Glo’ing Review – Summer is coming

‘Cold’ is a relative term.

Here in South Africa, when the weather is at its coldest, and we’re wearing our thermal underwear, and have turned the tea cossie into ear muffs, we’re at about zero degrees Centigrade, or 32 Fahrenheit. In Norway, that is the sort of rarely-seen temperature that demands wearing a bikini and heading off to the nearest Fjord for a swim.

On a trip to Switzerland, I came to understand that a fridge is actually a device used to keep food from freezing.

And, truth be told, we South Africans hardly ever get zero degree days. Sure, waking up at 4am to be on set at 5am is no picnic, but the African sun doesn’t sleep for long in Winter, and it’s up soon enough.

But if you live in the Northern Hemisphere – as the Starks in ‘Game of Thrones’ are fond of telling us – ‘Winter is coming’. The summer solstice of June 21 has passed, so daylight is growing shorter, and opportunities for dashing off for a quick summer swim are dwindling.

Now that you have taken the bad news with gusto, here’s the good news: the opposite is true in South Africa. Right now we’re in the middle of our admittedly very mild winter, but – Summer is coming.

For filmmakers that means:

More beautiful ambient daylight, and that means longer shoot days, especially in Cape Town, with a potential 16 hours of exquisite light at peak summer – December 21.
European and American top models – like birds – will migrate south, to bask in the glow of castings, make-up lights and enviro-friendly LED’s.
The beach and the outdoors beckon – the aforementioned models and actors can do swimwear shoots without their skin resembling the Abominable Snowman’s.
Wheat fields will ripen gold and be ready for harvest in October and November, and biscuits and fruit cakes and breakfast cereal makers will rejoice. OK, maybe not rejoice, but you get the drift – if your visual needs puppies bounding through fertile and fecund farm fields, that opportunity is coming, in just three or four months’ time.

To paraphrase the song:
For everything, there is a season
A time to plan, and a time to shoot
A time for reflectors, and sunscreen, and gorgeous lens flares
Doo bee Doo bee doo.

We look forward to basking in the sunlight with you, camera in one hand, dust-off in another, and a freshly-baked biscuit in another. Didn’t I say South Africans are special?