Challenge

Chief Lighting Technician Matt Ardine is an industry veteran, with credits that include Everything Everywhere All at Once, Wolfs, and hundreds of music videos, including Childish Gambino’s “This is America.”

Ardine’s latest commercial project was a comedic spot that reunited Coca-Cola’s Glacéau smartwater brand with its longtime spokesperson, Jennifer Aniston, after a five-year break.

The team was tasked with lighting an interior rock garden “set within a set.” Ardine says, “We used [Aputure] STORM 1200xs for foreground bounces and booklights, but also had a large 12’ x 12’ window that we had to fill with sunlight coming in through the background.”

“To get the amount of foot candles that we needed, we needed something larger.”

Solution

Typically, to achieve this kind of output, the team would rely on a 12k or 20k tungsten light, but when they learned the Aputure STORM XT52 was available, they tried the new LED fixture instead.

“For the past 9 months, we’ve been using the STORM 1200x for every single project,” Ardine says, “Now we finally got the chance to try out the big brother.”

Ardine’s familiarity with the STORM family and its capabilities made working with the larger STORM XT52 easy. “It’s great to have two lights that work exactly the same, and one is just the bigger, brighter version for the situations where you need that output.”

Results

The campaign debuted in June 2025 to positive press and delight from Aniston’s fans, and Ardine are happy to have a new, versatile STORM fixture in their toolkit.

Ardine said, “That’s all I wanted, was a bigger version of the STORM 1200x. And that’s exactly what this is. And it’s perfect, you know?”

Lighting the Rock Garden