Indie Filmmaking: Creating Artificial Sunlight

[@aputurelighting]

What is a time when you had to fight the sun? Comment below for a chance to win an MC. Note: Winners will be notified via the email address listed on their channel

[@AdventureWidely]

A wedding shoot I did last Jan in California was on top of a mountain in the Muir Woods. My 250w/s strobe was just enough to balance my subjects against the bright backlit sky.

[@GlenReed]

I had difficulty shooting a cooking video when the lightning was bouncing off the granite counter top making the light noticeable in the scene. I definitely don’t like when the audience can see the light source unless it’s an artist choice. Thanks for the great tips!

[@DommoDommo]

On set as a PA our gaffer was setting up flag after flag after flag for an outdoor shot. No matter what he did the DP was unhappy claiming she had too much glare/flare. After deciding to just roll with it, I took it upon myself to place the clapper on top of the lens seeing if that would help, and it eliminated EVERYTHING. Basically it was a cheap matbox, but it worked and we got the shot!

[@patchpatchvideos]

Earlier this summer I was shooting a promotional commercial with the sun directly in the subject's face overhead thru the trees. We tried everything. Then we caved and moved inside :)

[@skelett_auf_raedern]

We where fiming on the beach of the Ostsee, a very important shot for the scene. There were dead body over all of the beach and we needed so much time to build the whole set, that we had only a hour left before the sun was away. So the light was very low and very harsch. We only had one 300d and that wasnt enough to imitate the sun, so we used a 4x4 frame and bounced the hell out of the sun from the outher direction and lowered the cam settings. Well it worked. We used the 300d for our main actor just to give her a little bit of light in her face. It turned out pretzy well 😁

[@jesseyules]

Always fun to hear the industry terms for things like black fabric, piece of cardboard and sheet of plastic.

[@valentinavee]

Jesse Yules Film lol yup

[@BodhiTOuellette]

C-47/CP-47/Bullets - used to hold pieces of gels onto lights. Clothes Pin. It's a fuckin clothes pin xDDDDDD

[@thegreatest5391]

This is to avoid confusions with the other departments like props from production design...

[@bk5710]

Also so I've heard legend had it the term originated to tack on a few dollars to the production budget because it sounded vague and more expensive

[@joas162]

Classic xD

[@JoseARubio]

Fantastic, please more videos like this

[@dunnadidit]

I shoot videos in a business with an entire front face of windows, but depending on where the sun is or how long I need to shoot for, it’s always changing. I tend to use large black acoustic blankets on backdrop stands to act as both a way to block unwanted light and give me some sound control.

[@valentinavee]

Dunna Did It two for one! I do this too.

[@ExpressiveImagery]

This episode is pure gold and ranks amongst the best you have produced. The lighting diagram and the iPhone comparison are also very welcome additions to the format. Thanks so much for creating, Tony.

[@valentinavee]

When I was starting out and I had no lights at all, all I could afford was a $15 fold-out 5-in-1reflector. The only light I had access to was the sun, but I made it work! It was all about shooting outside, placing subjects where there wouldn’t be any harsh lines on their faces from overhanging trees, or bouncing sunlight. (Also yes I’m ineligible from the prize but I like answering the comment question anyway.)

[@videocasetteTV]

You are very smart you deserve the prize

[@joas162]

That's how you learn to be creative. Money can be a burden :p

[@QippysChannel]

Usually whenever I have to pre wedding shoots outdoors, so what I tend to do is I have the subject turn away from the sun and have a nice rim lighting to light their hair, and gives this really nice warm summery kind of pics which I simply love! Great for making good family portrait stuff too!

[@openheadslt]

Good decision to show comparision between iphone and red. Light, framing and story is what matters more. Keep up guys!!

[@campodelverano86]

Shooting lots of dialog on an indie short outside in Seattle. I didn't account for how long it would take to do different angles and coverage of a long dialog scene outside. We were constantly shifting the 6x6 diffusion and towards the end of the afternoon there were some consistency issues where the light got bluer in the late afternoon. Nothing a little grading can't take care of, but now I know the importance of scheduling more days and hiring more crew to move faster.

