The worst two hours to film in Portugal are the two hours most people are free.
Early afternoon, sun overhead, nothing in the sky to soften it. It is the time a creator with a day job gets to their kitchen table, and it is the time the footage stops being usable.
Why the good light is a problem
Brands abroad write briefs asking for the Portuguese light as if it were an ingredient. It is, but not the way they mean.
Hard sun does the opposite of what UGC needs
Direct overhead sun produces a small, very bright highlight and a hard black shadow, with almost nothing in between.
That is the exact opposite of what a product video needs. Texture disappears, because texture lives in the soft gradient between lit and unlit. Skin goes shiny in one place and dark in another. Labels blow out to white. And the viewer's eye reads all of it as a photograph rather than as a person holding something, which is the one impression UGC cannot afford to give.
Golden hour has a meaning, and the meaning is holiday
The standard advice is to film in the hour before sunset, and here that advice is wrong more often than it is right.
Warm low sun is beautiful and it is not neutral. In this country it carries a specific association, built by decades of tourism imagery, and it says holiday, terrace, end of the day, somebody else's week off. That is perfect if you are filming a hotel and quietly wrong if you are filming a supplement, a cleaning product, a laptop stand or anything a person uses on a Tuesday morning.
You are not choosing a look. You are choosing what the video claims about when the product belongs in someone's life.
| When you film | What the light says about the product | What fixing it costs in the edit |
|---|---|---|
| Midday, outdoors | Nothing, it says photograph | Unfixable, texture is gone |
| Golden hour | Holiday, leisure, elsewhere | Colour grade, and it still reads as leisure |
| Overcast day | Ordinary Tuesday, honest | Nothing, this is the free win |
| Indoors, window to the side | Somebody's real home | A small lift in exposure |
| Indoors, ceiling light on | Cheap, late, slightly sad | A long fight, usually lost |
The third row is the one people refuse to believe. An overcast day is the best filming weather in the country and creators keep postponing shoots because of it.
The two windows that actually work
Neither of them requires equipment, which is the point.
The first is the hour after sunrise, before the sun climbs. Same softness as the evening, without the holiday association, because the association attached itself to sunsets and never to sunrises. It is inconvenient and it is free.
The indoor window, facing away from the sun
The second is a window that does not have the sun in it, at any hour.
Stand so the window is to one side of you rather than behind you, put the product where the light falls first, and step back half a metre from where you instinctively stood. That is the whole technique. It produces a soft directional light that shows texture, keeps skin even, and reads as somebody's actual kitchen, which is the register the entire format depends on.
Filming into the window makes you a silhouette. Filming with the window behind the camera flattens everything. To the side is the only answer, and it is the same answer in every country, but here the contrast is severe enough that getting it wrong costs more.
When you cannot choose the hour
Sometimes the brand needs it today and today is bright and it is two in the afternoon.
Go into shade with a big bright surface nearby: a white wall, a pale building, a balcony under an awning. What you want is light that has bounced at least once, and Portuguese buildings supply enormous amounts of bounced light for free. Do not stand under a tree, because dappled shade moves across the face between takes and no edit repairs it.
If you are stuck in full sun with no shade at all, film the product and not the person, get in close, and record the audio separately somewhere quiet. A tight product shot survives hard light. A face does not.
Keep reading
- In Portugal, Your Price Is Public
- Working as a UGC Creator in Madeira and the Azores
- Invoicing Foreign Clients as a UGC Creator in Portugal
- Portuguese Wine and Food Abroad: The Name Problem
- The complete UGC guide for Portugal
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Frequently asked questions
Do I need a light for indoor filming here?
Usually not. Between the window technique and the hour after sunrise, most Portuguese homes give you better light than a small panel would, and the panel introduces a second colour temperature you then have to fight.
What about the Algarve and the south in summer?
The same rules, more so. The contrast is harder and the usable window is narrower, so the early morning becomes less of a preference and more of the only option.
Can I just fix it in the edit?
You can rescue a slightly dark image and you cannot rescue a blown out one. When in doubt expose for the brightest thing in the frame, usually the label or the sky, and lift the rest afterwards.
Should I tell the brand which hour I am filming?
Only if they specified a look you disagree with. If a brief asks for golden hour on a weekday product, say what the light will imply and offer both. Most briefs asked for it out of habit and change their mind quickly.