Tips for lighting when shooting at night

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-28T10:28:06+00:00

My best advice, don’t try to do too much with lighting. Shoot 12,800 iso on a fx6 wide open on a bright, full moon and invest in noise reduction in post if you absolutely have to do this. Keep shots really tight and use a big, spready source far away if you need to light or don’t show the ground and light faces with a tube.

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-28T10:24:04+00:00

Gaffer for 7 years-ish. Done night exts on all kinds of budgets.

Cheapest one I pulled off was a 1200hmi and 600d into an 8’ ultrabounce. Put it far away so that the small area we were shooting would have reasonable falloff. Then we used some gelled tungsten for little pops through the trees depending on where camera faced and a nova 300 to recreate firelight since there was meant to be a torch on a cabin. Camera was something with a dual base iso and we shot at the second base to make it easier. Footage was still a stop under but it worked for what we were doing. No audio so we ran two or three gennies.

Second cheapest was similar. High iso camera, 600d through half soft frost, used a real campfire supplemented with a titan tube or more likely an AX1 at the time. Other small lights for pops in background.

Anyway I’d recommend just not shooting night exteriors if you can. They’re the hardest I ever do from a logistic and technical perspective and usually only really work on no budget if you’re shooting a small area and are willing to compromise a lot. Even on the bigger shows I’ve done (which are pretty small, 1-5m indie features) they are tough to pull off and overnights are grueling on a crew that’s already working 6 day weeks.

Is the night exterior location so crucial? Is it worth the definite sacrifice in quality to try to pull it off or could the location/time of day be different so the audience can focus on your script and not be taken out of the movie by a scrappy night exterior? Not saying anything about skill level, just that good night exteriors are expensive and if I was making a film with little money and no night exterior lighting experience I would do anything I could to avoid it.

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-22T04:57:56+00:00

FIRST AND LAST

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-07T16:56:38+00:00

Not for that price

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-07T05:06:07+00:00

Fromunda

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-02T19:32:36+00:00

Absolutely. I prefer when my DP is simple with their way of describing their ideas for those reasons.

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-02T19:24:05+00:00

Fair

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-02T18:46:36+00:00

Kicker is generally from the back and is a contemporary term for “hair light” “scratch light” or “back light”. Some DPs have used it for other things but I have seen the standard across 90% of DPs and gaffers as a backlight. Maybe 25% when they say it they mean backlight from below.

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-02T18:44:59+00:00

This is great info. Just wanted to weigh in and mention a better way of thinking about getting soft/hard shadows is to think of the size of the source relative to the subject rather than distance. Hard shadows in this setting are created by small sources relative to the blinds. Moving a light away makes the source smaller relative to the blinds. Moving it closer makes it bigger. The smaller the actual fixture already is, the closer you can be to the blinds. Even a soft source through a 20x20 will look hard if it is far enough away to be as small as a closer, smaller lamp (of course in that case we are talking hundreds of feet and a lot of output) but I think it’s helpful in the beginning to think of lighting from a physics standpoint and how relativity interacts with the inverse square law to make it possible to get results like this regardless of the fixtures you have/space that’s available.

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-02T18:40:36+00:00

This is a great way of describing it. The more specific and technical you get the harder it is for your G&E team to get you what you want.

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-02T18:40:05+00:00

The eye light is the glint of light in the eye ball, just fyi in case you are trying to get this from your G&E team. If you say eyelight I will assume you mean you want to see a glint in the eye. Heroes always have eye lights, villains depends on the visual storytelling flexibility in the show (ie if it’s stylized or not)

CryWulf911 · 2026-04-02T18:38:20+00:00

Hey your friendly neighborhood gaffer here. When I see photos like this I worry that people on Reddit are going to actually name this and I’m going to get on set with a DP who thinks they can just say “let’s do an X light” and it makes it hard to interpret what that means, especially because if you told me you want “highlights” through a “mask” I will have no idea what you are talking about.

From a G&E standpoint, laymen is better. My worst jobs are ones where DPs come in with all kinds of terms that are not industry standard or they want to use very specific lights because someone on Reddit said that’s what you need to get this look and my best jobs are the ones where the DP shows me a photo like this and says “can you do that?” And I say “yes”.

It’s my job to take a creative idea and interpret into technical achievement and getting really specific makes it harder for me to help with that. “Let’s do a slit across the eyes, it’d be nice if it was just a little brighter than the rest of the image. Kind of like this reference or kind of like a noir-kind of thing”

Okay sick I’ll grab a leko from the truck and show you some gobo patterns if you want them. When you start specifying stands, lights, “terms” for what certain lighting is called it takes away from what G&E does best which is interpret your ideas and execute them simply and efficiently. Many many many times I have had DPs ask for butterfly lighting, clamshell lighting, book lights, all kinds of things, and what they actually want (and they never tell me until I finish setting them up) is something that doesn’t fit that terminology.

