Shooting outdoors in bright sunlight is always a lighting challenge. It is recommended to
use an overhead diffuser to reduce and soften the hard sun light, but setting up a stable
overhead diffuser outdoors is another challenge. If the location is windy or the weather
is producing wind gusts, overhead diffusion is very difficult. Not only is it difficult to keep
the thing from blowing away, a little wind on a fabric diffuser can produce unwanted
noise.
In this Red Shoe Film outdoor commercial video we were lucky that the wind was
manageable. All six subjects were close head shots, so we used an ALZO Easy Frame
Diffuser supported by 2 ALZO Studio Booms. One of the booms attached to the Easy
Frame stand mount, the other boom arm used a clamp attached to the Easy Frame. We
set boom lengths to about 50% so that we could reposition the diffuser by simply sliding
the boom arms together with the diffuser. This arrangement perfectly positioned the
ALZO Easy Frame diffuser without having the boom stands in the shot. We also
adjusted the angle of the diffuser as the sun lowered in the sky by lowering the sun side
boom arm.
We secured the entire boom arrangement with every sand bag we owned, and although
there was some wind gusts, the entire overhead arrangement stayed put and produced
only a minimal sound.
To add some face fill light to the subjects we added 2 ALZO 794 lights clamped to the
camera tripod. It all worked well and the 4 hour shoot was very successful.
ALZO Easy Frame Diffuser Reflector in Action
Model facing the light through the diffuser
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