Editor’s Note
The following story was submitted anonymously. Names, titles, and identifying details have been changed or removed.
Film sets can be chaotic, especially at the low budget and early career level. These stories are not shared to shame individuals, but to highlight common failures, hard lessons, and the realities many crew members experience behind the scenes.
If you have your own on set horror story, feel free to ?? submit it anonymously. Chances are, someone else has lived it too.
Anonymous Submission
I was hired last minute to gaff for an out of town DP.
He seemed sharp — decisive, efficient, and calm. He lit the product like a top-tier commercial DP.
But as the week went on, cracks started to show. The issue came to a head once we flipped to the beauty portion of the shoot.We’d finished the product shots and were moving on to models against different color backdrops.
He chose to key the scene with a 12×12 book light. We had 2x Aputure XT26’s into a 12×12 Ultrabounce, coming back through 12×12 Magic Cloth.This should have produced the softest, most flattering light source, but he surrounded the 12×12 Magic Cloth with so many solid T-bars, floppies, and cutters that only a 2×2 square of light was left.
The setup was completely boxed in with black fabric on all sides. It looked like he was climbing into a tent every time he got on the camera.He didn’t just flag the source down to a 2×2 opening. He placed that opening high in the 12×12, roughly two feet above eyeline, turning what should have been a broad, soft source into a toppy, harsh key light.
For the first model, the light was already unflattering. For the second, who had noticeable under-eye bags, it was even worse. I gently suggested adjusting the height or adding some fill, but he was locked into the setup in his head.
When he finally went for client feedback, the reaction was immediate. They didn’t like the setup.
Their note: it wasn’t bright enough and didn’t match the storyboards or look book that was plastered all over video village. He’d lit the scene far too dark and completely ignored the reference images sitting right in front of him.
Instead of opening up the source, removing some of the neg/adding fill, or adjusting the setup in any way, he calls for an Aputure 600C with a lantern directly in front of the 2×2 opening we had just flagged down.
After spending an hour carefully shaping the light, we were now lighting the model with a lantern 3 feet away from their face — positioned directly in front of 12×12 book light and what was easily the largest forest of C-stands and t-bars we’d built on a commercial that year.
Every flag, cutter, and solid we’d just placed sat right behind the new lantern, instantly cancelling out all that careful work.And then, as if to cement the absurdity of the setup, he climbed right back into the tent of flags and solids he’d built — maneuvering through the narrow gap like it was a performance. It felt like he was making a show of the process, as if to convince everyone watching that there was purpose behind all of it.
The lantern, a few feet from the actresses head, lifted the shadows just enough to appease the limited understanding of the client.
He stayed tented away like that for the next day and a half, occasionally calling out for tiny adjustments — dimming the lantern 2 or 3 percent. Everything felt arbitrary at that stage.
What We Can Learn From This Story
- A lighting technique should serve a clear goal. In this case, heavy flagging reduced a 12×12 book light down to an effective source closer to 2×2. Once the size of the light source shrinks that much, the light stops behaving like a soft source and becomes noticeably harder and more directional. Simply starting with a book light does not preserve soft light quality if the source is aggressively cut down. As the source gets smaller relative to the subject, the quality of the light changes, regardless of how it was built.
- Reference materials should guide decision making. The look book and storyboards were visible throughout the shoot, yet the lighting approach did not reflect those references. When visual targets are clearly defined, deviating from them without discussion creates misalignment that surfaces later as client dissatisfaction.
- Source size and placement matter as much as diffusion. Positioning the bounce high and concentrating output near the top of the frame produced a toppy key that emphasized under eye shadows. Soft sources still require careful consideration of angle, height, and subject characteristics.
- Client feedback often reveals earlier communication gaps. When client concerns appear late in a setup, it is usually a sign that expectations were not aligned early. This is not a lighting problem alone, but a workflow and communication issue.
- Adding fixtures rarely fixes a mismatched concept. Introducing a lantern after extensive shaping did not resolve the underlying issue. It altered exposure levels but did not address direction, quality, or intent. At that point, the lighting approach became internally inconsistent.
- Complexity should decrease as clarity increases. As a setup evolves, decisions should simplify the process and reinforce the desired image. When complexity increases after a setup fails to meet expectations, it often indicates uncertainty rather than refinement.
- Online portfolios do not reflect on set problem solving. A strong visual presence can demonstrate aesthetic taste, but it does not show how a cinematographer responds to reference material, client notes, or changing priorities under real production conditions.