[@jesseyules]

In cases like this, I usually rehearse like crazy so we can get what we need in two takes. Take b-roll of the actors feet and hands, background details to give your editor options for timing.

[@jessestarks3128]

Good presentation and the iPhone shot doesn't look too bad. This goes to show it's more than just having a great camera, lights, composition, set design, etc. are amongst the many factors that come into play.

[@omarsoomro3895]

Hands down hardest 'light battle' had to be shooting a narrative short last year. We had an actress look through the window and sit back down at the table. But we had this high ceiling which was bright white and would bounce fill everywhere when the curtains were drawn. So we had to block out the sunlight with floppys, bounce 1Ks into reflectors through the window and angle them down to avoid light hitting the ceiling. Took way to long, but ended up looking amazing.

[@LonePictures]

Especially during the day when you wanna have that perfect dreamy daylight look but you’re not getting what you want so that time you gotta set up your own light which is pretty like the sun.

[@henryhodge2445]

Fighting sunlight - I had a music video shoot for a rapper which demanded a handful of landscape performance shots, and the locations picked with the best views ended up directly blasting the talent's face when setting, as well as daylight hours getting shorter & shorter - we had to shoot entirely in the opposite side of the city & move our entire set to multiple locations as fast as possible to compete with the sun before it set while getting all material we needed! When shooting low budget music videos, finding amazing landscapes with the sun backlighting your talent with a reflector lighting their face always creates a beautiful image, along with an ND & polarizer filter :) (in between company moves, I would stick my gimbal out of the window of the driver's seat & create a 360 degree spin forward as the car drove through the streets which made amazing transitions/b-roll for the music video)

[@BoyBlessing]

I was on set shooting a short film but I was sweating so much because the sun was beating down on me. So I put a flag on a c-stand above me to create shade for myself. I also did the same for another actor waiting on set. It’s a great way to create shade for yourself to work under on a hot scoring day. I hope I get the light it’s my dream light! Thank you Aputure

[@harman4686]

"Less is more" *proceeds to use 3 300D IIs*

[@eksine]

more is better

[@jambononi]

Compared to a film set. It would be annoying if every video was always for no budget stuff otherwise you’d never learn the next level of what’s possible

[@carolinas5132]

bro, lighting on big sets is no joke, they did amazing with very little!

[@isidroundercover]

I was about to comment that lol

[@jacobstauff7153]

Biggest battle with sunlight was on one my first commercial shoots where we filmed exclusively outdoors with a small time allotment. However the weather would not decide between overcast or sunny, constantly changing. Ended up doing our best to utilize the sunny windows and supplement what we could using reflectors and LEDs for the overcast times. With a little color grading and some prayers to the Adobe gods it all thankfully came out pretty solid

[@aputurelighting]

That's awesome! Way to be resourceful with using reflectors and artificial light. Sometimes it can help to put all the scenes in the shade somewhere to keep the lighting at least slightly consistent, but that can be a challenging scenario either way.

[@jacobstauff7153]

Aputure great point! And overcast really softens all the edges nicely if that’s a look that fits the piece

[@alex_coleborn]

I shot a horror film in an old house a few weeks ago and 90% of the feature was shot at night (of course). So I worked with my gaffer to black out 10 windows in the main room (2 being slanted ceiling windows) and 5 in an adjacent bedroom with some thick black bed sheets. We then entirely lit the room with dim practicals, an LED panel to create contrast on the face in some shots and long shadows in others. Then we using a few hard lights to separate background and create a bit of depth from the talent. We were worried it wouldn’t be worth the 4 hour set up time for the shots but it was worth every minute haha especially for the low budget we were working off!

[@CatSatOnKeyboard]

jokes on you, I don't even have an iPhone

[@JULZs5]

On badly scheduled film sets. I shot a feature where I had to do interior day scenes at night and night scene in the day.

[@abbierayner9808]

i would love to know how you did the day scenes at night...having a similar problem at the moment!

