For this Pepsi Christmas spot, we were on location in a vast rice field on the edge of Saigon, Vietnam. The creative concept from the director, seasoned pro Keir McFarlane, was ambitious and magical: a several-hundred-year-old tree adorned with glass Pepsi bottles, with the wind itself creating the melody of "Jingle Bells."
My primary challenge as the cinematographer was the environment itself. The "magic hour" near the equator is incredibly short, giving us a tiny window for the perfect light. My strategy was to use this natural sidelight to our advantage, creating a beautiful blue sky effortlessly. Fighting the harsh daytime sun in Vietnam is a losing battle; the sheer strength of the sun combined with the high humidity simply creates a white, detail-less sky, no matter how much light you use on your foreground.
However, the shoot was beset with problems. An enormous hornet nest and an inexperienced crane crew slowed us down immensely. As night fell, we had our wide shots but were missing all of our crucial close-ups.
This is where foresight and planning saved the project. In pre-production, Keir and I had discussed this exact "what-if" scenario. I had told him, "I can light anything except the night sky," and we had agreed to have large, pastel-blue painted polys on standby.
As darkness fell, we began the complex task of recreating the precise quality of late afternoon sunlight. We placed the blue polys deep in the background, creating a believable "sky" that was visible through the branches. The look required a combination of low-angle warm hard light and soft toplight. To simulate the soft sky, I used huge frames and bounces—specifically 4K HMI PARs with flood lenses bounced into Ultrabounces and polys in a booklight setup with grids. For the hard, low sunlight, I used 6K HMI Fresnels. This setup allowed me to meticulously shape the light and the surrounding reflections on each bottle's glass surface. We shot this on the RED Epic with Master Prime lenses, and I even earned a wasp bite for my trouble as we worked into the night.
The final result is a testament to this resilience. Roughly 60% of the finished commercial—including every close-up—was shot in complete darkness, yet it seamlessly matches the shots from the real magic hour. I was incredibly proud when our hard work was recognized by AdForum as the second-best ad in the world at the time of its release. It's proof that with the right planning and a deep understanding of light, you can overcome any obstacle to bring a magical vision to life.
