A couple of tricks from the trenches.
Silver Aluminum foil.
1) flat, unwrinkled foil, on silver shiny side will produce a strong reflective surface.
2) flat, unwrinkled foil, on the dull side will produce a softer reflective surface.
3) foil, folded carefully into squares, produces seams on the foil when unfolded.
The seams then can be easily manipulated to control the light.
4) foil, crumpled up, then carefully uncrumpled will produce many facets on the foil. This will give the foil a softer reflective surface. But, this technique may also create unwanted hot spots, and dark areas.
Mylar, another reflective source is used occasionally in my industry. It has a greater reflective surface than aluminum, but is less capable of manipulation.
Mirrors are too a good source of reflective energy. But, unless you have a very expensive mirror that is used to bounce laser beams around, your average house hold mirror will have a loss of %15 of total light. a 1 kW light is now an 850 watt light.
Plexi I have seen done, but in my line of business, the lights we use would melt the plexi before the camera was turning over.
The leading gel companies sell reflective material.
Rosco has #270 a black on silver reflective scrim.
#271 a white on silver reflective paper mirror.
#272 white on gold soft reflective gold paper.
#273 white on silver soft reflective silver paper.
Lee Filters and Formatt Filters and GamColorhas very similar products as Rosco.
The numbers #270-#273 are Mired Shift numbers. Mired Shift is based on color theory, and basically dealing in terms of Kelvin.
Since reflective surfaces don't change the color temperature of light, they give a Mired Shift number for a reference number. All the gel companies use similar Mired Shift numbers.
Gold and silver leaf is also used in my industry, but I won't go there, unless you have money you want to spend.
Good luck.
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