Bounce

What this is about

Bounce is the technique low-budget crews and big features both fall back on, because a white surface is the cheapest large source there is. A sheet of poly, a bounce board on a C-stand or the ceiling of the room itself turns a small unit into something metres across. Control is the weak point — reflected light spreads everywhere, so the grip department spends its time cutting the spill back off the walls with flags.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• The bounce surface becomes the source, so its size and distance to the subject decide the softness, not the lamp.
• Reflector color transfers into the light — check the ceiling and wall tones during the scout, not on the shooting day.
• Bouncing loses a lot of output; plan a bigger lamp than a direct setup with the same exposure would need.

With TillyGen

Bounce boards and their stands appear as separate entries in TillyGen's equipment list, so a soft setup is not planned as one lamp on one stand.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.