[@JULZs5]

@@abbierayner9808if you have a hmi (or aputure 300d 600d since this is an aputure thread), place it outside the window and bounce that on a ultra bounce. Shear out the windows to hid the might time exterior. If these lights are not accessible to you, avoid shooting towards windows. If you have windows, close the blinds and add a small light behind to make it look as if some daylight is coming through. Level out the room to what the mood you want is.

[@stevenkralovec]

I was playing around with natural lighting at a friend’s house. On one side of the house there were several large windows creating A LOT of soft light on the subject. Too much even, but that was the best light source available. I didn’t have any lighting equipment, so I had to experiment with moving the subject a certain distance from the window, changing the subjects angle from the window, to get the sort of Rembrandt lighting I wanted, while also keeping in mind the background of the shot. It was a little bit of a balancing act to get the subject in the desired light at the desired angle with the desired background.

[@aputurelighting]

Great idea using the window as a light source and moving the subject when you couldn't move the light. Add some black fabric for some negative fill and you can create some really nice lighting!

[@mercedessteele9971]

Outstanding video! Straight to the point with all questions answered for those who don’t know. Thank you!

[@shaynearcher6020]

The most common scenario i find myself fighting sunlight is more indirectly, when you are in a location shooting against windows that need to be in shot and not having them overexpose, whilst still keeping a high key corporate/commercial look to the footage that i am generally shooting. my favorite technique is to line the windows with ND gel cuts, which cuts exposure and allows the DR of the camera to retain all of the information outside, allowing me to have a more neutral canvas to light from there!

[@aputurelighting]

Using ND gels is a great solution! One technique that we've explored on this show is to add haze in the room in front of the windows so that the over exposed highlight bloom, making it look more pleasing and less digital.

[@shaynearcher6020]

​@@aputurelighting yeah I did see that episode, was a great watch! Haze certainly works great for the right projects!

[@spatnaspolecnost]

She casually walks in to search the bookshelf for what to do during a home fire.

[@tommyowen529]

Man. I love this freak’n channel. Such good information. Thank you. 🤙🏼

[@aputurelighting]

We appreciate it!

[@jovannialberto1421]

For our end project in filmschool, we had to film day for night to recreate the moon. Well you can imagine the sun is a pretty big problem and there is no moon. So we used two wind-ups and a 12x12 frame clamped Duvetyn around the frame to create a black box, kinoflo in there and voila everything worked fine.

[@aputurelighting]

Nice idea to tent the window!

[@directoradamg]

During a 48 hr film competition we were shooting in the top floor recreation room of a building that was surrounded by windows. We started shooting at 8am and finished at 6pm. This means we have to shoot from sunrise to sunset since it was fall season in Canada. We also had to fight a lot of changing shadows. My initial instinct was to use the window and sun as backlight, but I didn't have sufficient bounce or fill light with me to bring up the exposure of the talent. So we had to move the scene near a wall in the middle of the recreation room and put up neg fill in order to control the shape of the sun on the floor. The sun also changes color temperatures throughout the day, so we changed color temperature to adjust for changes inside the camera, and then in post corrected what minor color temperature changes we saw. Thankfully we used a color chard periodically throughout the day to keep things matching.

[@hivestudiosinternational]

I just shot a feature using projection of live CGI with unreal engine. I had to ensure that the foreground lighting was kept low enough to keep ambient spill off the projection screens whilst achieving the look I wanted. This involved a delicate dance between on-set lighting, realtime cgi lighting and high iso.

[@EdGobina]

I remember shooting an interview outdoors with some crazy harsh sunlight, and boy was it a bad time? I had to find an area where the sun wasn't hitting the background, place my subject in front of this spot where the sunlight would hit them, then threw a diffuser overhead to soften that harsh light. The shot turned out pretty good.

[@aputurelighting]

Sounds like a good solution, nice job!

[@sabihboi2496]

So grateful for this channel .

[@CriticasDeCineEn2Minutos]

I am a teacher in a small film school and we are constantly fighting against the sun, especially with everyone is filming with only his smartphones. Negative fill is key, and many times we use just black bags or blankets.

