Toby Orzano

Lekos are good for ceiling bounce. The focussed beam doesn't spill all over the place, so you don't have to blackwrap the crap out of it like you might other units. Also you can use the shutters to hit a specific shape on the ceiling from across the room, or just to change the size of your beam for more/less intensity out of the bounce without dimming and making it warmer. Might need a couple in a big room as they are only 750w max. If you rent them, make sure the rental house has edison connectors on them rather than 20A bates, or that they come with 20A bates to edison adapters. Also you can tape duvatyne teasers onto the ceiling to hang down around your bounce and flag it off the walls. Cut them longer than you think (to hang down lower) because you can always roll them up higher and clip it.

4x4 Reflector boards are very useful. You can hit an actor with a rim from a pretty good distance. Also use them a lot on establishing shots of buildings that have an entrance under an awning. Hit some light in at the shadows so it doesn't look like a black hole. Sometimes it looks really sourcey to the eye but usually reads fine in camera. Reflector boards usually have a hard side and a soft side which you can choose based on how much intensity you need, and you can definitely also shoot them through 4x4 diffusion frames, just make sure your angles are right so that the diffusion isn't cutting the incident light on the reflector. Usually you want a technician to shake the reflector boards up every couple takes to make sure they're aimed properly as the sun moves. I work with one gaffer who likes the 12x12 checkerboard silver/gold lamé for fill bounce for wide shots under harsh midday sun where you can't use an overhead. You get a lot of punch out of it, and I think it looks a lot more natural than a straight silver or straight gold lamé. Also you can flip the ears around and use the white side on the back, which gives more bounce than a lot of the dirty ultra bounces you get from some rental houses. This is for a TV romance series, so there is more of a textbook warm stylized look rather than natural realism, so may not fit your bill. We also created custom 4x4 beadboards with silver/gold checkerboard over the normal silver shiny side for tighter shots or tracking shots that require you to follow an actor with bounce fill. This same gaffer also uses a 1/3 silk for overheads. He brings this rag from Germany. I haven't seen 1/3 at a rental house in the US but it could be around somewhere. For singles, you can often get by with a 4x4 frame of diffusion overhead, either handheld by a technician or in a combi stand, depending on how high the sun is. Usually complemented with a 4x4 beadboard for fill. This is often faster much faster than moving bigger frames around, especially if you are understaffed. If you find yourself going back and forth between bounce and overhead and you only have one frame, skin the bounce right over the diffusion rather than pulling it off every time. Saves a bit of time when you have to switch back. There are some situations where you just have to bust out the 6Ks.

Also as far as thin diffusions go, I worked on a super snowy feature with a gaffer who wanted Light Opal on the barn doors of all of his 1200 HMI PARs to prevent the cold, moist snow from potentially cracking the hot lenses. I don't know if it was necessary but there was no breakage. Light Opal is even thinner than Hampshire.

I was on one shoot where we received the elusive rip-off "Hampster Frost." I had a phone pic but I think it's lost forever. Seemed a little thicker than proper Hampshire.

Magic Gadgets makes good 2k dimmers as well as a flicker dimmer that you can use for fire/tv gags etc. Also the Shadowmaker model has three 2k channels with independent dimmers and flicker programs. http://www.magicgadgets.com

Your rental house should be able to help you out with the correct tubes for Kino fixtures. Also of note: Altman makes some UV broadlight units, from what I recall they were 400w. This is not equivalent to 400w tungsten, UV reflective surfaces illuminate much brighter than a 400w tungsten would illuminate any normal objects.

Also, you might look into removing the back plates and screwing the kino housings directly into the ceiling. Its not so hard to patch up the little screw holes.

I'll second 2x4 or pipe spreaders. With either, screw the wall plates onto pancakes to spread the pressure to a larger area. Make sure the 2x4s are oriented vertically for maximum strength. Make sure the wall is strong and ideally try to place them at studs or other support points; I heard about a crew popping bricks out of a wall. Another option that is better than polecat wall-to-wall is to put two polecats floor-to-cieling on opposite sides of the room, then use cheeseborroughs to make a speedrail crossbeam between them. This will depend on what the frame is and how good your art department is.

