Tom Guiney

Also, pars can't be cut quite as cleanly with barndoors or flags as fresnels, especially barndoors. Part of what a fresnel lens does is it refracts the light rays coming from behind it so they emerge much more parallel to each other than they were before going through the lens. Hark: Because the light rays coming out of the fresnel are largely parallel, you can make a much harder shadow edge than you can with a par. With a Fresnel, it's a bit like the light is coming from a single point source, which is as hard a shadow as you can get, whereas with a PAR spreader lens, it's more like you have a multitude of tiny sources clustered together. Par lenses are made of a bunch of little lenslets, each of which acts like its own little source . You can push in the side barn door quite a lot, but the light from the lenslets on the far side of the lens will still sneak past the barndoor, since each lenslet is emitting light rays over an arc. What you get is a sort of multi-shadow effect at the edge of the cut, where the flag or door is cutting the light from some, but not all of the lenslets. Of course, if you set the flag a good distance from the PAR, you can get a pretty hard cut, and if you shoot the PAR through a diffusion frame, then the frame becomes the source and that determines the cuttability and shadow edge that you're working with. The drop-in fresnel lenses that are in some PAR lens sets do not give you the same effect as a real purpose-built fresnel. They approximate it, but they really aren't the same. Those lenses are a bit harder than the other lenses, but not really hard like an actual fresnel. PARS are distinctly more powerful for your wattage. They're most people's go-to for HMIs. HMIs are so often used with a softbox or a frame that it doesn't matter how hard the beam is, and for daylight situations you often need all the output you can get. When I have a good-sized truck (so rarely these days) I generally get all PARs for my HMIs with one or two fresnels if there's a situation that calls for the simulation of direct hard sunlight. FWIW, the older 12k and 18k HMI fresnels are cheaper to rent than the powerful 12k/18k pars and Arrimax-style lights.

@jaron- what's the story on the walk n talk? It looks like just a handheld bracket for a briese? Sounds heavy to carry, no? @original post- joker(or a tungsten triolet back) in a chimera octaplus? I have those and use them all the time. Not too focusable, really, though. The soft fabric eggcrates are ok, but not amazing. Far more effective for directing the light from softboxes than the soft fabric eggcrates are the hard metal honeycombs, like the ones you can get to go on a parabeam or a vistabeam. advantages- very effective at directing light, and don't sag. drawbacks- heavy, expensive, fragile, only fit on standard rectangular chimera, only up to a certain size. As far as tungsten backs to go inside a softbox/octaplus, you can make your own that's a little more versatile than the chimera triolet. You can buy a cheap photoflex speedring, screw a 5/8" stud into it for mounting, and rig one, two, or three mogul base sockets into it. I did that by spanning the center of the speedring with little metal lamp parts from the hardware store. You can use the 1k mogul base bulbs, or screw a bipin adapter into it and use 750w HPLs. You might want to do that because the big filaments on the 1k "dildo" bulbs sing loudly when you dim them. Remember though that if you're using 1k bulbs each one needs its own line and plug so your cable doesn't fry. If you're interested I can dig it out and take a picture of it. good luck Tom Guiney airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes

Hi there. Several questions to better answer your needs: As far as the shot, can you get a steadicam? No? Office building floors are sometimes nice smooth tile where you wouldn't feel the wheels of a dolly or doorway dolly right on the floor. What look do you want? Does the fluorescent flat-ish look work for your story? IF so, easiest by far is to work with the overhead fixtures. look at the bulbs carefully. Are they T8 base fluorescents (exactly 1" diameter) or T12 base fluorescents (exactly 1 1/2" diameter) or something else like the U-shaped tubes? for t8s: Optima 32, Chroma 50 are older versions, modern ones are Movietones. Rentable some places, if not they're purchaseable from barbizon etc. If you're using a ton of them, think about renting them from one of the larger houses like Cinelease in LA where it would still be cost effective to ship to and fro. If it's too flat, you can add eggcrates to all of them. To find those, look for 3/8" cell fluorescent louvers. Canal plastics in NYC sells them singly. You can buy a case of them from Goodmart.com. Ok, you don't want to use fluorescents. Is it a drop ceiling? Those can be very easy to work with. Pop out a tile, pass cable over the top, find rigging points up in the ceiling above the drop ceiling to rig your small tungsten heads, all kinds of options. Don't count on it though; pop a few tiles (carefully) to see if there's a big chunk of ductwork or something else annoying up above the drop ceiling that makes it impossible to rig up there. A nice rig that sturdier than scissor clamps is to screw a baby pigeon to a piece of lumber about 24"-36" long, then rest the lumber across several of the drop ceiling support struts so the weight is spread out over several points. Another more dramatic looking option is that the character is passing through patches of light that are coming from the doorways windows on both sides of the hallway. Perhaps you'll want to supplement the sidelight with a little camera-based fill, like a kino/chimera/litepanel/Airbox rigged over the operator. CAreful to keep this light off the walls close to your camera so you don't give the source away too much. Good luck. Tom Guiney airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes @airboxlights twitter feed

