Lars has bounced a little bit of light on the front of him it just gives us a little
bit of something on his suit.
His suit wants that light because it's so reflective, anyway.
So it's down there, I can see the corner of this couch, I wanted to go out of focus so
I just tilt the lens over.
Shifted my plane of focus not going this way away from me but I tilted it this way so I
could throw my spaceman into focus and now all out of focus starts to build this direction.
So it's the ability to change the focus plane.
I have a great lesson on that.
All about tilt shift lenses.
So check that out.
So using direct harsh sun is you basically place it almost like you would any key light.
If you get it behind you and up, it's going to look a lot like a butterfly light.
You get to the sides can be a split light.
You say, "Oh, well that's the worst situation."
If you keep working it, looking at it and moving it around and augmenting, eventually,
you're going to find something that starts to work.
Good photographer, good DP will find something that works eventually.
You keep working it till you just find something interesting.
We did some silhouettes in here that were very interesting.
We did some of the foreground, just that direct sun so its just a matter of keep working it
till it finally does work.
Keep those cameras rolling, keep on cooking.
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I'm ready for my close up Mr. DeMille and while I'm doing my close-up, why don't you
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