Violet Hour

Built entirely from the window between sunset and full dark — roughly twenty minutes a day, which meant eleven consecutive evenings for four minutes of finished film.

Approach

The fragrance is described by its maker as something worn at the end of the day, so the constraint chose itself. If the film could only exist in that light, the light would have to carry the whole thing.

Working in a twenty-minute window changes the shape of a shoot day. Rehearsal happens in full daylight with stand-ins, everything is marked and locked by late afternoon, and the actual shooting is a single unbroken run with no time to reset.

Method

Rehearse in daylight, shoot in the gap, review overnight, adjust for the following evening. No fill, no gels, and no attempt to extend the window artificially.

By the sixth evening the crew could run the whole sequence from memory, which is the only reason the last few nights produced anything usable — there was no time left to think.

Delivery

A four-minute film, three thirty-second cuts for social, and a set of stills that the client ended up using across print. Finished in a single grade with no relighting in post.