Golden hour filming urban sunset locations

Sunset and golden hour filming locations

Discovering good golden hour filming sunset movie locations is a time-consuming job. Finding locations to shoot with your drone can sometimes be a task in itself, the key point to any sunset golden hour shoot is timing typically known as the photographer’s golden hour. Even if you find a spot the weather can trip you up after that long wait and careful planning, all can be lost in a few seconds. Time is money and your time costs you money so a constructive plan must be in place before you head out to capture that 3 to the 5-second money shot. Flying your drone around aimlessly with no subject or goal in mind is a pointless exercise. We should prefer to set out our goals on paper before We intend to even get our camera drone equipment out a few days before the shoot.

aerial filming photography drone golden hour sunsets
golden hour photography

So before we begin, let’s think about what it is we have imagined or seen in our minds how does it make us feel !. The sun adds elements to our emotions in movie making and if used correctly it can move your audience and create an expandable experience on what would be only a standard flat photo canvas if We were to take the image and remove the sunset element. With this in mind, imagine you have been tasked with finding a filming location with an urban theme of an old gold mine, your client wants a 3-second dusk shot of an urban structure with the sun bursting thru the structure. The director of the film wants you to create a 3-second clip for an ending. Bearing in mind the hero of the film has just stolen all the riches from the mine and killed all his adversaries single-handed with nothing less than a torque wrench he found in a vehicle he used to gain access to the hill, sounds like a Jason Statham movie I hear you say!   Hmmm so where do we start ?.

The below clip is nothing special but illustrates clearly what the objective is, the short film will show 3 sequences of the golden hour, all three sequences are around 3-5 seconds it should be easy to spot them !. What clip is the ending, comments below?

I would always go on a reconnaissance exercise or recce for short to find me my subject and place. When a subject and place is found I would look for where the sun sets and rises, I would make any inquiries necessary to get permission and check that the site is secure and safe to operate in with a drone. If you have this ticked off on your briefing sheet then you are good to go the rest is up to you. If its a morning, that means getting out of your pit or bed at a time that gives you at least 1 hour to be on-site to set up your equipment I typically allow 2 hours before the golden hour happens so you are set up and ready to capture that film sequence and best of all get paid for what you are good at, after all, it’s a job. If its a dusk shot then forget getting home and going out with your pot smoking mates or playing football or whatever it is that satisfies your inner child needs as the goal here must be realized, that means staying out till that perfect moment happens to capture a 3-second shot and get the task completed no matter what.

Aerial filming and photography is a rewarding Business providing you are willing to give up your time and apply yourself, in essence, it should be a passion as well as a vocation as without the vision and passion it can be difficult to capture media from a creative point. So can you create a good film without vision, well yes providing you have a good director and creative director but this all costs money if you want to produce stock or promotional filming media?. so I refer back to the beginning, it’s all about preparation and planning, do that and you will at least capture what you intended to produce and if that’s only 2 seconds then that 2 seconds is worth more then 2 hours of generic Aerial filming footage of mountains, etc without no real objective or goals.

 

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