Cinematography : Sunset lighting by Anthony Dail

Shoot a plate of your background. Bring that plate with you to a greenscreen studio. Live key it onto a monitor and edge light the subject warmly as if the background sunset image is really working on them. Watch all this in real time and tweak it till it's just right. In post you can even add in a little lens flare to make the effect more believable. Oh, yeah, and hire a DP who can shoot all this effectively for you. The alternative is not much cheaper. HMI's and a ton of grip equipment and a crew on location? Not cheap and you're at the mercy of weather conditions. Your sunset may not even show up if the day is overcast. In addition, a setting sun sets quickly and you will not have a lot of time for the actual interview. Where with a background plate you can loop it etc.

I have never done a live key into a monitor.. That would be cool though if I could figure that out

Wow a real person with an actual posting, so rare on Stage 32 these days. Sunset shots just look so great but as you guessed there are some issues. The first issue you will have is the time it takes for the sun to set. The time available, keeping the sun in the frame will depend upon many things; how wide is the lens, how close to the horizon is the sun at the beginning, and distance from the equator, to name a few. Consider that you will have 20 minutes, but realistically need to get the shot in 10 minutes. However if you want the changing sky colours without the sun, then you may shoot at an angle to the sun, or with the sun behind you. If the sun is to be in the frame, yes, you will need to light the person in the interview. First, shoot the sunset with the camera you will be using and determine the exposure you will use to get the sunset to look the way you like it, which may look brighter than if it was just a sunset shot. Look up how much light is needed for the camera’s ISO, lens stop and shutter setting. This will tell you how much light is needed to have a full proper exposure of the subject against the sunset. Rarely does that look correct and real. Depending upon the exposure latitude of the camera you are using, you will underexpose the people between 1-3 stops. A camera with a greater latitude will allow you to have a greater difference between the exposure and the amount of light needed. Through your test exposures you determine the amount of light needed. Decide on the amount you can underexpose for your camera’s latitude, if you are not sure and cannot test, defer to 1 stop of underexposure. Look at the photometric data provided by any real company that makes lights for television and film. You will find info about the amount of light at a given distance the fixture provides. You are looking for a light that will give you -1 stop or 1/2 the amount of light your camera needs for the full exposure settings from your test. Each stop down needs double the amount of light and each stop open needs half the amount of light. If the photometric data is not provided for a distance you can use, then remember that light falls of in an inverse square relationship so 2X the distance will be 1/4 the amount of light, and 1/2 the distance will yield 4x the light. The light will also need to be daylight or 5600K. This will yield natural and intense reds and oranges in the sunset. If you end up using a tungsten lamp, full CTB (Colour Temperature Blue) lighting gel will loose 2 stops or yield only 1/4 of the amount listed in the photometric data. With the sun in the frame you will have flares. Set angles to make the flares work within your frame, but make sure they look ok if going over the subjects face. With a dolly or slider the moving camera will also make the flare move which can be quite pretty. If the sun is not to be in the frame and you will shoot with the sun partly lighting you subject, a couple of things happen. The amount of time you have to shoot the shot is longer than dealing with the setting sun, but as with any setting sun shot, the amount of light will be changing. The sky behind your subject will be darker than the sky around the sun. Because you are shooting at an angle from the sun and not into it, you can use a polarizing filter to make the sky even darker. Your subject is partly lit by the sun (possibly) but you will need light to fill in the shadows on the face. Again tests of what the background sky will look like at different exposures will give you your exposure and from that you figure out the amount of light needed. The fill light can be 2-3 stops under the sun on the face, or 1/4 to 1/8 the amount of light. You can also set your exposure using the sunlight on the subjects face and perhaps overexposing it between 1/2 and 1 stop. If the sun is illuminating your object, that light will be quite a warm colour. Should you use a reflector lot fill in the shadows the fill will also be warm. The warm light from the direction of the sun makes sense, but the fill light should be cooler so you probably wish to use a 5600K light again. If the sun doesn’t light your subject then the light you provide should mimic the warmth from the sun with a 1/4 or 1/2 CTO (Colour Temperature Orange) gel on a 5600K light with a light loss of about 1/3 of a stop. Fill light would still be 5600K. If you are doing an interview with no surprise questions but looking for information, do a rehearsal. Assume that you can get no more than 5 minutes of questions so that if you have more time you can ask the questions again, on a different lens. There are a couple of alternatives. Using your test as a background VFX plate and shooting the interview on a green or blue screen stage being careful with lighting the subject. Or using a sunset backdrop which of course would have nothing moving and shooting on a stage or on location Not difficult just think about what you want it to look like.