In the situation you're describing, it sounds like you need a big soft "sourceless" fill to counteract the big bright bay doors. If you can't get a generator or tie in, why don't you get several 1.2ks or 1.8ks that are bounced into a 12x12 or 8x8 bounce or two? Since there's no glass, it's just open bay doors, you shouldn't have the problem with reflections that glass windows would give you. That's what I would do. If you bring enough stingers, you should be able to find enough house power circuits to run them all without popping any breakers. An added advantage of this style is that multiple sources can fill the rag more evenly and thus make it softer and feel non-sourcey. Here's a trick for distinguishing between 20 amp and 15 amp outlets, which will be particularly important if you're using 1.8ks. (this is only true if the electricians who wired the building followed all the rules, which is not always true. And, you also need to try to figure out if there's any existing load on the circuit in question.) 15 amp outlets: just a regular "surprised face" 20 amp outlets: the left "eye" is "winking" at you. Tom Guiney lighting, cinematography, airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels

So how did you deal with that while operating? That sounds like a pain! Attempt to end your moves a fraction of a second early? anticipate the action's end point? I've been considering getting an fs100. How much of a dealbreaker do you figure this is? Tom Guiney Airboxlights.com

Lately I've been having some success (in brighter lighting situations, big soft 10k key, something like that) with a leko right in the face to get a simultaneous bright ping in the eye and to lift the face just a little bit more than the body/clothes. Just above and behind the camera works. That may sound a bit odd, but it's good for a few reasons. As was posted earlier, if the eyelight isn't too bright relative to the key, several stops under key level, it doesn't feel like a flashlight in the face. The leko is good because its so controllable; iris it down to just the middle of the face and fuzz it out a little. It's also nice because you get a perfectly round little pop. If your light levels are not as bright as your typical studio setup, knock the leko down to something more reasonable with ND. Getting the level right is worthy of attention. If its too bright, it'll pollute the primary lighting look, and also a super-bright pop in the eyes can look a little cheesy in the wrong situation. If it's too dim, it'll melt away and not do its job, especially if the blacks get crushed a lot later. The dark area of the eye can swallow up the tiny little ping. I also have had some good results in less controllable situations with an on-camera litepanel with an Airbox litepanel diffuser on it, dimmed to just the right level. That gives you more of a bright object to reflect in the eye rather than the hard kick off the wetness of the eye. Not too bright! On-camera lights and obie lights can be pretty lame if they're too bright. That "License and registration please" look. Tom Guiney Tom Guiney, Gaffer, LD, DP in NYC. I make inflatable softboxes for LEDs: www.Airboxlights.com twitter lighting feed @airboxlights

The longer your lens/the more open your stop, the more murky and indistinct the foreground stuff will be. If you're going to be shooting outside, be sure to have your NDs along so you have the full range of t-stops available to you and dont get stuck at a deep stop where your foreground things will be more clear than you want them. Lit sterno cans burning in front of the lens can make neat heat ripples. maybe think about having some fun-tak or silly putty with you for quick and easy positional tweaking of really small lightweight objects right in front of your lens. A c-stand and cardellini are a little burly for handling drinking straws and little pieces of frosted plastic. really all kinds of stuff can be cool on a long lens. garbage! gauze! twigs! my .02 yours Tom Guiney gaffer, dp airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels lighting tips on twitter @airboxlights

That's the general size of it. Each of the three phases reaches their maximum voltage in the cycle at a different point in time, and so at any given point, one of the three is at maximum output, one is partway down, and one is around minimum output. If you visualize a single cycle of a sine wave, and then make two copies of it and move one 1/3 of a cycle to the right, and the second copy 2/3 of a cycle to the right, that will be a visual demonstration of the output of your lamps over time. here is an illustration: http://bit.ly/sgl9Eh When the sine wave is at either its positive or negative peak, then the output of lamps attached to that phase are at their maximum. By powering three identical lamps that are set up next to each other doing the same job off the three separate phases, you never have too bad a drop in your output. Apparently you can use this same technique with HMIs on magnetic ballasts to reduce flutter on non-safe frame rates, but it seems dodgy to me and I've never attempted it. Get aquare wave ballasts. All this being said, General rule from experience with high speed is to use the largest filaments that you can, ideally 20ks and never less than 5ks. The bigger filaments take longer to dim down and up and maintain a more constant output. Get 20ks. Or tens. Don't use multiple-1k filament units like maxibrutes or bargers, those little filaments flicker badly. You see it worst of all in practicals in shot with their tiny little 60w filaments. Don't use HMIs for high speed even as high as 120, you could get pulse like what you showed us on your sample video. 120 is supposed to be safe, but I've seen pulsing with HMIs at that rate. Tom Guiney gaffer, dp airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels lighting tips on twitter @airboxlights

