12 March 2026

Lighting for mixed stills and motion

How we plot a day that has to yield both a hero still and usable coverage without relighting every setup.

A day that must produce a campaign still and a film rarely fails on cameras. It fails on light that cannot travel from a locked hero frame into coverage.

We start with the still: key, fill, and edge that will also read at 24 or 25 fps. If a beauty dish is too small for a moving subject, we change the modifier before we change the shot list.

The stills art director and the DP share a plot, not two plots taped to the same wall. Gels, diffusion, and practicals are decided in pre-production with both names on the PDF.

On the day, tethered stills are the rehearsal for motion. If the still is wrong, the film will not rescue it. If the still is right, coverage is a question of blocking, not of reinventing the key.

When a client needs a hard beauty frame that will never move, we protect a short window for that modifier and then rebuild for motion. Honesty about time is cheaper than a relight that eats lunch.

The company began with commercial stills and grew because clients asked for the same eye on moving image. Today the roster covers directors of photography, stills photographers, colorists, editors, and CG artists who share a lighting language. We produce in studio and on location, with a finishing suite in Chișinău that receives every project — so grade, graphics, and delivery are not an afterthought handed to a stranger.

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