How DP Nathan Henneton Lit the Roland-Garros Interview Position with RayFlex Reflectors

The Paris-based DP was lighting the FFT official post-match interview position for the 2026 Roland-Garros tournament, set up in the mixed zone beneath Court Philippe-Chatrier. If you have never seen one of these positions in the flesh, picture a corridor with a chair in it. Concrete overhead, no depth behind the talent, no room to put a stand anywhere useful, and a queue of the best players in the world coming through it between matches.

 

The players do not wait. You get the setup you built that morning, and it has to hold for every interview that comes through the door.

 

 

The problem with small rooms

 

A flat background at close range is the fastest way to make an interview look cheap. There is no falloff, no shape, nothing for the eye to read as space. The subject sits in front of a wall and the frame goes dead.

The normal fix is more units. Two or three small spots with gobos or cookies, feathered across the backdrop at different intensities, building up pools and gaps until the wall reads as something with depth. That works. It also needs stands, cable, flags, and floor space, and in a two metre wide corridor under a tennis stadium you do not have any of those things.

 

 

Nathan went the other way and used one source with a reflector in front of it.

 

What he actually did

 

He used a 45cm silver RayFlex on the flexible rod, throwing broken light across the backdrop off a single source rather than adding units to the position. The mirror tiles bend, so the pattern is adjustable by hand, on the spot, with no gobo swap and no re-rig.

The rod is the part worth paying attention to here. In a corridor that narrow, a rigid mount forces you to put the reflector wherever the stand will physically go, which is often nowhere useful. On the ROD02 Flexible Rod you can snake it in above the frame line or off the side of an existing stand and still get the angle you want. That is a real difference when the whole position is two metres across and half of it is taken up by camera.

Worth noting he was on silver. Silver is basically neutral, so it does not push colour into the bounce. Any warmth you see in those frames is coming from the colour of the source or from whatever the light lands on, which in this case is a warm backdrop. That is the practical argument for silver on a job like this. You keep the decision about colour with your source and your surface rather than baking it into the reflector.

In his words:

"The RayFlex allowed me to break up the light and create subtle pockets of highlights across the background. It added depth and made the interview space feel much larger than it actually was."

That last part is the bit worth sitting with. The space did not get bigger. The light told the camera it had.

Look at the behind-the-scenes frame and you can see how tight it really is. Backdrop, one chair, a boom, and a wall of black on either side to keep spill under control. Then look at the finished frame. The background is alive with soft warm pools that fall off naturally towards the edges, and the subject sits in front of something that reads as depth rather than fabric.

 

Nathan's gaffer on the speed of it

 

Nicolas Esnouf gaffed the shoot, and his take on the mirrors was short and to the point. They were fast and easy to setup and add texture to the background.

That is the whole argument for this kind of tool on a job like this. On a build with a real prep day you can cookie a wall however you like. In a mixed zone with a schedule dictated by match results, the thing that matters is how quickly you can get texture up and how quickly you can adjust it when the next subject sits down at a different height in a different shirt.

 

The same tool, dialled down

 

The mixed zone position is the loud version. Elsewhere in the same documentary, the interviews were built in real locations, a home, an office full of trophies, rooms with their own furniture and their own existing light. RayFlex is in those setups too, just pushed much further back in the mix.

That is the part people miss. Dapple does not have to announce itself. At low level, on an already-lit room, it does nothing more than stop a corner going flat. The kind of light people notice without knowing why.

 

Not just the tennis

 

Nathan has since folded RayFlex into his standard documentary approach, working across a wide range of sources.

 

 

"I now use it on almost every documentary shoot, from Amaran 360C to Nanlux Evoke 2400B."

 

 

That range is worth noting. The reflectors do not care what you point at them. A small bi-colour point source and a 2400W fixture both produce dapple, they just produce it at different intensities and different throws. Harder and more parallel the source, sharper and more defined the pattern. Softer source, softer edges.

