Best Practices: Shiny Boards

Resurfacing a shiny board with a heavy duty, high-reflective mylar

It's spring. I've been using the good weather to catch-up on maintenance. I recently recovered my shiny boards or 4x4' reflectors. Shiny boards are a tool as old as Hollywood. They have a soft and hard side with a brake for locking the board's tilt angle. They are a valuable tool to have on any grip truck.

Here's a before & after; an old board on the left and a refinished one on the right. It's a big improvement!

One of my earliest memories as a young, green, grip was using shiny boards. The key grip showed me how to set them up: mount the board in a combo stand; point 1 leg directly away from you and set the board at the same angle; put a 35 pound shotbag on your shoulder; and then, using the leg pointing away from you, tilt the board back onto your shoulder, balancing the reflector and stand. You can walk a long way with the shiny board like this was. When you get to where you need to setup, you are ready to go. You have the reflector in a stand with a shotbag.

One shotbag is normally plenty because you generally keep one grip with each shiny board to keep them trimmed. As the sun moves, the board needs to be adjusted. It moves more than you think. A good grip keeps an eye on how the board's light looks and keeps it adjusted between takes.

Board that are not in use, should be tabled. This is positioning the board in a flat, horizontal position. This minimizes wind pressure making it less likely to tip over.

We call them 4x4' shiny boards or reflectors but the actual dimension are 42x42" .

Best practices are to keep shiny boards in good conditon with a good hard side and soft side. Boards need to be routinely resurfaced.

I surprised with how often I work off of other rental truck and see not best practices: boards with poor reflective surfaces; boards that do not have a true soft and hard side; boards without working tilt brakes; boards that are not real shiny boards, e.g. lack a tilt brake or sometimes even a yoke, it's just a shiny board; boards that are not 42x42"; etc.

PS: A variation of the shiny boards are one with mirrors. These can be super useful. One of the best uses is the ricochet. Sometime you need a shiny board where the sun cannot light it (or the angle is too severe). Place the shiny board where you need it, but instead of the sun directly lighting it, you use a mirror board to catch the sun (or whatever light) which then lights the shiny board. It's a great trick.

PPS: Years ago I worked as the gaffer on commercials for a great, family-run, theme park called Holiday World. I was gaffer & key grip. To the little production company, it was the same position!

I worked on these commercials for years. We always used available light on sunny days. If it wasn't sunny, we would never shoot!

I asked for HMIs a few times but was always told no. The park was generally open. They didn't want to run electric distro in an open park.

My package of "lights" was typically a half-dozen shiny boards, 2-4x4' mirrors, and a grip package including overhead frames with diffusion like 1/2 soft frost and bounces like ultra-bounce.

I learned a lot about lighting with shiny boards. You are reflecting the sun so you have a super bright source that is always color correct. The commercials looked great.

As you often see with production companies, even though they have been doing great work for a client, there are changes with the management and the production company loses the client.

That is what happened with Holiday World. The owner Will Koch tragically died. (Will was often in the commercials in a homespun, unassuming way. He was always friendly and pleasant to work with. He is missed.) Then a dispute over ownership began in the family. When it was all settled, the media director we worked with for years was gone. (He was awesome.) Then the production company I worked for lost the contract.

It's sad. A company that worked hard for them for many years delivering a great value for their advertising dollars was fired for no reason.

As a footnote to this story, I worked as an electrician on a huge commercial there a year or so later. It was a large crew with a large equipment order. They had to have spent more in 1 day than my old company charged for the season. The shoot was a disorganized mess. When I saw the commercial it was not as good as the ones we used to shoot with a small crew and available light.

Here are a few old pictures I found of Holiday World shoots: