Golden Hour

What this is about

Planning it is arithmetic, not luck. A sun app gives the times for the exact location and date, the recce confirms which buildings or hills cut the light short, and the schedule works backwards from there. On the day, everything is lit, rehearsed and rolled before the window opens, because the light changes visibly between takes and matching a second attempt is hard. Most crews realistically get one or two setups, so they choose the shot that needs the light and shoot the rest either side of it.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Golden hour has the sun above the horizon; blue hour begins after it has set. That single fact separates the two windows.
• Magic hour is the loose umbrella term crews use for either or both — always ask which one a call sheet means.
• Near the equator the window can be well under an hour, far north it can stretch across most of an evening.

With TillyGen

TillyGen computes the golden-hour window for the location and date, so the day is built around it instead of hoping for it.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.