01/20/2025
Night exteriors on a budget can be daunting, especially lighting large spaces. My approach simplifies the process: determine the light’s motivation—moonlight, streetlights, or a fire pit—and treat the scene like any other, adjusting for scale. Large exteriors follow the same principles as smaller scenes but require larger, more distant sources.
For this shoot, DP and I discussed going for a purely moonlit look. We chose a hard-ish moonlight to backlight falling snow, paired with a soft bounce for fill or key depending on the talent’s orientation.
The main hard moonlight came from an upstage 3/4 backlit angle to light the barn area. To emulate the far-reaching quality of moonlight, we used reflectors for added height and distance. An .lighting 1200D with a narrow reflector shot into a 50cm CRLS #2 and a 4x beadboard soft side, both rigged on a mombo. This provided a blend of hard specular light and soft ambient fill from one source.
For soft fill, a 600D was shot into an 8x8 Ultrabounce, with flags shaping the spill. Inside the barn, titan tubes added a warm interior glow.
A radi 4x4 litemat served as the augmenting key for mediums and close-ups, complementing the 8x8 while providing a flattering shape to pick out talent against the background.
To enhance the scene, a snowmaker FX machine was rigged on a triple riser top stick and rotated for realistic snowfall.
Client:
Agency:
DP:
Gaffer: ☝️ .dp
KG/Snowmaker:
Team Lead:
Talent: & Lily
Music:
