Early morning short

Ludovic Fekete · March 22, 2014

Hello everyone !

My name is Ludovic and I'm a student at the local Cinematography School and we have a short movie project. The story is about 2 person, a man and a woman who's going to meet in an early morning. Now the problem is the light. I would prefer to use the blue hour lights, just before the sunrise, maybe a half an hour after sunrise but that's it.

Civil twilight is about a half and hour and we gonna need more time. We have 3-4 days for this to shoot. Can I use the civil twilight after sunset? Is it going to be different?

If I'm gonna make the change from civil twilight-sunrise-half hour after sunrise, how am I gonna be able to edit these shots?

I appreciate all kind of help. I would like to stick with this early morning lights if possible, it's wonderful.

Thank you for you time and patience.

Sorry for my english.

Have a wonderful day !

Dustin Supencheck · March 28, 2014

This is always a tough time to shoot. What it's coming down to is some intense pre production.

I would say some of the short you HAVE to shoot during these two 30 minute windows. Yes I think you can shoot in the morning and at night. They are marginally different. Which over 4 days of shooting only gives you apprx 4 hours of actual shooting time. That stated you need to know exactly where your camera is going and what your blocking is far in advance to production day. If you have enough pre planning you can knock out a lot of shots in this short amount of time since you are simply using all natural light. (maybe have someone run around with a bounce for some fill) And make sure that you are metering quickly before every take because the light levels will be changing rapidly. I would probably underexpose a bit for this look. A set of fast lenses will obviously be quite beneficial to buy you more shooting time.

Now 4 hours is probably not enough time to shoot even a short film. This is where it will take some ingenuity. What is it that you like about this blue hour? I'm assuming it's the quality and the color. I love this time of day myself. I try to utilize it as much as possible. The quality of the light is extremely soft and appears quite low contrast and the blue gives it such a beautiful mood. You can recreate this. Maybe not for your wides, but certainly for your close ups. Ideally you could get your hands on a color temp meter and go out during your favorite time of day and read what it's at in terms of color temp. Take this reading and use it to find the right filtration to match that color. Now it's quality you need to worry about. If you get a really cloudy day you may be able to make this work. I would recommend that you don't see the sky for the shots you are "faking." It will appear blown out and white unlike the beautiful blue you are going for. That or you could use a frame of some sort of thick diffusion (grid or muslin, hell if you're on a budget I've used bed sheets in the past) but you don't want the background to be brighter than your subject so you need to cut that down as well. Like I said you might only be able to fake your close ups especially if you don't have a huge budget.

Try doing all of this to get your image as close to the look you are going for and if worst comes to worst tweak it a bit in post and you'll be spot on. Also be sure to take a bunch of test stills beforehand. That's how I do all of my pre production.

I hope this wasn't too much of a jumbled mess! Happy shooting!