Using Reflectors:

Sidebar: A History of Ingenuity

Part of the heritage of cinema is the tireless inventiveness of its practitioners. With few iron-clad rules dictating equipment and techniques, the film industry has evolved as a logistics and problem-solving pressure cooker, with roots reaching back to the Renaissance painters. “When doing still-life portraits, painters would often go outside and stretch muslin over their subjects to get soft light,” says Stephen H. Burum, ASC. “When photography first started in the 1830s and 1840s, they had studios with big, glass ceilings and walls that faced north, allowing them the same kind of consistent light; they would seat people there and take very long exposures. If they wanted to manipulate light, they used large, black panels, or white muslin that they could pull over the top or the sides to create different lighting effects. When the movie industry started up in the early 1900s, filmmakers basically borrowed from the same traditions.”

Burum points out that early filmmakers used either glass studios or studio sets that could turn on big Lazy Susans, enabling them to point the studios towards the sun. “The most famous of these was the one Thomas Edison built in New Jersey called The Black Maria. Also, filmmakers often built their sets on platforms so that they were shooting south, placing everything in backlight so that they could then put out reflectors to bring light back into the set to get an exposure.”

On these “stages,” early film practitioners experimented with an array of reflecting materials available at that time. “They’d get a piece of 4-by-8-foot plywood, paint it white, and lean it against a post to reflect light back at their scene,” Burum details. “They also used mirrors if they wanted a harder light or needed more exposure. They soon found that big mirrors were too heavy to move around and tended to break easily, so they began using the ferrotype tin, which is basically a large piece of chromed metal.

“Ferrotype tins were originally made as a photo finishing tool to get glossy prints, they were made in different sizes, so filmmakers would have them framed up to use as reflectors,” he continues. “However, sometimes the light they created was too hard, so they’d take a ball-peen hammer and bang them so that the light would be softer; they called those ‘dipples.’ The only problem with propping any of those reflectors on the ground was that the light was coming from down low, and in most situations that looks unnatural and is hard on the actor’s eyes. It was therefore decided that reflectors should be elevated, so crews built parallels and set the reflectors up higher, angling them to catch the sun.”

As cinema continued to advance and film sensitivities charged toward double-digit ASAs, the need for softer, subtler bounce and reflecting sources became apparent. “The early filmmakers then decided to take a big piece of muslin and other fabrics in frames and use those to reflect light,” says Burum. “Those frames were usually quite large, so they’d lean the frames against two poles. Sign painters leaf was applied to 4’ x 4’ pieces of plywood for a soft yet punchy effect; both silver and gold were much in favor. They eventually came up with a sort of paint-easel configuration to support the smaller mirror and tin reflectors. Finally, the collapsible stands-and-yokes system we use today became standard.

“This is also why filmmakers came to California — there was plenty of sunshine most of the time!”