Blumhouse and Netflix upended the traditional rules of nature documentaries with the first season of Nightmares of Nature, a stylized, horror-themed series following a trio of forest creatures taking refuge in…a cabin in the woods. For Nightmares’ second season, cinematographer Robert Hollingworth joined the production to tell a new story set in the jungle.

Hollingworth says, “When [director Charlotte Lathane] rang and explained the project to me, it was genuinely one of the most fantastic opportunities that I've heard of in a long time. This is an amazing mix of two completely different genres. We came up with this idea early on, about the journey of an opossum going from the jungle outside, finding a disused research facility hidden in the depths of the jungle, and then going into that building and exploring.”

While Hollingworth is experienced with wildlife and macro work, the added horror genre layer brought new challenges. The team would need to work in a remote concrete building where they couldn’t hardwire power, and the lights would need to adapt to an unpredictable animal “actor” while keeping a consistent look. Factor in the traditional limits of documentary budget, crew size, and schedule, and the task at hand seemed, well, frightening.

Hollingworth, Lathane, and their team first aggressively planned the sequences. Once a look and needed effects were agreed on, Hollingworth began assembling his toolset.

Tunable color lights with battery power were key to the plan, so the production turned to Aputure Nova P600cs, INFINIBARs, MC Pros, and MT Pros. Hollingworth says, “ Every single light was tinted and colored and all done very deliberately. Backlights were always going to be in a certain color. The fill was always going to be in a certain color. Keys were always going to be in certain colors, so we always knew where we were in the scene.”

To help work quickly around their animal talent, Hollingworth undertook an extensive prelight. “It takes longer upfront to get all the lighting done, but once it's rigged, you can shoot 360 degrees. We could shoot in any direction we chose at any point, and we could just dress fills in and dress keys in accordingly to give us some contrast in the frame.”

Since the shoot would require frequent lighting adjustments, the team used a Sidus One transceiver and Sidus Link Pro on an iPad for wireless CRMX control. This made lighting adjustments extremely fast and also enabled lighting effects. “There's a shot we did where the camera's slowly pushing forward through a doorway into this dark void,” Hollingworth says, “but what you don't notice is that there's a 30 to 40 second lighting cue working, which slowly fades up the light, opening the room up.” Effects also covered one of the most essential aspects of an abandoned laboratory location: “ There's every excuse to have a light flickering.”

Lastly, to address the lack of hardwired power, the team came up with a clever solution to rotate lights quickly. “We had two kits of INFINIBARs, kit A and kit B. They were both on the same DMX channels, so if they were both switched on, they would both respond at the same time. When kit A’s batteries went, we would take them out of the fittings and put them on charge, and then we could immediately put kit B in. We were good to shoot within a few minutes.”

Nightmares of Nature season 2 premiered on Netflix on October 28, 2025 with widespread praise from outlets like Bloody Disgusting for its storytelling and setting.

Hollingworth is proud of what the team was able to accomplish with their battery-powered lighting kit: “Now more than ever, the budgetary constraints aren't necessarily a constraint to your creativity because the lights are more affordable, but also more controllable. We would've ended up needing a sizable lighting [console], which not only adds budget, it slows you down. It's a physical desk in a location. Having access to this new way of controlling large quantities of lights…you're able to explore in only two or three minutes, lots of different looks. Capture each of the looks on the monitor, then flick back through them, see which one seems to sit the best.”

Hollingworth adds that innovations in LED lighting are only part of the story on set. “There's no point having all of these features and all of these benefits unless you can actually use them. I think where Aputure has really helped filmmakers is by consolidating the complexity of the lighting down into something incredibly simple.”