The treatment for this Stella spot said that the day was supposed to be a bright, sunny, afternoon BBQ.  So of course on the shoot day it's cloudy and raining most of the day.  To compensate, we used the few HMIs we had to brighten up the background and give us as hot a backlight on the actors as we could muster in order to sell "sunny day".  

The first shot in this spot was probably the biggest challenge, as it was full on dark and stormy and rather cold. But hey - lights!  If you're looking close enough into the background then I think the darkness is evident - but maybe if you're not looking that closely, you don't notice? For the rest of the day, we got lucky enough with the sun popping in and out to be able to get what we needed.