There's something undeniably captivating about Blue Hour. That brief window each day when the sun has set, but the night hasn't claimed the sky yet. It's raw. It's real. It's natural filter that transforms everyday scenes into something almost cinematics. Hey, can you think of a trash? Hmm. Cinematic. Picture this. Your onset has the last layers of sunset. What did you just say to me? Just call. Okay. Hmm. Oh god. Stop. Some way, way, way, we stop. Stop, please. Alright, hopefully you guys enjoyed that little sequence, a little short intro because it was quite tricky to shoot. And shooting at Blue Hour is inherently beautiful because like, the whole sky is just vibrant, saturated blue. If you throw in some more lights, it just gives you that orange and teal look like naturally. And pretty much anything you shoot will look very cinematics. And if you're looking at the sky, naturally and pretty much anything you shoot will look very cinematics. So that begs the question, if everything looks so good at Blue Hour, why don't all film your shoot during Blue Hour? And the answer to that is lighting inconsistencies. The biggest issue once the sun goes down is that you only have 30 to about 40 minutes ish to shoot a very quick scene. You can't really shoot like a whole movie in one day with just 30 to 40 minutes. Within the same shot, your sky is literally changing color and getting darker every single minute. And because of that, it's incredibly difficult to create a consistent image during Blue Hour. But in this video, I'm going to break down how I shot this short sequence in my backyard. And some things that you can do to prepare for a shoot like this during Blue Hour. Now, of course, obviously, Minus has a lot of lighting inconsistencies as well. Some shots are brighter, some shots are darker. But hopefully you guys find some sort of value from this video. Now, diving right into it, the most important step when shooting at Blue Hour is just the planning and preparation. You only have about 30 minutes to shoot. Get all the shots you need to shoot that one short little scene. So you better prepare to have all your camera gear ready, your lighting gear ready, your mics, whatever you need, props, clothing, costume, whatever, ready to go when the sun is about to set. And the first thing that I did was just literally go on my weather app, on my Google Pixel phone, and check what time sunset was. And right now, in June, in Los Angeles, the sun usually sets around 810 p.m. Now that I know that I'm going to plan to have everything ready to go, all set up, everything attached, all the modifiers, all the of your lightstand, whatever you need to set up, everything is ready to go at least 30 minutes before the sun actually sets. And even though the sun sets at 810, I highly recommend getting some test shots or at least shooting something right before the sun actually sets and make sure that your lighting looks good. And then as you're shooting, you're just going to be adjusting the output of your lights, according to how dark this guy is. So in the intro, you saw that this is the wide shot that I opened with, and I'm taking inspiration from this frame that I found on ShotDec. This is from a show on Netflix called End of the Fing World, and it's a shot from one of the episodes. And because Blowr is naturally blue, if you use any warm, orange lights, the color contrast of that lighting is going to get you like 90% of the way they're already. So looking at my shot, I'm going to set up my table and grab a dining chair and position it as close to my window as possible. Now, this is because the window is going to be the motivation for all of my lighting. The goal of my lighting is to pretend, make believe, that the warm ambient lighting from indoors is actually strong enough to light me. Now, in reality, it's so dark. Like if you just use ambient light coming in from indoors, and you just turn on your house lights, it's super dark. You won't be able to see me pretty much at all. And even if you can, the light doesn't look that good. So how do we create a believable, good looking ambient lighting that can also see me and make believe that is coming from inside? The first thing that I did was to set up a light to create shadows on the pillar here to pretend that there's a dining table light or some sort of light that's coming in from indoors. The light that I'm using is the Cobor CL60R, which can do by color and also RGB colors. I'm using the cone reflector attachment, and I'm going to set the light to around 2700 Kelvin with a plus five green shift at around 40% power to start with and then lower it according to how dark the sky is. The reason why I did the green shift to about plus five is because the color looked a little bit off as it was passing through the window. And if I see something like that on set, I'm definitely going to try and correct it in camera before I take it into post because color grading can only take you so far. You always want to do everything in camera. The next part of the frame that I want to light is this back portion of the patio right here. I want the viewers to think that there's ambient lighting coming from inside my house and is illuminating the pillar and also a tiny bit of defense in the background. The light that I'm using is the Cobor CL220, and it's a 220 watt by color light. I have a reflector and barn doors in front of it in case that I wanted to shake the light in any way. And initially I set the light to about 2700 Kelvin, which is pretty warm and at 60% power and pointed it directly at the pillar and positioned it off to the side to try and create some interesting shadows. But on camera it looked too hot and too saucy and kind of like you know that there's a light there. And it's not soft and spread out like how ambient lighting would look like. So what I ended up doing was actually flipping it around and just bounced the light off the patio walls and that treated a much softer looking light. But because the walls were already super warm, I'm going to cool off my light by changing the color temperature to around 4000 Kelvin. So with those two lights set up already, I am done with lighting the location and all that's left to do is light myself. I'm using two lights here. The first is my key light, which is another co-bore CL 220 with a 48 inch softbox set at 2700 Kelvin. Now if you're also using a large softbox like I am with a 48 inch softbox, so that's what a four foot softbox. If you're using a large one like that, it's going to severely decrease the output of your light. So instead of setting that light to about like 20%, I set it actually to about 75%. And this light is positioned about 60 degrees off to my left. I want the light to feel like it's interior ambient lighting and kind of like blend in with like whatever light is coming in from the window. So everything is going to be off to like my side. It wouldn't really make sense if the light was like kind of in front of me and you can see that the light kind of wraps way over my face. That probably wouldn't look really natural. It might give it a way that you know I'm being actually lit by a source. So instead of that 30 degree to 45 degree angle that usually plays your light in, I place it off like 60 or even like 80 degrees away from myself. And once that looks good for me, the next light in the last light is going to be the edge light. And I'm using the Cobra CL60R with a reflector and I'm setting that at 2700 Kelvin and at 75% power for a nice hard light on my side and back. And that's it for my lighting, four lights in total. Now the camera that I'm using is the Canon C70 with the Sigma 1835 T2.0. And I'm using the small rig magic fizz to pull focus and I've got a shotgun mic mounted on the top for scratch audio and a holly land marks 300 wireless transmitter so I can see what my image is on my add almost ninja monitor. And I'm sending my camera's color temperature to be around 4000 Kelvin to get a good mixture of both blue and orange colors to grade in post. Now when I'm actually shooting, I'm moving like super quick. I'm just one person and I'm like I've managed everything by myself. So everything needs to be super quick. I'm not going to be setting up a ton of different shots. I have three different shots in total, wide and medium tight. And then if I have time for B-roll, I'll get B-roll. But by that time, I'm sure the sun is like already gone. The sky is like super dark and there's not much light left. And if you were working with a crew, I would highly recommend having someone who can operate camera for you, point focus, and also having someone who can adjust the intensity of the light for you because as the sky is getting darker, you'll need to adjust your camera's exposure accordingly. So I started with a 4-stop ND filter, went down the two, and then eventually took it off. At the same time, I'm constantly adjusting the output of my lights because if I left my lights at the exact same power output for the entire shoot, what ends up happening is as the sky gets darker and I'm taking off the ND off my camera, my lights will 100% become too bright or overexposed. So as the sky gets darker, your lights also have to get darker as well. And just having someone there next to a light or a couple of lights or on their phone, kind of adjusting it is super duper helpful. Or else your image might look drastically different from shot to shot from take to take. Alright, that's it for this video. Let me know if you have any questions about my setup in the comments. If you like this video, hit the like button, and subscribe for more filmmaking content. Until the next one, my name is Alex Chung and I'll see you later. Bye. .