Bright enough, bright enough, bright enough. Make sure your rear projection is bright enough. cheaper projectors tend to not be. you always knock it down, but you can't make it brighter. I usually insist on 10000 lumen projectors for rear projections in shot. It seems a lot, but any wash you get from your front lights reduces it, you just end up needing it. Insufficiently bright rear projection is sort of a heart attack moment of Oh god how come I didn't insist on the brighter one. Get the brightest thing the budget will permit. Or just do a greenscreen behind them if they have the means to put the footage in in post. Tom Guiney Gaffer, DP airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels lighting tips on twitter @airboxlights

Less is more- matte knife, wrench (or leko multiwrench, ,mich lighter and fits many common things), gloves. light. Hammer?? I hear about this phenomenon, but you've got your toolbag for things like a hammer. OR screwgun. Or anyting else heavy. Wrench, knife, sharpie, gloves. Perhaps a continuity tester pen or voltage sniffer. A small belt. Your poor hips after so many long days, bloody bruises under the skin from too much time, don't do it. Your hands are what you need the most. Dont go hug one your belt. Listen to my years of mystery bruises on my hips before I learned to strip down.Your toolbag has all the non-immediate stuff. I used to like the Raine line of EMT pouches. held just about everything I needed. Tom Guiney Gaffer, DP airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels lighting tips on twitter @airboxlights

If you have prerig time, perhaps consider preinstalling a few speedrail starters (http://www.cinegearstore.com/products/1-1%7B47%7D4%22-x-3-1%7B47%7D2%E2%80%9D--Speedrail-Starter.html) (modernstudios.com sells them too) in the ceiling. When there's nothing attached to them, they'd be small and unobtrusive, just a little aluminum cylinder in the ceiling, but could rapidly be the basis of front end support of an excessive menace arm or else of a grid. 3/8" hanger bolt into the joist, that supports the speedrail starter, you can start a grid off of it or even just stick a 5/8" (long arm) rod into it and lock it with the set screw. Parabeams are a bit heavy for a long 1 1/4" menace arm. It would work though with a sufficient mast triangulation to take the frown out of your speedrail. better to just take the weight from the front of the arm with a reliable point that you have preset into the ceiling. Tom Guiney Gaffer, DP airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels lighting tips on twitter @airboxlights

+1 on Toby- check out how the competition does things. Also, worth your while might be a trip to LA to see how the top end does it. I'm a new yorker, but I admit we are the second city of film and video, not the 1st. 2- Who's your market? I'm assuming you don't have a ton of money, so perhaps low-budget features? low-budg videos? Maybe want to figure out what kind of jobs you'll be trying to get and tailor your truck to that market. I feel like you could go one of two ways: either your truck is awesome, everything perfectly laid out, extremely user friendly, great carts, nice equipment, or else it's super cheap and your point of entry is the low rental price. Frames of reference: I did a feature in Nebraska once, and the 5-ton we had from Lights On! Omaha was amazing. Better than any truck I had seen in NYC. And in LA, they've got the whole custom cart thing worked out really well. Then the flip side of that is the beat-to-poop three-ton you can get from Beyond our reality in NYC which is fairly crappy, but it largely has everything you need, and the whole shebang is only 1000$ a day, possibly including driver. You'll be going out with it as driver/gaffer/key grip/swing I assume? Do you have a client base at all? Warning: there is a LOT of equipment in New York already. You're committed to NYC? HAve you done any market research, perhaps there are soem cities with decent film markets that are underserved by equipment vendors? Another omaha example: yes theur truck was nice, but the gear in Nebraska was SO overpriced. A possible opportunity for a low-price option. Have you spent some time working in new york yet? Have you made the friendly acquaintance of a number of production managers/producers etc. here? Maybe it's just my cautious nature, but if I was going to jump in to gear heavily, I would want some friendly clients lined up first. Just having gear will not necessarily generate income. My experience with gear ownership has been extremely conservative, but very safe and profitable- I buy gear right when I get a job that demands it and thus pay off a certain part of it immediately. The flip side of that is that I have seen many people do very well by jumping deeply into debt to get assets with serious earning power. Smash Camera, aanycdolly, various others. So: get an awesome truck or a cheap truck, nothing in between. If it's going to be an awesome truck, go see some really nice trucks, probably in LA, to get some examples of what awesome looks like. There aren't that many great 5-ton trucks that I know about in NYC. Good luck. Tom Guiney Gaffer, DP airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels lighting tips on twitter @airboxlights

