Chapter 904: Golden Hour

Outside Los Angeles International Airport, crew members busily loaded packed luggage onto a chartered flight while Duke gave an interview to reporters.

"I love this natural rhythm of shooting," he said. "After finishing a scene, you sweep the floor, move the lights back, and the actors can grab a drink of water. You need to immerse yourself more deeply in the role of the director rather than checking emails—an assistant is doing that for you. You hold a light meter in your hand, checking how the light affects the actors' faces..."

As always, how a shot visually engaged the audience was crucial to Duke's work. This was evident in his preference for moving cameras. During filming, Duke avoided broad static panoramas and top-down shots, relying instead on the Steadicam to design dynamic wide shots that allowed a scene to unfold in motion and highlight its key points.

Since he began shooting Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the most difficult scenes were sometimes the most ostensibly simple and straightforward ones. Two people talking in a room—or inside the Millennium Falcon—were always the hardest to shoot. Duke tried his best to balance the majesty and scale of Star Wars with the intimacy and heartbeat of every character.

At the same time, he wanted to give the film a more retro style.

This didn't mean there wouldn't be fast-cut action sequences; rather, he was striving to shoot longer, more confident takes.

It was highly meaningful work. Duke didn't want shots that lacked energy, nor would he accept slipshod efforts. His eye was as sharp as ever, and he caught everything. Because of this, when the crew met his demands, they knew they had done a genuinely good job.

Having wrapped up their scenes at Warner Studios, Duke now had to lead the crew out of the soundstages in Burbank to shoot a "galaxy far, far away" and capture its massive scale and magnificent spectacle.

In fact, Duke had never shot at so many locations for a single film before.

When reporters asked about the locations, Duke said, "We'll be heading to the forests of Wales, Skellig Michael Island in Ireland, and the frozen woods of Iceland. Then the desert of Abu Dhabi. These places will have an undeniable presence in the film. Their energy will bleed into every scene, every actor, and every crew member. It's an energy that serves the movie."

Of course, for Duke and the crew, the shoot in the Abu Dhabi desert would be the most grueling leg of the trip once they reached the UAE. The locations were separated by hundreds of miles, and the practical sets were being built using a method rarely seen nowadays—harnessing the power of wind, sand, and natural light.

A small fleet of Fords formed the convoy supporting this desert expedition. Every camera had its own white pickup truck loaded with lenses, functioning much like a rickshaw.

Frankly, this was the toughest film Duke had ever shot. The Abu Dhabi desert was even hotter and drier than imagined. After just two days, some people were already showing signs of dehydration, forcing Duke to issue a mandatory order: everyone had to drink large amounts of water.

Fortunately, the IMAX Cameras were highly reliable under these conditions. A digital camera would have overheated and failed in the same environment. Extensive testing had also ensured the crew wouldn't be hindered by metal expanding in the extreme heat. In such harsh environments, film stock showed its superiority, acting as a nearly perfect medium. Shooting in these awful conditions was also a testament to how mature modern IMAX technology had become.

To guarantee a smooth shoot in the desert, Duke had specifically hired a team to handle film maintenance and care. Coupled with custom rain and dust covers, the IMAX Cameras were fully able to breathe.

Moreover, the crew had reached out to a famous local producer, commissioning him to buy large quantities of dry ice in Abu Dhabi. They packed it into the covers with Velcro, pressing it tightly against the camera bodies to mitigate the blistering heat.

After arriving in the UAE, Duke hired a large number of locals to work on the crew in order to reduce the difficulties they faced.

Film was an international language, but terms like "monopod" or "electrical tape" certainly weren't. If you planned to shoot a scene abroad—arriving in an unfamiliar environment, or even the wilderness—what would you do when unexpected emergencies happened? How should equipment be chosen and used? How should footage be stored? What were the local filming regulations? What if you accidentally broke the law?

Things like this were about much more than just the language barrier.

Any Hollywood crew traveling overseas to film, especially one leaving the Anglosphere, had numerous issues to keep in mind.

Duke's crew, for instance, had done an immense amount of prep work before ever setting foot in the UAE.

Take the equipment alone: aside from the two IMAX Cameras dubbed the "Death Star" and the "Millennium Falcon," Duke specifically had the IMAX Company provide backups. It wasn't as if he lacked a track record of destroying them; to date, two IMAX Cameras had been scrapped during his productions.

