Day Exteriors in harsh Daylight - Bounce

[Nicolas U Hepburn]

Hi everyone,

I was rewatching a few episodes of Lost and since exterior shots are basically what make the series, I was wondering how they dealt with filling the shadows in those high-contrast scenarios.

 

Here the sun is obviously clipping which is fine. The actors are almost silhouetted although there is some bounce  coming from below and filling in the shadows.

 

Now obviously on the singles, which also last longer on screen, they changed the light quite a bit. From the eye-light I can tell there is a big bounce filling in the right side of his face "motivated" by the sea's reflection, and the sun now is acting as a back/edge light. It seems as if they cheated the angle a bit, making him give his back to the sea to have the sun. 

 

The single on the boy seems to be more accurate to the wide shot. They brought in some negative fill.

 

In this one, you can see some blue fill on the man's face but considering how hot the sun is hitting their back, do you reckon they are still bouncing light back in?

 

Is my analysis correct? 


Here are a few more shots. I get that they're under the shade but judging by the shadows on the sand, the sun must be pretty bright and if I were to expose with my camera (Pocket 6k)for that, I don't think I would get that much detail/exposure in their faces. The single on her shows that there is some bounce coming from the bottom but I can't tell if it's artificial or if its the actual sand since it looks a bit warm. Could it be that Panavision 35mm just have that much more dynamic range or is it the actual lighting?



In this next one, from the reflection in the eye there seems to be a bounce camera left. Wrapping the sun by bouncing from the same side to act as a key I get, but if I only want to lift the shadows to get more info back, what tips do you have so that it doesn't look like a sun sandwich? I know obviously that size matters and they have budgets to just use lights able to compete with daylight.


I do have many more examples. Looking forward to reading what you think.