[@valentinavee]

Cinepifisis nice! I hope you can show these episodes to your students too, I think they would be useful to you.

[@stevegrothaus]

I love that you did the camera comparisons! I hope you continue doing this.

[@24k_MNS]

We were shooting outdoors in the open and it was a long conversation that two characters were having. We were getting blown out pretty bad, colors still weren't looking great with the NDs. We ended up moving the conversation under a tree since it didn't affect the story. The branches and leaves served as a nice gobo. We didn't have to do much, only used a small LED, flag, and bead board. We rehearsed for the scene and when it was golden hour, we ran through a couple of times and got the conversation with the lighting perfect, very dreamy, summer vibes.

[@aputurelighting]

Sounds like great problem solving! Glad to hear you made it work

[@MehulKhandhar]

Fantastic. Explained so well and made it so simple.

[@dmattei760]

Living in Phoenix, AZ, you always have to fight the light. One time in particular, was during a western short film shoot, (my second attempt at a short film) we had to shoot around 12pm, when the sun was directly overhead. It was too bright, and my dslr didn't register the bright highlights well. So we decided to embrace the look of extreme heat. We shot low looking upwards at our subjects, placing them right in front of the sun, and made use of the cowboy hats on the subject to make faces evenly shadowed. Then we utilized the car windshield sun reflectors from my car as bounce boards, and got the subjects face a little more filled. The end result was really punchy, but usable!

[@aputurelighting]

Haha that sounds amazing. Way to get creative with what you had!

[@FlomFilmsOfficial]

Fighting sunlight was actually my last interview corporate shoot. We shot towards the window to create a natural frame. The sun was rising on a building which was fine, but we didn't plan for the sun to hit a window on the adjacent building. Creating a much more significant change in lighting that was unavoidable and couldn't be fixed. Our only solution was to wait 30 minutes for it to pass beyond the adjacent window. In hindsight, we'd change our shooting direction despite it being a pleasing composition.

[@kirkattard9337]

Great lights breakdown video. Keep it up

[@mohdanasqureshi757]

it happened while shooting for a short film. we had 3 scenes left to shoot which were interior at night and it was already 6 am. slowly the sun came up and instead of waiting for night we covered the entire balcony doors with dark black blankets and since it was a tender and personal scene of a couple the focus was on them in a medium shot. we then put up net curtains in front of the balcony which was there throughout the shoot hence there wasn't problem for any continuity error. at the end the trick worked and there wasn't any when we compared the shots that were taken at night than that to those taken in the morning. it was a continuous 14 hour shoot and it was worth it.

[@rworldproductions7610]

Ok this video is sooooo on time lol. We are about to shoot a new project and the whole film is set in the morning. Needless to say the sun will not stay in place, so maintaining the same light was going to be an issue. This has given new ideas

[@valentinavee]

Yessssss! So good to hear! Good luck with your shoot!

[@rworldproductions7610]

@@valentinavee thank you, truly. It's on Saturday and the excitement butterflies are beginning. Cant wait to say "action"

[@rworldproductions7610]

@@valentinavee Thank much, sorry for the late response. The shoot went well and we should be releasing it next month. But it was challenging , but we attacked it and proud of the work we did. Thanks again

[@YourProEntertainment]

Worst fight for me here in Finland was when you get direct sunlight during the winter and it's snowy everywhere. Light bouncing everywhere but you need the best dynamic range to keep details in the shadows

[@simvid8107]

Just recently I shot in the Dominican Republic for a charity and due to location permits etc, we had a lot of outdoor scenes in the middle of the day. Of course the sun was brutally hot and right above us and with a limited crew and gear truck as well as a fast paced schedule I found myself having to "fight" the sun constantly. I say "fight" because we ended up finding corners and spots where the surroundings would play into our favour; a street corner in shadow where a big van parked a bit further down the street reflected the sun and created a perfect backlight for us. There was a restaurant that had some sort of white sunshade outside so we shot underneath. All we had to do is use bounce or neg fill to shape the lighting from there.