Just to be clear, in the studio, the backdrop behind your actor would be the greenscreen. Not a monitor with the sunset image which would look ridiculous. The live key of that is just a reference so you know how to light the subject in the room so it looks believable. Assuming you have a decent monitor in the studio, the composite should look right but can still be tweaked afterwards. Adding foreground objects and lighting them with the same warm sunlight is another way to sell it. As is a small hopefully quiet fan which can mimic a breeze if the background seems like there was wind. Many studios have crew available to assist with both the key as well as the lighting. So give a call to a few in your area and see if anyone can help. You'd be surprised. You can even check a local public access channel in your town. Many would have the basic gear to do this. Actually shooting the sunset you may be better off hiring someone. Good luck.

Good points Michael. Of course the screen, green or blue, could also be outside. If the setting sun is behind the subjects in the plate shot, then the sun's lighting angle is a backlight. This would allow shooting the foreground interview earlier in the day using hard and soft reflectors to provide the key and fill. Colour correction would be with a modified white balance and an additional filter on the camera plus perhaps some additional in post. This makes for fast simple VFX comps. A method we use a lot.

Thanks everyone for the reply. It's a little complicated for me at this point. I think I may shoot it one hour before sunset and turn them 45 degrees to the sun and use it as a key light. The location is on a dam and we are using the lake for the background. The sun sets to the right side of the lake, so if he's 45 degrees or so to the sun, that would put the lake in for the background. I think that might make things a bit easier. I will have someone holding a reflector for us. The person I'm interviewing is very sharp and normally can do what needs to be done in two takes. All I'm using is a dslr camera. I do have a green screen. But right now I use it to just play around with at this point, cause I'm not just real good at keying everything out yet(sometimes I can and sometimes I can't) so I hate to take that chance. I just do this on the side as a hobby, do I'm not a pro. I have learned I can make more money picking up cans on the side of the highway. Ha I'm still listening for any additional thoughts since I have revised my plan... Thanks everyone so much for the input

I also did some test shots yesterday to better prepare me. I did noticed that my skin was really red looking at sunset vs one hour before sunset. ( just thought I would throw that in there )

If yall want, I'll post a link to the video on here. Let me know. It's only 3 mins long

Anthony of course you should post a link. Curious to see what you did and to hear how it went.

I will have to wait a week or so before I can release anything. Check back here in a week or so and I'll attach a link. Remember. I'm not a pro.... And they waited to late for me to start to work on this project as my schedule was already full. Some things I would still do to it, but I had to find a stopping point somewhere. Again, check this again in about a week or so. Thanks again for the input

https://youtu.be/O2xe1UY3gdM Almost 10k views in just a few hours on the customers page.

Hi Anthony. Congratulations on the hits! Which were the segments you shot? The narrator, the owners of Gearhead, anything else?

Andrew, I shot it all, and edited it all

Anthony I think you did nice job overall with this piece. Editing pacing kept everything moving very well and delivered the information. As a generality, good visuals that are missing mediums shots and close-ups of people enjoying themselves. You show the people engaged in an activity but some tighter shots would give emotional re-enforcement that they are having a good time so the view should enjoy this. The montage of action shots worked well, perhaps some simple 3 shot sequences of the various activities would have stressed those activities more. I’m also curious why you didn’t use the drone for any of the action shots, the people on the lake seems an obvious choice. For lighting there are 2 main things that jumped out. The owners of the bicycle shop was not a great set-up. The top light is too bright with their faces suffering from the shadows. In that spot, the top light needed to be either flagged of diffused and then their faces needed to be lit. The location within the store is also not to your advantage. With a whole store available, putting them against a wall with a few things in the foreground made the setting just ok. Putting yourself against a wall and having a large expanse of a store behind them would show the size of the place better and be a much more interesting shot in terms of depth, colour and texture. The other set-up is the sunset shot of the “host’ of the piece. First, most of the forest in the background is not lit by the sun, only a few trees on camera left and your subject. This lessens the impact of a sunset shot a lot. Looks like you used a relatively hard reflector, somewhat opposite the sun to fill the shadow side of the face. Unfortunately with the sun slightly behind your subject and the reflector slightly behind the subject, his face is shadowed and dark. When doing these sorts of shots the idea is to visually wrap the sunlight around the face. With the sun from behind the subject and coming from camera right, the first light source or reflector should be to the right of the camera so that the light from the sun appears to wrap around to the front of the face. The light falls off on the side opposite the sun, as it should. If the contrast ratio between the sun and the shadow side of the face is too great, then a large soft reflector will provide a “sourceless” contrast correction. The overly saturated red colour can easily be taken out with any correction program, even the most basic ones should handle red saturation. I know you were limited in available gear, so these are just suggestions. All in all, nice work!

That's a lot of input. Thank u very much. Love it. I will reply a bit more when I get time later this evening. Thank u!!