 

How do you add texture to a background in a small interview space?

 

The short answer is that you break up a single source rather than adding more sources.

Flags and cookies work but need distance between the gobo and the wall. Projectors need power, space and a lens. A flexible mirror reflector sits directly in front of your existing key or a small dedicated backlight, catches it, and scatters it across the surface behind your subject as broken pools of light. Because the mirror tiles flex, you shape the pattern with your hands. Bend it more and the dapple scatters wider. Keep it flatter and the pools stay dense and concentrated.

Dapple size determines the character. 5mm is fine, complex and mottled. 10mm is slightly larger, soft and natural. 20mm gives chunky, organic pools of light and is the best all-rounder. 25mm is large, uneven and dramatic.

Finish is the other choice. Silver is neutral, so the bounce carries no colour shift and the warmth in your frame comes from your source or the surface it lands on. Gold puts warmth into the bounce itself. Silver gives you more room to move, gold gives you a look straight out of the reflector.

For a compact interview position, one reflector on a stand or clamped to an existing rig is usually enough to change the entire feel of the frame. It is one setup out of many, but it is a fast one.

 

What size reflector do you need for an interview background?

 

For a background at interview distance, roughly one to two metres behind the subject, the 45cm reflector is the one. It covers enough area off a single source that you are not patching multiple pools together to fill the frame.

The 25cm is for tighter, more contained work. Product, close-up inserts, a small area of a set, or anywhere you physically cannot fit the larger panel. On a background it will work, you are just covering less wall per reflector.

 

Can you use dapple reflectors with any light?

 

Yes, and the choice of source changes the result more than most people expect.

Nathan works across a wide spread on documentary jobs, from an Amaran 360C up to a Nanlux Evoke 2400B. The reflector does not care about the fixture. What it cares about is how hard and how parallel the light hitting it is. A harder, more collimated source gives you sharper, better defined pools with clear edges. A softer source gives you the same shapes with the edges smeared, which reads gentler and less deliberate.

Distance does the rest. Move the reflector closer to the surface and the pattern tightens and gains contrast. Pull it back and it spreads and softens.

 

How do you mount a dapple reflector?

 

Every RayFlex takes a standard 5/8" baby stud or a gobo grip head, so it goes on whatever you already own. The accessories exist for the situations where a stand alone will not get you there.

The ROD02 Flexible Rod is the one Nathan used, 28cm, for the 45cm reflectors. The ROD01 Mini Flexible Rod is the 25cm equivalent, 30cm long with a cold shoe on the end, and it is the one to reach for when you are mounting the smaller 25cm reflectors.

For rail work, the M01 Plus Mount is the one to get. It is a rail mount receiver with a removable 5/8" baby pin in one unit, so it is completely modular. Pin in and it goes on a rail. Pin out and it goes on any stand setup or gobo head you already own. Best of both.

The ARM02 Swivelling Adapter sits between the reflector and the stand and gives you full angular control. If you are working alone and adjusting the pattern yourself between setups, it is the accessory that saves the most time.

None of this is essential. You can get a good result with a reflector and a stand. But in a two metre wide mixed zone with a queue of players outside, the rigging is what determines whether the idea is possible at all.

 

The kit

 

Nathan's setup was a 45cm silver reflector on the ROD02 Flexible Rod. If you want that combination, The Large Silver Kit is the direct match, with the rod available separately from accessories.

If you would rather not have to think about it again, The Everything Kit covers every reflector size at every dapple depth, in silver and gold, with the mounting hardware to rig all of them at once if you want to. It is essentially everything you need and everything you will need.

They do something that is genuinely hard to fake any other way, and nothing does it faster.

 

Credits

 

DP: Nathan Henneton (@nathan_henneton_dop) Gaffer: Nicolas Esnouf (@esnoufnicolas) Production: FFT official post-match interviews, Roland-Garros 2026