Different projects may require different things in the background to help sell the story we are trying to tell with our photos. Sometimes they can be as simple as using a window in the frame. What happens when you are shooting and there aren’t any windows that fit your vision, or any windows at all?
Jay P. Morgan from The Slanted Lens wanted to give off the look of a castle, more specifically a dungeon you could find in a castle, but the shoot was in his living room. Instead of building a complicated set or without going into composites, he simply created the look of an arched window with bars by cutting out the shape in the seamless paper and adding tape for the bars. If you are renting out a studio, I would suggest running the idea by them first before you go cutting up their rolls of paper. This can be a very easy way to change up your set, especially if it's the same one you use repeatedly.
Using the seamless to create a window isn’t the only way either, depending on how tight of a crop you are shooting with your subject, you can possibly pull it off with a large poster board or other materials you can cut out a window shape or any shape for that matter. Does your subject have to stand in front of it? Nope. Flip it around and use the shapes to create interesting cast shadows. You can use color gels combined to another look or even pieces of diffusion for a broken glass look. Get creative and have fun. What are some other creative ways you spruced up your on your set?
This is great!
If you're shooting video, if the window is to be out of focus in the scene, you can stick a large screen TV behind the "window", any def TV will do, and run a background scene on it. I suppose you can do that for a still as well.