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.
Berlinell produces commercial stills and short films from Porto. We plan the still and the motion on one plot so a campaign does not split between two vendors. The suite on Rua das Flores holds tabletop, a small cyc, and a colour desk. Location days stay on the river and in the granite streets we recce first.