Establishing a reverse keylight, against a wall with no windows

[Anton Leo Felixberger]

Hello colleagues, I have a question and I hope someone can give me a tip: we are shooting a film in a very beautiful location, an old mansion with wonderful wood-panelled walls and big rooms.
In any case, our shooting direction is against the wooden wall. It´s a seated dialogue between two people, daytime. In the wooden wall is no window.
What do you do in such a case if you want to establish a reverse keylight? Simply simulate a fake window above the edge of the picture?
I would take a floor lamp and put it in the picture but the director doesn't want "warmer" light on the faces. In the picture you can see the shooting direction and the wooden wall.
I am happy about any input.

Thank you so much and sorry for my english.....

 

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I would light from the window direction so one person is front-lit and the other person is backlit.

I'd try to pull the couches out enough from the wall so that the frontlit person can be keyed over the upstage shoulder of the backlit person.

With a white ceiling like that, you can justify the backlit person having some dim soft fill from overhead.

Or you could add a very hot slash of hard sunlight on the lower half of the fireplace that hits the corner of the couch and bounces fill back into the face of the backlit person more from below.

Crosslighting the couch from the top of the fireplace wall might make the scene look artificially lit though if you don't really go wide I guess you could say there's a window up there.

[David Mullen ASC]

You see here that I keyed her over the upstage shoulder of the backlit person. His face is filled in by the backlight bouncing off of things on his desk. There is also a hallway window on the right that is adding some light to his face. But the main thing is that the window light is dominant.

[David Mullen ASC]

[Anton Leo Felixberger]

Hey David, thank you very much for your detailed and sympathetic reply. In fact, I have already thought about it, also because it would fit very well narratively. One person seems unapproachable at first (person with darker face). My concern is, what do I do with the close ups? Then I would shoot directly against the hot window (keylight), right? Your examples look terrific good of course but did you work with overs in these scenes?

19 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

You see here that I keyed her over the upstage shoulder of the backlit person. His face is filled in by the backlight bouncing off of things on his desk. There is also a hallway window on the right that is adding some light to his face. But the main thing is that the window light is dominant.

19 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You control the brightness of the background in whatever is the best method. You can also just ND gel the window area that is within the frame.

[Anton Leo Felixberger]

Yes, or I take blinds, cover the windows with diffusion and light a HMI through it (similar to what you did in the example image).... then the reverse shot doesn't burn out totally and the light source is explained (the window). Thank you very much.