It is correct that the number refers to the wattage, but it doesn't just refer to the wattage. You can tell what type of light it is because the different types come in standard denominations. 5k's are tungsten. 4k's are HMI. Tungsten ratings are 150w, 300w, 650w, 1kw, 2kw, 5kw, 10kw, 20kw. HMI comes in 575w, 1200w, 2500w, 4kw, 6kw, 12kw, 18kw. (ARRI recently added a 1.8kw and I think I heard 9kw too.) Also some portable units at 200w, 400w, 800w. This is kind of right. A PAR can fixture itself does not have a lens, but the bulb assembly has a lens and reflector built in, and are available in different spreads (wide, medium, narrow spot, very narrow spot). However, the original post refers to a 2.5 PAR, not a PAR can. PAR cans are a type of PAR but not all PAR are PAR cans. A 2.5 PAR is a 2.5kw HMI PAR. HMI PARs of all sizes have lenses that either drop in or pop in to the front of the fixture to focus the light, also available in different beams (spot, medium, wide, super wide [also called stipple or bugeye, and some are frosted], and sometimes fresnel). There are open face tungsten PAR unit that have no lens at all. Ultimately what makes a PAR a PAR is the reflector, as PAR is an acronym for Parabolic Aluminized Reflector.

Read Set Lighting Technician's Handbook by Harry Box and then come back for any further clarification needed. I don't mean to be curt but there is already misinformation in this thread and it wouldn't make sense to rewrite here what's already been written eloquently in the book to get you up to speed. And another tip would be to get a patient gaffer who knows this stuff on your project and then you don't have to worry about it, or he can teach you as you go along. If you don't know what a 4k fresnel is then there is a LOT more that you need to learn before you can successfully and safely operate one. Again I'm not trying to be harsh, and I admire your ambition, but we have to be realistic about how much you can gain from this forum.

Just to clarify: S4 PAR: PAR64 Can: S4 Ellipsoidal:

There is a little confusion here. Chad and David are talking about S4 PARs and Charles is referring to S4 ellipsoidals. Both are pretty versatile and economical. If you had to have one or the other, I'd go with the ellipsoidal because you have a lot more options, including the bug-a-beam adapter which allows you to put JokerBug HMIs through the body and lens in addition to the standard 575w or 750w tungsten HPL bulbs. I am also a big fan of the S4 ellipsoidal bounce that Charles touts. Then I would get a couple standard 1k PAR64 cans, which are super cheap. S4 PARs change beams by swapping lenses rather than lamps as in regular PAR cans, which is a PITA because they always get stuck in there. The only upside is that they are a little more compact than PAR cans. All lights mentioned accept either pipe clamps or TVMP adapters on their yokes. The TVMP adapters give you both baby receiver and junior stud for mounting on conventional stands/grip hardware.

And yes, forgot to mention that you wouldneed to gel tungsten lights to match daylight which no is not at all efficient in terms of light for the amount of power you are drawing but i think a good option when you consider the original stipulations of wanting to purchase the lights on somewhat of a budget. Daylight balanced sources are absolutely ideal if money is not a problem. Also want to add that bounce may be a viable option even for interiors if you have strong sun from behind the subject.

If I were to buy one and only one fixture for a reasonable budget I would consider a couple options: 1) a 2k open face such as a mighty mole. 2) a mole 9 light fay http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/191873-REG/Mole_Richardson_5541_Molefay_5_85KW_Tungsten_Par.html. This allows you to split almost 6kw worth of tungsten light over three circuits so that you can run off ordinary house power. The barger light is a similar option http://www.barger-baglite.com/buzz.htm . Guy might be onto something with the parabeams but myself i would prefer tungsten. Hmis would probably be your best unconditional bet for the situation mentioned but yes very expensive to buy. However, even with the tungsten units i mentioned, you will probably need some sort of diffusion and control, either a chimera or 4x4' open frame which you can skin with any diffusion gel and a couple 4x4 floppy flags (they flop down to become a 4x8 flag). You would need the latter if you were going with the fay because it can't be fitted with a chimera. Of course none of the options above would work for exterior locations without a generator, in which case i want to point out the option of using relector boards and/or mirror boards (or even 8x8 or12x12frames with a reflective material) to bounce the sun onto the subject.if using a hard bounce such as a mirror board, you can shoot that through an aforementioned 4x4 open frame to diffuse and soften it. This will not usually be necessary if you bouce with a larger frame.

I would say that you are going to need more light. A 5K isn't going to make full use of a 12x12, and it's not going to light four people with room to move around. You'll also need to take measures to actually blow out the cyc. I would say bump the key up to at least a 10K and the fill to a 5K, and also pull them away from the wall a bit and light the cyc itself with a row of spacelights, skirting the fronts if necessary. You may need spacelights over the whole action area as well if you're going to be seeing a lot of the floor beneath the talent.