[@DillonVaughn]

On a recent music video set I was DPing we had to fight the sun in pretty much every way imaginable. We were shooting in the Arizona desert in the middle of summer (~120° F, no breeze or shade) and racing against the clock to shape the light in the afternoon. Of course once we had negative fill and beadboards in place to give some kind of shape to counter the awful afternoon light the sun quickly hit a point where it moved behind the ONE highest mountain peak and totally put us in the shade. What we fought against all day was reversed almost instantly and it became a scramble to bounce as much light as we could to maximize the useable time we had as the sun was setting. I can't say there was anything "magic" about that hour but we pulled through and nobody got sick from the heat! It was definitely the most challenging experience I've ever had on set and there were multiple days of it.

[@DillonVaughn]

On top of that my new BMPCC4K was dead on arrival when I rigged it up that first day. The main board was defective and shorted out. Luckily I had my old BMPCC in my kit as a backup. My tires were also busted from offroading to our location and I had to buy a new set just to get us home. Truly a cursed shoot.

[@aputurelighting]

Wow that sounds like a nightmare!

[@NONE2NONE]

Jesus they put so much work into a tiny scene...I have no idea if I would even notice any of that stuff as a viewer.

[@aputurelighting]

A lot goes into filmmaking! We didn't even go into how to record sound for a scene like that

[@eddietor_cine]

Filming an Indy music video. We had our model on the back of a truck and she’s looking outward. The sun was crazy harsh at that moment. We didn’t have diffusion that could cover. So we backed the truck up until it was under a huge tree. One it cut down on the harshness but two it made it cooler so we didn’t have to “sweat it” as much.

[@rumorfymedia]

I was shooting a class room scene and the sun was coming through one of the windows and hitting a student's desk at the perfect angle but it was creating major hotspot. So what I did was I mounted a double open end scrim on a c-Stand in front of the window and then it was perfect!

[@gxrsky]

the most practical use of scrim 😳

[@aldenxt]

I still remember, on this project, we were shooting an interior fight scene. We had a 1K just right outside our window to imitate the harsh sunlight shining right in. But the sun was setting and just nice it was about to rain, so the entire interior just got darker as time when by. We were practically rushing an entire fight scene just so to minimise the amount ambient light lost due to the changing weather and setting sun. I would say, what a fun time it was. Haha

[@MarcParisel]

Definitely exterior scenes to have a nice balance and maximum dynamic range between keep density on blue sky color, have a nice shallow depth of field with the background and create soft light on the actor. And the result iiiiiiiiiis.....I’m still testing what best options could be😂😋😉 cheers and thanks for the educational content. Do you have contact of your DOP?

[@brandoncharleson]

Great tips! The time I had to fight the sun was when I launched my Kickstarter campaign, GoPUCC - the world's first collapsible shaker bottle. It was a two day shoot, one INT and one EXT. The INT one took place at a gym where we had to block a lot of the light coming in since there were so many windows and it was in the middle of the day. We had to think on the fly and block the sunlight to create more contrast and less flat-faced lighting. Thanks again for the tips!

[@jaegermah]

Awesome vid!!!!

[@aputurelighting]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@Perrylayne105]

Love these

[@xx1simon1xx]

i was the gaffer on a shoot for an anti plastic add two weeks ago, when we shot the introduction of the female lead actress the sun came out and hit her perfectly as a kind of hard backlight. the dop loved it, knowing we couldnt shoot with the real sun, since it would most likely disapear until we were ready to shoot, i quickly had a 6k arri compact set up outside, took us 20 minutes but ended up looking exactly like the sun before (i blocked the real sun). it ended up looking pretty good, and we wouldnt have shot it like that if the sun hadnt come out..

[@aputurelighting]

Great example! Way to think quickly and recreate the same light the sun was giving

[@CraigSinclair]

Great video as always. Biggest takeaway was flagging light and using duvetyne for negative fill. I'm a sunlight warrior. Im constantly fighting the sun so I use the shade of trees to flag and a 5 in 1 reflector to bounce light onto my talent. Ps. Loving what everyone is saying about the new MC. Would love to try one

[@parvizabdumatinov9029]

thank you for teaching directly practical video

[@nathanaellathrop5799]

I had a shot where I put a clone trooper helmet on a stand and had one light hitting only one side. The light was bouncing off the wall and giving too much fill, so I put up some black sheet on the other side, this way only have of the helmet was lit, and the other was totally dark. This was actually the first time I ever used negative fill.