People refer to soft frost, half soft frost, and hilite all as shower curtain. Rosco Hilite is the lightest, half soft frost is a little heavier, and soft frost is a significant jump heavier. In my experience, half soft frost is the most efficient of diffusions, giving you the best softening-vs.lightloss ratio of any diff. (Silk and tough spun are the worst) That's why I use half soft on my inflatable softboxes. A shower curtain from the dollar store is not really the same stuff, but you can find a chinese-made copy of half soft for industrial applications should you need a large volume. 125$ a roll does seem a bit much for a roll of etched plastic sheeting, doesn't it? If you have zero budget, the dollar store item might be worth examining though. yours Tom Guiney Gaffer & DP Airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for Litepanels

Does the warehouse have any windows or doorways down at the end of one of the aisles of shelves? You don't have the money to turn the lights off and light the background to taste, but if there are any windows/doors/bay doors stategically located, you could switch off the overheads, and let the window light play as a natural back edge on the shelving, or perhaps even keep a little bit of the window/doorway in shot deep in the background as a little hot spot. Find the spot in the warehouse, expose to how much natural backlight you get on the shelving, then color correct your key light. the ambient glow from a background doorway is likely to be a pretty dim source though, you'll need to pump your iso up pretty high. It might work with what equipment you've got to get what you want though, the cost being a bit of grain. You've got enough gear to light a small area, but that's it. Key your subject + two very limited background places with your 600w lights. So if the window/bay door idea is a no go, and you're not going to leave the overheads on because it'll look cheap, perhaps key your subject with one unit, then rig your other two up high above the top of frame in two spots down the row away from you so they looked reasonable convicingly like overhead downlights, leaving large shadow areas between them. This is likely to be very high-contrast though, possibly too "creepy" or "scary" for your subject matter. your 100w units could serve well enough as a backlight, should you choose to use one. Is this a scary warehouse or a happy friendly warehouse? What feel do you want? hope this helps Tom Guiney airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels twitter lighting tips @airboxlights.com

Second what Chris said- I'd be leery of having compact fluorescents be my only option. #1 I've never seen a compact fluorescent where the color on skintones really looked totally ok. Straight tube fluorescents, yes, kinos are ok, but CFLs, pretty much never. #2 you're pretty much stuck with soft light like chris said. You can actually make them seem hard, but it's inconvenient and not that great. The farther away a source is, the harder it is because the size of the light source relative to your subject is smaller. If you took a bare cfl bulb and backed it up a ways, you would have a relatively weak but hard source. You would also have to do something to cut the light off of everything but your subject in that case also. For a cheap light source that you could use to bounce, rock n roll par cans are really cheap to buy, especially used. put a 500w bulb in it so you can still use a cheap household dimmer, bounce it off something white, cut the excess off of your background and you've got a nice source. Beware- soft sources with no flags and stands to cut the light off of where you don't want it is a recipe for unintentionally bright backgrounds. Get the imitation arri kit but try to find a couple used C-stands and flags. Even duveteen (black fabric) draped off a c-stand arm will serve. Light removal is as important, if not more, than light addition for quality work. yours Tom Guiney Airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels twitter lighting tips @airboxlights.com

that sounds challenging! So when you say you're going to use car headlamps but power them from a generator, it sounds a little like you're mixing apples and oranges. Anything from a car is going to be 12 volts DC. Generators generally output 120v or 240v AC. If you've got access to a generator, you'll have to use lights that use the same type of current and voltage that the generator puts out. That being said: on very very low budget, assuming homemade equipment is your only option: to emulate firelight you could set up two paper lanterns ("china balls"), both on dimmers, one with a white lightbulb and the other with a yellow one and have someone rapidly adjust the dimmers up and down to imitate the flickering intensity of the fire. If you can get professional gear I like bounces better for this kind of thing, two or three different small fresnel fixtures, each gelled a slightly different color, bouncing off of a piece of bead board or foamcore, dimming erratically to create the effect. Keep your source low, obviously so the lights comign from the right angle. If you don't actually have access to a generator, but are using car batteries for power, you can find some 12v lamps in an auto-parts catalog that you could make into china balls. A car headlight fixture from a junkyard could be made into a serviceable hard light source that you could use to light objects in the deep background or use as a hard backlight. There are relatively cheap marine flashlights available that run off of 12v. Search for "Q-beam" or "million-candlepower marine flashlight". http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&gcx=w&ix=c2&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=q-beam. Those are not suitable for shooting without some modification; they put out a bright, extremely focused beam, only really suitable if you bounce it or if you put a LOT of diffusion on it or make some kind of softbox for it. You can run these off of a car battery. hope this helps. Tom Guiney airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for Litepanels twitter lighting tips @airboxlights Hope this all helps

