This will change everything about your cinematography! In this video I break down How to film with Natural light. After learning and applying these cinematography concepts you'll be able to achieve cinematic shots in any situation your in.

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Contents of this Video:
00:00- Intro
00:22- Shoot against the light
01:07- Time of Day
02:20- Shot Composition

Film against the light this may have been a term that you heard before but essentially what you're doing is filming in the opposite direction of your light source which can be the sun or even a film light but essentially what you're doing is backlighting your subject.

what this does is separate them from the background and it creates interesting shadows that makes an overall more dynamic shot then if your subject was front lit.

If you watch some of my interview breakdowns you’ll notice that I always place my B-cam in the opposite direction of my Key light and that's because the key light creates interesting shadows on the face whereas if I filmed the subject front lit it would just be a really flat and uninteresting image.

But I want to talk about how to achieve cinematic shots using nothing but natural light and the biggest tip for this besides the backlighting concept is the time of day you decide to film this.

The time of day is extremely important. so much so that I organized my entire production in Louisiana around it. There's a window in the day that I avoid shooting outside at all costs and that is from the hours of 11:00 Am to 3:00 PM give or take an hour depending on the time of year.

And here's why, when you shoot between these hours the sun is directly overhead and what this does is completely wash everything out and it makes it extremely hard to expose. This is an example of a shot that we filmed in the early afternoon. As you can see it gives a really unflattering look to the face because it causes shadows right underneath the eyes and there is no way you can backlight anything because the sun is directly overhead.

The best times to shoot are between the hours of 5:30 Am to 9:00AM and then I would say from 4:00 PM to 8:30 PM

And the reason is because the sun starts to angle and you can begin to use it to backlight your subject.

Here is the difference between shots that we got in the early afternoon vs shots that we got around sunset.

As you can see the time of day plays a huge role in achieving this, but its also about how you place your camera and compose your shots.

I specifically found spots on the farm that would have sunlight peeking through branches giving my subject a rim light and causing shadows and light leaks, overall creating a really interesting shot.

In this shot for example its about 6:30 PM and I'm shooting on the deskside of her face, the sun is causing a rim light and contrasting shadows on her face.

In this shot its 7:00 and the sun is a little lower and the lighting gets a bit more dramatic. Now I specifically placed her here because of the beautiful rim light that was happening, it was completely outlining her and everything in gold.

This shot was closer to 8:00 and I saw a path where the sun was leaking through the leaves so I just told her to walkthrough this path and I shot her again against the light and it just created these beautiful light leaks and solar flares that really gave this shot a ton of character.


One thing that I would say is any B-roll that your shooting point your camera against the light and find those spots where the sun creates those light leaks and solar flares and then place your subject and just move your camera around to create these interesting shots.

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