[@aputurelighting]

Negative fill is amazing!

[@matthewjiang4051]

I was filming in a bathroom at night. The overhead incandescent tube lightbulbs cast odd shadows on my actor's face, so I took the only other light I had available - a desk lamp - and placed it on the sink above him (he was sitting on the floor for the scene). I found the shadows and contrast acceptable, so shot my no-budget short film. I submitted it to Chapman University as a part of my film portfolio. Currently awaiting their decision.

[@NepotismTV]

Great work, everyone! I love this team (and Aaron hat).

[@viniciusgalavernamus]

Guys you´re amazing! I´m learning so much, thank u all

[@NickNCC]

One time after a 22hr shoot day in the desert at 92 degree heat an extra swung back into our camera and shattered our ND during a fight scene. I passed out in terror and exhaustion and could only hear the screams of the producer as I slowly made my way towards the light.....this was going to be the end. My AC slapped me with the slate and jolted me with some compressed air jumpstarting my brain once again. I then knew our solution. We then had to use our 300D on battery power to shoot into the sun and offset our shadows to minimize contrast levels. The sun almost took me that day, but I arose ready now to fight another battle with the 300D II by my side.

[@obangamuzik]

Great video! I learned some things. Thanks

[@taulantskendaj8486]

Great video, thank you so much for making these educational videos.

[@eliassolo1703]

I remember a time I had to fight the sunlight in the Atacama desert in Chile. It was noon and there where really unpleasant shadows in the faces of all the actors. Unfortunately, I had no diffuser or additional light source so I used a big white bed sheet from one of our tour guides to use as fill light in some shots and diffusion in others. Overall it was a great struggle but it forced me to think creatively. Cheers Elias

[@aputurelighting]

That's awesome to hear. Anything that puts you outside your comfort zone and makes you think creatively is going to help you grow!

[@micahversemann4643]

I had to fight the light on a short film I was directing. For the most part it was a cloudy afternoon but everyone so often the sun would break through the clouds messing with the continuity. To solve the problem the grip team had an 8x8 grid on stand by right out of frame that could quickly be moved in to diffuse the sun when needed so we could continue shooting.

[@johnrossi8862]

i used to work for a local television news station and i was recording a segment for a military donation drive. It was actually my birthday and i remember that it was really cloudy and overcast that day. It was actually my birthday and I was in a really good mood so I thought i might try something new and get a bit more "cinematic" with my interview. We were out side and instead of just a boring talking head I put our main subject, who was the owner operator and someone who is extremely important in NY, in a particular angle where the sun was acting as my key, but it was behind him so it was like a 3/4 back light key, with a bounce for fill. It looked BEAUTIFUL... that was until the sun decided it was much bright than the clouds and halfway through the interview and completely blew out the background and gave him an atrocious harsh light and shadow. My piece of art was destroyed and I was almost fire because of the "poor image quality".... Yeah, it was a great birthday. We only had one take for the interview and I completely blew it haha

[@CraigCapture]

I’m watching and I’m like yeah I get it, then the iPhone vs Red comparison and I sit up...nice touch!

[@aputurelighting]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked it

[@spebat]

Super helpful, thanks!

[@aputurelighting]

Glad it was helpful!

[@abegarza4491]

Almost all of my shoot days start out with a nice overcast as we are setting up to shoot, then as soon as camera rolls the sun peaks out right on the subject. So out come the modifiers.

[@lautaromastemafilmmaker]

Wow that videos are amazing! really! I learned a lot with that

[@nathanielrosa1]

Love the iphone comparison

[@jeffreyhong6191]

I had to fight the sun on one of my recent shoots fighting a crazy backlight against a huge window.. supplemented the inside light by using an ultra bounce to help fill the room

[@dudeitsdavid2117]

Is the lighting change on her face weird for anyone else during the cuts from 5:27 to 5:35? I never noticed this kind of thing before but I guess I see it now since I'm hyper focused on only the lighting trying to learn.

