Cinematography Stuff: Planning Your Shoot on a Sunny Day
The Truth About the Sun (for Film Makers)
I found out very early on - the sun is one light you’re never going to beat. I mean, you can beat it if you have banks of HMIs lined up and pointed at your scene during a daytime shoot. But it’s big, it’s bright, and it’s everywhere during the day. I’ve been on shoots where we’ve blacked out the windows and there’s still a sliver of sun coming in somehow. And it’s so damn bright - even a little bit of sunlight - that it can be a menace! So unless you’re a cinematographer on a project with the budget for it, you’re not going to beat it.
Instead of trying to overcome it, we try to work with it. Sometimes that means diffusing it, or bouncing it, or blocking it. It can also mean (and often does) that we move the camera and talent throughout the length of a sunny day shoot to keep a consistent look to the shots - for example, keeping the sun on the right side of the frame in every shot. This takes planning and it requires a location that allows us to move the camera and talent from shot to shot.
About the Video in This Post
In the video example, you’ll see how we move the talent and the camera in a clock-wise direction from shot to shot to keep the sun to our right as the sun moves across the sky. Think about the camera and the actress standing on an imaginary Lazy Susan. While everything else - the trees, the ground, the hills and the sun - are not on the Lazy Susan. As the sun moves, we just rotate the Lazy Susan and the camera and talent to match the sun.
For this video, it was easy to do. We were surrounded by trees and so we were able to shoot in several angles and still have the pine trees as our background. When I had to shoot in a direction that started making the background look too different (for example, if we had to go to the edge of the line of pine trees so that no more pine trees were in the background) I just a low hero kind of shot. That way the camera was just looking into more pine trees. Does that makes sense? It’s kind of hard to explain.
Why Is Planning Important?
Every project and film required planning. The planning stage is where we try to make sure we cover as many bases as possible so that when it comes time to shoot, we have as few unexpected challenges as possible.
The difference with shooting outside is that we can’t control the sun. Again, we can modify the sun with gear. But we can’t stop it from moving and we can’t just turn it off. But planning to shoot in the sun is actually easier in a way. With a sun-tracking app you know exactly when the sun will be in which part of the sky, when it will rise and set, and which way it will move across the sky. And if you know your location you’ll be able to plan exactly how you want/need to shoot your scenes.
