Matthew Parnell

The manfrotto website has spare parts blow ups for pretty much its whole range.

See the AC Mag article on I Am Legend... the flashlight scene from that film is my favorite of recent times.

Gday Scot,

Im a Brissy Boy myself. Good luck with the production mate.

Cheers,

Matt

As with most arri stands and hardware, Arri C-Stands are basically rebadged Manfrotto/Avenger stands.

How long is a piece of string?

It can and has been done, just make sure you get a nice powerful projector with a lens that can do the range/area you want.

Photon VFX www.photonvfx.com does Motion Control work.

This has really got to do with your ambient/source levels, and controlling of light.

In terms of level your problem in my eyes is the lamp itself. While a 2.5 does pack a fair punch, it in reality, even in shadow largely complements daylight ambient levels, if you want to key over the top of the daylight ambience then a larger lamp, say a 6k or a 12k, even maybe a 4k at a stretch would have achieved what you wanted throughout the whole day.

If you cant afford a larger lamp, you can lower the ambient level within the room through the use of negative fill. I would suggest a black opposite to the window to stop light bouncing off the opposite walls. I have worked on scenes before where we have had the grips put blacks against all the walls in a room except those in shot to lower the ambient level. I would also suggest this even if you did get a larger lamp.

Im personally not a fan of tenting unless your shooting an interior scene day for night where its really a necessity. With daytime scenes, tenting means that you have to build your ambient levels from scratch, which if your on a limited budget and the tight schedule that goes along with it, can add unwanted complications.

It largely depends on where you are.

Grips and Electrics have different duties depending on whether you work under the European(including Australia and New Zealand) or American System.

Sorry, but you won't see anything by Manfrotto/Bogen holding up lights or overheads on a "hollywood grade" film set.

 

-DW

Over here in Australia and New Zealand Manfrotto/Avenger/Arri stands are the standard on most sets.

Unfortunately Mathews, American Grip, Etc don't have much market penetration over here. So there hasn't been that much choice in the matter. That's starting to change with a number of equipment dealers importing the gear now, but if you head to most stand trolleys over here, whether it be on a $200m US feature or a $1m Indie 99% of the time 90% of the stands are Avenger/Manfrotto/Arri. On a lot of the trucks I work on a large proportion of the hardware is Mathews/American Grip.

Matt,

 

I chose this because it is possible to get the hazer effect with a fogger but it isn't possible to get a fogger look with a hazer.

 

Tom

There is a number of hazers out there that do have the function to do everything a smoke machine does in terms of fogging. However, I would imagine rental on one of these units per day would be pretty comparable to what you are looking at spending to buy.

It is really not worth the risk... is saving a few grand worth endangering lives?

No, no, no, no and especially NO!

It is never a good idea to overrate lamps at the best of times, with HMI's this can turn deadly. Unless you are an engineer and can safely convert the head to 1200w and have insurance to do so DON'T DO IT!

The larger the source of light the softer it is... if you fill a whole 4x4 diffusion frame with light you will get a softer source than only filling a 2x2 section of it. But also remember that the greater the distance between you subject and the light, the softer the light gets.

For example if you were to go within a couple kilometers of the sun, other than a bad sunburn, you would get an incredibly soft, wrappy light as opposed to the incredibly hard quality direct sunlight has here on earth.

I have always been taught to set to max when striking, makes sense to me because it puts the globe under less stress. Also electronic ballasts with electronic dimming control, like the newer powergems automatically set to full on strike. Also, some smaller lamps ie 200w that I have used wont strike at all at mins. Based on the whole concept of discharge lighting I would say set to max then strike is the way to go.

Just my two cents.

Kelvins are used to effectively measure the colour temperature of white light.

While difficult to explain, the easiest way to think about it is to imagine colors on a compass. North is Blue, South is Red, East is Magenta, West is Green. Along the north-south axis is a band of white formed by the convergence of all the colours to white. Kelvins are measured on the north south axis, so from red to blue through white. Colour obviously isnt this linear, but that gives you the general idea.

Wiki will answer you question in more detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature

Much more to it than just a lampholder. The heads include igniter circuits, safety circuits(including switches on doors etc), UV protective lenses and heavier duty reflectors. Also you have to consider heat and UV protection amongst a myriad of other things.

Essentially all that you would have remaining of your original lamp would be the shell. And you would be putting in new, every component out of a 575. I really cant see it being worth converting a tungsten lamphead like a T1 to a HMI.

It would be much much safer, much easier and probably much cheaper just to get a 575 head. Even if it is a chinese copy.

The Diva400s are very handy lights, with lots of throw, but i dont really like the quality of light they produce as compared to a 4 or 2ft Quad and a few of the DOPs I work with share the same opinion. But really its down to what fits your needs and your personal preferance.

QUAD Pros:

-Seperate Ballast and Head, meaning the head is lighter and easier to rig.

-Output reduced by turning off tubes meaning no change in Colour Temp.

QUAD Cons:

-Less compact for travel with seperate head and ballast.

DIVA Pros:

-High Output from a fairly compact head.

-Dimmable, allowing more exact trimming.

-One unit, no seperate ballast and head.

DIVA Cons:

-Orientation of lamp is very important to stable colour temp. On a test with these lamps we were getting variations of around 400k and an increase in ugly colour spikes if not orientated properly.

-Heavier Head, harder to rig.

Three phase is rare in homes over here, you can get it, but you have to specifically get it installed and its really a pain to do. Only really keen guys with serious home workshops using three phase lathes and welders seem to be the only guys keen enough to do this.

We were in a hall in the middle of an older industrial area. We never did work out what the problem was, so your theory might very well be right.

John,

I am in Australia where we are purely based on a 415/240v three phase system. Was an old building in an old area.

Cheers,

Matt.

Recently did a shoot in an older building that was getting mains power that we were metering at 257-261v besides our generator power of a perfect 240v. Because of budgetary constraints, we had to run of house power even at those voltages.

When we put the lamps on house power they did throw about a 1/4 stop more light, however on that job we were going through an average of a par globes, two tweenie globes and a pup globe every two days. Of those lamps we only had 8 pars, 4 pups and 2 tweenies out of the truck! Went through a lot of prac globes as well.

Off that experience one can definitely assume doing this on purpose does not work out cheaper or more time efficient, especially for a gain of about a 1/4 stop!

Maybe RGB LED fixtures could be good for this?

Cheers,

Matt.

Also could be called hogsmesh. At least it is over here in Oz. Very handy stuff.

Also remember to try to protect the lens from exposure to rain as well(especially on HMI Pars). One drop can crack a lens.

Cheers,

Matt.

I find the Kino 15inch kits to throw a much nicer light than the mini-flo kits and you can get a two bank version of them. They can come with 12v balasts for car use etc.

Cheers,

Matt Parnell

Over here in Oz I only just got the December issues about a week ago, no sign of the January issue yet. Seems that every new issue lately has had a different distributor sheet on it.