Sekonic L-398. It's an analog incident meter with an "amorpous photocell" that never requires batteries for operation. Comes with a "Lumigrid" for overall reflected readings but I don't know how useful that actually is.

Right, I wasn't thinking intesnity, I was wondering about flicker. Would 2ks be more prone to flicker at 50hz than 60hz because of fewer (and thus longer) cycles per second? Interesting to hear the dinos are okay on multi-phase. Good to know.

High speed is getting pretty trendy these days. A lot of people are thinking, "Let's make a cool music video with a Phantom. What would look cool at 1000fps?" rather than, "we've got this concept and vision for a really cool music video and we need a tool to make it happen. oh, phantom looks like a good option." For the record, 1000fps plays back really freaking slow. I gaffed a music video where in pre-pro everyone was talking 1000fps and when it came down to it on set we never went above 400fps and still ended up shooting literally hours of footage for a 4-minute video. Make sure the shoot really requires 1000fps before you choose your lights if you are on a budget. That being said, to get back on topic, I wouldn't mess around with the dinos either. Big single-lamp units will be the sure and consistent bet. Supposedly 2k and larger are flicker-safe for 60hz (never used 2k myself but can confirm 5k+), but I do wonder whether 50hz would require going a little bigger (maybe only 5k and up?) Regardless, if you do indeed go for the full 1000fps you're probably not going to use anything smaller than 10k.

Your desire to previsualize is admirable, and you seem to have the grand scheme figured out, but for a quick tweak like this what's the harm in bringing a couple cuts of gel along to the shoot to audition them and see how you like it with and without?

For that meager budget I think you would get the most bang for your buck from a few par cans. Get blue gel, diffusion and beadboards to cover all your bases. Bounce them off the beadboard for soft light, shoot through a light diffusion for more direct light, use blue to balance your daylight scenes. Get cheap kit stands for them as they are lightweight, maybe some cardellinis as well for different mounting options. Get some practical stuff as well—zip cord, sockets, quick-ons, dimmers, china balls and a variety of different wattage bulbs (i'm assuming there are equivalents to these for european power systems). Duvatyne to control/skirt the china balls. Also use practical desk lamps/table lamps/floor lamps in your scenes, using the appropriate wattage bulbs and/or dimmers to balance to your ambient levels without the lamp shades blowing out. Draping a bunch of white christmas lights all over the ceiling can help with soft ambience as well if you can keep them out of shot. Maybe invest in a used 650w fresnel if you need to make some clean shadow effects for your horror/suspense stuff, but that would take most of your budget on its own.

Reality stuff is by nature repetitive and it's more about the drama than innovative visuals. If you're bored with all the permutations of technically good setups then get one up and running in ten minutes and then go flirt with the make-up girls for the rest of the scene.

Sometimes the best way to light something is to not light it. Shoot towards the lit kitchen and watch the character walk away from the camera in silhouette.

One really fortunate thing for the student of light is that most of us are immersed in it for a significant portion of every single day. As you go about your everyday business, study the light in the different situations you encounter. How is each source affecting everything around it? Think about the angle and color and quality of each source. What is causing the light to look the way it does? Determine what it is about the light in certain situations that make that situation unique. What about the quality of morning sunlight coming in through a window makes you able to recognize that it is morning light coming in through a window, and how would you replicate it if you had to start from scratch on a stage? Notice also the absence of light in certain situations. What you can't see can be just as important as what you can see. I would also recommend taking general physics classes in high school and/or college. You will learn about the physics of light, optics, electricity, mechanics and other very practical topics that are pertinent to filmmaking. When it comes down to it, you probably won't need the mathematics on set, but the concepts you learn will really enrich your understanding of the medium you are working with. Sounds like you're already on the right track and way ahead of the game for your age. Keep shooting, keep reading, keep asking questions. Don't just make "contacts" with other people in the field, make friends.

My advice would be to find work at an established rental house before jumping into the business yourself. You'll get a much better idea of how to run things, what people are actually renting, what headaches you might run into. You'll find out what works and what doesn't before you drop a bunch of money on something that doesn't. And you'll be making some money while you learn.

put the name out there and ask around and get on a feature as a swing or grip intern. it'll probably be low or no pay but you will learn so much more than you would in any workshop that you have to pay for. while on set, be honest about what you do and don't know. people will be far more tolerant of the mistakes you will make (it happens to everybody) if you demonstrate an active willingness to learn than if you pretend that you know it all and screw up. also, don't just make contacts with other grips, make friends. Work hard, ask questions, make friends. That's the way to start getting work.