diagram: poor man’s process

On day 2, we were fortunate to be setting up day for day, and because of the giant frosted glass window garage door, we ended up not needing any lights!

The garage door was our key light, acting like a giant 15′ softbox because of the frosted glass windows. In order to add some shape to our talents faces, we positioned the car angled at 45° to the door. If we kept the car pointing directly at the door, the light would have been impossibly flat to work with.

By wrapping the entire passenger side of the car with negative fill, we were able to continue to add some shape to the image.

A half soft frost was doubled up and hung in front of the driver’s side window to really soften the texture on the drivers face.

We used a TV with daylight driving plates to give the appearance of movement out the rear window. Our DP taped a phone to his rear window and drove around a bit a few days prior to us shooting to get those plates.

A thanks to my grips who shook the car during every take to simulate the bumps we’d normally feel driving down the road!

The nice thing about this whole setup is that it was super efficient. We barely had to move any equipment as we switched between shots. By opening and closing the sliding door on the van and sliding the half soft frost over, we were able to adjust light quality quickly depending on where our talent was in the van.

Lastly, in order to achieve the over the hood look the DP was going for, I built him a nice little goalpost rig for that 6-figure camera setup so we could get the proper framing.

dir/prod: Chelsea Isabella
ad: Markus Essien
dp: Gabe Fermin
1st: aaron butwinick
kg: Thomas Charleston
grip: Teej Morgan
grip: Kai Hohnan
sound: Jacques de Curnou
script: Jill Coats
dit: Eric Lopushansky