Please help, reflectors and soft boxes

[dimanasa]

I am shooting an independent film, it is a low budget project and I am interested in building my own soft boxes and reflectors, does anybody know how to make either of these professionally but on the other hand inexpensive. The project is going to be shot in black and white, so I need to make sure my whites are not too much over saturated.
I know the basis of building a cheap reflector and soft boxes, but I would like to know other people's input.

Any help is appreciated
Thank you very much

 

[daveroberts]

i guess the most obvious thing would be to pop down your local diy centre and pick up some 4 x 4 ft poly sheets about 2 - 3 inches thick, however, apply rosco supersoft to one side and u have a very efficient reflector, less delicate than a plain white polystyrene sheet but works better at distances, or in weather with no direct sunlight, or if you wish to use a more focused amount of light on your subject

if you wish to use something like lastolite, make sure you dont use it in a place likely to suffer from wind, ie. outside, as it causes the material to blow about and cause very distracting light level changes to a subject, best avoided unless used inside, obviously...

im speaking through experience and i find that a couple of those poly sheets with supersoft or similar reflector gels gaffered to one side do the trick in most situations.

ive not used softboxes, they are another very useful tool for studio work and provide a more controllable but slightly harder source of light than that of a light bouncing off abit of poly, im sure one of the gel manufacturers does a diffusion gel, off the top of my head, i think rosco make one called 2004 diffusion or something, that uses a shower curtain type gel that diffuses light, without the noise of traditional gel

hope this helps