There was also an ample supply of film, batteries, memory cards, and various cables. No one could predict what might break during a shoot.

Just to transport the backup gear, the crew had to charter a large cargo plane. And this was after they had conducted several advance scouting trips to the Abu Dhabi desert to trim the fat off their equipment list.

Before shipping it over, Duke had his people test every single piece of gear to ensure nothing would go wrong. Professional repair shops were incredibly difficult to find abroad, especially with a language barrier. He also had the equipment shipped out early, arriving in the UAE a day before the crew to avoid wasting time on location. The sooner the gear arrived, the sooner they could enter the shooting phase.

At the same time, they prepared a massive number of plug adapters for the equipment—plugs from the EU, Britain, America, Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea were all different—and bought a batch of local phone numbers.

Additionally, the most crucial part of shooting overseas was the filming permits.

Locally, it was always better to apply for as many permits as possible and establish contact with the regional film board. While the locals themselves might allow the crew to film freely without any paperwork, the local government would likely feel differently.

They also needed to find a local producer who could secure release signatures from anyone who might be caught on camera at the shooting locations—someone familiar with the area's filming laws, customs, and culture.

How did people greet one another? What gestures and words were considered impolite? What were the local traffic rules?

These things seemed trivial, but they all directly impacted the crew's operations and shooting efficiency.

Moreover, hiring a well-known local producer came with another benefit: effective theft prevention.

There were criminals everywhere. The first rule of preventing theft was to keep the gear within sight. By working with a local producer or shooting team, they could receive advice on the security of the filming area and learn which places or times of day were unsafe.

Bringing locals on board cost extra money, but it would be entirely worth it in the end. They could offer the crew sound advice and save them valuable production time.

Out in the Abu Dhabi desert, dawn and dusk became the busiest times for Duke and the crew. First, these periods were relatively cool, helping the actors and other staff achieve their best working conditions. Second, this was Hollywood's highly prized golden hour for shooting.

What was the "golden hour"? In English, it was called the "Golden Hour" or the "Magic Hour." Using words like "gold" and "magic" to describe it was enough to show just how precious and miraculous this window of time was.

It lasted only a brief while, producing footage dominated by golden-yellow hues. These shoots mostly took place just after sunrise in the early morning and just before sunset in the evening. The opportunities to capture it in a single day were extremely limited.

In the desert, the midday sun sat directly overhead, casting harsh, intense shadows and blinding light. But just after sunrise and right before sunset, when the sun hung close to the horizon, the light grew warmer and richer. As the rays passed through the atmosphere, most of the blue light was absorbed, leaving behind the warmer parts of the spectrum and revealing the charm of that golden glow. The light during the golden hour carried a golden tint that could give completely ordinary scenery a brand-new look.

Unlike the warm, yellow artificial lighting of fluorescent lamps, the natural outdoor light during the golden hour was soft, warm, and richly layered. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, casting longer, deeper shadows that visually added many new possibilities for shooting. Because of this, with a well-chosen composition, the chances of capturing a brilliant shot were much higher.

Soft light was incredibly important to cinematography. It made it easier for the cinematographer to capture constantly shifting shooting conditions, and filming under this light ensured that details and shadows wouldn't be lost.

Duke was exceptionally strict about shooting during this window. The golden hour wasn't strictly limited to a brief few tens of minutes; to a large extent, it depended on where on Earth you were filming. At the poles, it could last for an hour or two, but near the equator in Abu Dhabi, the golden hour might only stick around for a few minutes.

Many of the desert shots for Star Wars: The Force Awakens were filmed at sunset. The scenes involving the female lead, Daisy Ridley, frequently required a sunset or sunrise background.

Although he wasn't behind the camera himself, Duke still gave John Schwartzman's crew two requirements. First, never set the white balance to "auto." Second, arrange the camera positions reasonably, analyzing each specific scene on a case-by-case basis.

For an upcoming dialogue scene between Daisy Ridley and BB-8, the golden hour would be very brief. Duke led the crew to the location hours before it arrived, getting all the equipment ready in advance to eliminate any time lost to mistakes. If they couldn't get it in one take and had to do multiple retakes, an enormous amount of time would be wasted.

Therefore, the key to securing enough filming time during the golden hour was simply to have all the preparations done ahead of time.