From the course: Creating a Short Film: 07 Cinematography

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Using scrims

Using scrims

From the course: Creating a Short Film: 07 Cinematography

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Using scrims

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- [Instructor] Cinema lights are often very powerful, and sometimes, you'll want to tone that down a bit. We've talked about diffusing the light, but what if you don't want to diffuse it? What if you wanted to have the same light properties, the same temperature, hardness and so forth, but just want it a little bit more dim? Well, you could always get a dimmer for the light if it doesn't have one. Dimmers are usually little boxes that you plug a light into that have a level control that allows you to adjust how much power gets to the light, which dims the light. But dimmers don't work for all types of lights. Alternatively, you could just use a scrim. A scrim is a metal mesh that only decreases the power of the light, and leaves the light just as hard. Scrims come in two forms. You could put a circular scrim in the barn doors of a fresnel light, and these come a few different varieties. Single and double refer to the amount of light they reduce. Single scrims have one light reducing…

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