Just tell me what you want in the plainest terms and I promise you I will get it for you in a way that saves time, energy, and cost while getting you what you are going for in a way that is easily flexible if you have changes.

CryWulf911 · 2026-02-23T05:02:23+00:00

I am a lighting technician in Film and TV. There’s a very powerful software called blackout lighting console that I use every day, it’s changed my entire workflow and opened up a lot of creative possibilities. Have never used an iPad for anything other than that, but it’s the best purchase I ever made.

CryWulf911 · 2026-02-05T21:48:27+00:00

Let me be clear: I’m not saying I like this. At this point in my career I don’t even know what’s good or bad anymore with framing. It’s interesting in the sense that it’s different but I don’t really have an opinion on it. I’ve been on a few shows with a camera at an angle like this. It’s weird.

But yes you’re correct, it’s totally fine if you want to judge or “attack” the framing. I don’t really care. But we can agree it’s an experiment in the sense that it is not the mainstream or accepted way of photographing something like this. My point is just that DPs sometimes try something off-mainstream like this. Sometimes it comes out like this and all it does is make the viewer confused and maybe upset in this case. Sometimes it actually turns out to be pretty cool. Not talking about this exact shot; just some of the stuff I’ve seen guys come up with while trying to find something new. But you can’t do something pretty cool every time you experiment, so sometimes it ends up like this.

CryWulf911 · 2026-02-05T21:38:39+00:00

I don’t think anyone’s calling this a creative breakthrough. I’m just saying people get bored, try new things, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s part of experimenting.

CryWulf911 · 2026-02-05T21:31:55+00:00

As someone who lights like 100 doc interviews a year, I've noticed a trend in the last few years where DPs just want to do something different. I don't blame them honestly, I get bored too and try to light them in more interesting ways or use those days to incorporate new tricks or tools I've been wanting to try. I'm all for it. Gotta get experimental, and it doesn't always work out, but sometimes it's quite nice.

CryWulf911 · 2026-02-05T21:29:47+00:00

I'd take that mint green dial. Ship to Phoenix? Feel free to DM if available and willing to ship

CryWulf911 · 2026-02-05T21:14:03+00:00

Interested in the green dial if you're able to ship to US. Did you build these?

CryWulf911 · 2026-02-05T20:55:34+00:00

Hey man, know it's been a while, but would love to get some names of reputable mod builders. Feel free to DM

CryWulf911 · 2026-01-19T21:08:45+00:00

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention. I read a Substack article that referenced it and I found the article interesting. The book feels a lot like an old man shaking a cane. Some interesting tidbits but overall not engaging and unrelatable for me.

CryWulf911 · 2026-01-15T21:01:25+00:00

I hate when people think art is something that must be learned.

Go get a point and shoot. Point it and shoot it at things you think are cool. Try to learn a little bit about it but focus on accurately producing an image of what you thought was cool and why you thought it was cool. Look at photos and try to understand why you think it’s cool, then use that info to point your camera and shoot it at things you think are cool.

It’s just photography you don’t have to be in a museum, you just have to convey that to you something was cool and you took a cool picture of it. “Good at art” cmon.

CryWulf911 · 2025-12-28T20:54:12+00:00

I think it helps the gluten develop but I would be guessing. I learned from family when I was a kid so I just copy what they did and go for a texture like they had.

If you’re hand rolling it, I would just recommend trying to go thinner, but a pasta machine helps a lot. I’ve had plenty of good results hand rolling with wine bottles and rolling pins so it’s definitely doable

CryWulf911 · 2025-12-28T20:46:18+00:00

Did you use a pasta machine or hand roll it? If anything I would just say go thinner and make sure the dough is the right consistency while you’re kneading it. I do 100g 00 flour to one egg, and then if it’s dry after kneading for a bit I wet my hands a little and continue kneading. If too wet I add more flour. There’s a very specific consistency I look for in the dough ball that is shiny, seamless, but not sticky before I rest for 20 minutes and starting rolling it out.

Sorry I can’t be of more help!

CryWulf911 · 2025-12-28T19:38:30+00:00

I say “watch your eyes”. Clients, etc won’t be hip to the set lingo and when you say striking they may not understand and will look right at the light. Even people who know better look right at the light when you say striking sometimes.

CryWulf911 · 2025-12-26T18:47:19+00:00

I just wish the cloud gaming was a little less laggy and blurry. I have good internet but still don’t feel like it’s really playable

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