[@dudeitsdavid2117]

The lighting looks great btw. Wish I could do something like this

[@saricfilip]

I had to fight the sun light on my latest short that I DP for your light this location competition and the problem was that my sun was setting and we needed to create the morning feel with our artificial light and we managed that by using 4x PAR can lights, 1x Nanguanf flex light with 216 diff and a 4x8 bounce board with 1x 2K openface and 1x 1K openface and we managed to pull it off pretty convincingly in my opinion :) Thank you guys for awesome videos and keep making them :)

[@aputurelighting]

That sounds like quite the setup! Glad to hear it worked out

[@saricfilip]

@@aputurelighting sure was but couldn't have done it without my crew 😊🙏

[@neopotrebitel]

I had to fight the light when I was filming in a bedroom with a huge window. The sky had some scattered clouds so the light was constantly changing as the clouds covered or uncovered the sun. We didn't have any lights at all and had to completely rely on the sun for lighting. That was really tricky.

[@parthsavaliya2524]

The recent commercial that I shot with Ursa mini has kind of a long shot treatment with basically no cuts with talent in the middle. Treatment of the commercial was like it starts with extreme CU and then zoom out to the Mid Full and then zoom in to Mid Close and then zoom out to cowboy and then dolly out to full shot of the talent with land in a frame and this was just 30% of complication. Basically there was a lot of coordination involved and so it was a long one shot take I can't diffuse the direct sun with muslin (we had 12x12 muslin) due to shadow of the diffuser appearing in the wide shot. So we had only 1 and half hour to shoot and we couldn't in the morning, hopefully we predicted that it won't be done even in 2 hours so we tried in afternoon and we got it around 4pm so hell yeah sun is hard to diffuse when you need a wide shot of a whole space.

[@Visethelegend]

Fighting Real Sunlight was when I was shooting a music video in Tulum, a beach which was very very bright. So most of the time we had to shoot with bounce light. There was this one scene which is one of my favorites that we wanted the light of the sun to hit in a specific place in a cenote (water cave) and placed an M18 we had on top of them with a lot, like a lot of sandbags so it didn’t fall (since it was shooting straight above from the singer). If anyone is curious enough to check the video is called Las cosas no se hacen así. For artificial moonlight my most recent nightmare was actually for the very recent Light this Location challenge I DPed, since the walls were white the light I placed bounced everywhere and it was very very hard to control it, since I didn’t want any spill light but the actor and had light two small flags. Anyway, post did fix most of the spill light thankfully,at least at a decent level. Lol

[@BrentHagyVideography]

Having to shoot a wedding in the middle of the day with no shade or overcast...not only was the light harsh it was HOT! 🔥

[@jijic.7204]

Really good thank you!

[@zmts2]

Student filmmaker + horse + child actor + golden hour scene in a farm field. The sun always wins in the end. The key is getting some nice shots off before it does.

[@rajkumar-wb1bf]

When We were shooting a movie in summers and we have to shoot from low angle at that time We can't use diffuser because we have to show the sun also at that we faced high exposure and contrast

[@creativefilmz]

Nice! what aperture was that scene shot at?

[@LourisConte]

This was beneficial!

[@pretti6774]

Amazing lighting

[@egarofalo]

I was doing cinematography for a short movie about Pinocchio, so a "tale style" light. Low Budget project, so a lot to shoot and little time to do it. The scene was written as an emotive moment at sunset and we shoot it at 12 am. 'Nuff said 😂

[@AsymovFilm]

Сонун видео урок болуптур рахмат!))

