Having the background dimmed/desaturated with a subject in the foreground clear.

[sheeep]

So, I'm trying to think of ways to shoot one particular shot. The way I picture it, the person in the foreground would be fully lit and fully saturated, with the rest of the scene behind him slightly desaturated/dimmed.

I know one way to pull this off would be to record the background scene, desaturated it, and then green screen the foreground person over it. Trying to avoid doing that.

The next option would be to have a light setup with lights on both sides of the foreground subject, exposing the foreground subject, and cutting the ambient down on the background subjects.

Just wondering if there are any other techniques?

 

[Drew Ott]

Without doing this in post, just don't use any background light at all. Try to use flags to stop the key and fill from illuminating anything behind the foreground character.

This will naturally desaturate the background, and obviously make it dimmer.