It's called Magic Hour... it's not really an hour, more like 20 minutes, and it's not before sunset, it's after. It's the period of time after the sun goes down, but before it gets dark. The light, which is indirect and colorful, wraps the actors nicely and fills shadows, cutting down on harsh edges. The light tends to be gold, but can also have red or orange in it. "Days of Heaven" (Nestor Almendros, DP) is a movie that was planned and shot around this Magic Hour, and for this, worth a look. (He won the 1978 Academy Award for Best Cinematography for this.) Assuming they had two Magic hours (one at sunrise and one at sunset) they had a total of 40 minutes of shooting time. Since the average day on a movie set is anything from 12-14 hours, you can imagine how much longer it took to shoot this movie. During the day they planned their shots and set everything up, then ran from setup to setup during Magic Hour, getting what they could before the light went away. This is very expensive, and so you will rarely see Magic Hour employed in any big way for features. You will see it used all the time in commercials.

Shooting during Magic Hour is no big deal. You just set up a shot like you usually would, start shooting before the sun sets to work in a couple of on-film rehearsals (sometimes the shot actually looks better before Magic Hour), and shoot, shoot, shoot, until you run out of stop. Check your meter often... light changes very rapidly during this time of day.

"On a good gate, that's a wrap."

Perfect. Thanks Monsieur Focus Puller, I always watch out for your contributions to the forums.

I'll let the forums know how I get on with the "magic hour" movie.

Ray

serious about nothin' 'cept film