[@seboldsg]

I had to fight sunlight few times but the one that stick in my head the most is when I was recording musicvideo some time ago. We were recreating "golden hour" in the middle of the day! Diffusing sun above talent as much as possible and bouncing the sun back to talent with golden reflector on 2m heigh c-stand and around 5meters away. THAT WAS HELL!! We had to re-adjust reflector pretty often as we didnt know that the sun is so fast :) btw. it was also a bit windy day! :)

[@krisdekker5830]

Recently did a shoot where we made the classic mistake of not having a first assistant director. The first few shots our director would do 4 or 5 takes then after realising that we only had half of our shots after lunch and the sun was already going down it was 1 or 2 takes for every shot. It was a race against the setting sun. We ended up scrapping one wide shot because it was impossible to match with the shots we had at the beginning of the shoot. In this case our solution was not to fight the sun, but to work around it! We shot some extra close-ups instead of the wide shot and made it work.

[@tinkeryan7]

The editing!

[@TylerVincent]

We were filming a scene from a music video in a roller skating rink and wanted to use the disco ball ball light as our main source. The lights that were there were programmed to cycle through colors every 5-7 seconds and we only wanted the scene to have white colored lights. We ended up doing at least 10 takes trying to time the action of our characters dancing underneath the disco ball for those 5-7 seconds that the lights cycled to white light. It was getting embarrassing and just was taking too much time that we ended up cutting that entire scene from the video.

[@anime2121]

The time I have to fight the light when we were filming out side during noon time. We were in the middle of the field with no shade and the shot was wide, mid and some close up. The Sun was coming in and out of the cloud. We can only film when the Sun was behind the cloud to get that nice diffusion. We have to get ready when the Sun about to get behind the cloud. Could be few second to few minutes of filming time.

[@benjaminvoorhees2468]

I had to fight the light on a short crime drama. We started with shooting coverage for the actor with sky behind him. Then when the sun dipped over the hillside, we brought in some 120d's and warmed them up to emulate the sunset on the opposite actor who was laying on the ground.

[@aputurelighting]

Great example! It's really smart to use the sunlight when you need it and then add artificial lighting when you don't need to see the sun or the sky.

[@Haddotafekadya268]

thank you from Egypt it was very useful to us

[@ratt57]

Thanks for the great video! You showed "Duvetyne" (mispelled?) in the video for about two seconds. What is that and what is its purpose?

[@BB_films3000]

i was shooting a music video in noon and had a time when i had to shoot the character when he was inside the car, ambient light was too strong for that shot, so i moved the location to shaded area to balance the ambient light and used Aputure M9 as fill for character.

[@HelloEkow]

Recently did a corporate event with huge windows and tons of natural sunlight (which was their main reason for the location and video style). However, last minute they decided to do a presentations and close the blinds on one side. So I had one half of the room at 56k beautiful natural light and the other with 29k tungsten and low light. As simple as this sounds of a problem it happen halfway through the event and I had a ND filter on. Of course I was the last to know about the surprise presentation 😅.

[@DayofToast]

I once had a int. night scene we filmed during daylight. We blocked out the window and ended up using a fish tank as the main light source on the actor's face. Bizzare, but worked out lovely.

[@ThePlaceForThings]

loved it. must own a 300d II kit one day 🤞

[@JacoxNovak]

I fight the sun every single shoot hahaha, anyways, thanks for these vids, I love everything about them. :)

[@BoyBlessing]

Honestly liked the look of the lighting best when light #1 was the only light on

[@Visethelegend]

Which set up?

[@elaeda6920]

I'm fighting with daylight for the last 2 weeks, trying to fix and find balance between daylight and artificial lights indoors. Also each room has a different brightness, which gives headache on post edit.

[@plisskenetic]

Never liked that twinkling sound they use when breaking down their setups. Should change it!

[@leondebla1985]

For my short film 'Getaway' I found this beautiful street, but it was only beautiful from one side. Unfortunately when we arrived at the location on the day of the shoot, the sun was behind my characters. It was shot on a Canon 77D DSLR so my dynamic range wasn't that good, I also did not have any spare crew members for a bounce or any lights available. My solution was to film in cinestyle and try to fix it in post. It worked quiet well, it wasn't perfect but you can only work with what you have.

[@leondebla1985]

I still don't have any lights so the MC would help a lot 😜

[@saemranian]

thanks for your sharing