If that's the case, I'd go for a joker. It will gives you options fully unavailable with the divas you've got now. Hot spots in your background, real output for when you need it, you can bounce it for serious softness, hard light when you want it, soft as well with the chimera, all kinds of options. Plus you can battery-power it. Be sure to do some dry runs in non-time critical situations with your batteries so you know what kind of lifespan you get. I do love my 1x1s though. So convenient! I'm thinking about selling one of my Litepanel 1x1s and getting a dedo felloni instead. They're the same thing but lighter and brighter. yours Tom Guiney Airboxlights.com inflatable softboxes for litepanels

I have had some luck using table lights. Get little candelabra based sockets and find yourself a variety of frosted glass trims, wherever you can., Chinatown? Lamp stores? It works ok. It tends to be gaining up the camera, lights on the table for a little in the eyes, dedo/pepper backlights. This is working on The Hills and other such productions. It's good for when you do't want to ruin the ambiance of the place youre shooting, in order to preserve the organicity (such as may be there) of the action. You can put bottles and flowers and stuff in between your lens and the glowing table light. You can make a lot that look rather like candles or a frosted globe or something like that. Once I even put a large light undera frosted glass table and made the whole thing glow like a light. It gets tough on the wides though, seeing any of hte light source. Again its about masking off the obnoxiously bright pieces with set dressing.

Goof-off! And scraping first.

Am I too cynical to think that people are more likely to go out if they think there's something to be gained by it? A community of freelancers, every job can get you your next job, or not, and the social aspects of our business are absolutely important.

How bad will it be? Aren't ccd cameras the ones that smear on bright points of ligt? Lightning strikes 2k "paparazzi flashers are pretty good and not too expensive, as are atomic 3000 flashers. What am i missing?

When you go look at some moonlight, it tends to look dim, monochrome, and hard. extremely defined shadows, like sunlight. Best way to do this is with a fresnel source, far away so it's hard with an even falloff. Not necessarily blue, although blue suggests the actualy monochromaticity of moonlight to our eye. When shooting balanced to 3200, fully blue 5600-6000 "moonlight" looks a little cheesy and fake to my eye. Perhaps warm it up halfway to tungsten , keep it hard, even, and far away. That means a big light on a condor, usually. Give it your best approximation. yours Tom

Hi Jean. They're really for different things. a 200 joker is way more powerful, I mean no comparison, but not as effective as a battery fed light because it pulls so much more power and thus runs out fairly quickly. A 1x1 is a really flexible fast tool, but it cant do what a joker can do. What kind of work are you doing?

-pars -honda 2ks You can get a lot of bang for your buck with either black par cans as were previously suggested or even more efficient, source four pars/altman starpars. Go with a spot lens or no lens and they punch really hard. Great for deep deep background stuff. Inexpensive from a theatrical style rental house. Really do go to the other rental house; getting theater stuff from film/video rental houses is significantly more expensive, at least in new york. What I like to do in these situations is get a couple little honda 2k generators since they're so little and portable, get a bunch of pars, and send them way out deep in two different directions. Bring the honda 2k with you and put it right near the light. Saves a LOT of stingers. I love the glowing LED resin pebble idea! Seems a bit of a science project though. What's your budget like? Does it include science projects? Hudson sprayer for very portable wetdown sheen on your pebbles. Don't know if it works through a sprayer, but add a little glycerin to the water, that's how that super-drippy-beady athlete sweat is done in various athletic gear shoots.put that on the pebbles for extra wet-look long-lasting glistening. re: your plan- sounds reasonable. think about getting that 2.5 very high and far away, never mind the frame. Big sturdy stand like a Long John or mambo. Moonlight is really quite hard when you look at it. Ultradistinct shadows. It just looks soft because its dim. Dedos for the pebble shine? perhaps if you can get them close to the pebbles, but that wont be as easy in your wide shot. What about glow-in the dark paint? Or just get them glisteny and get just the right edge on them. Bring a leko or two with tighter barrels for a precise long slit on the line of pebbles. cheaper than dedos and more effective at a distance. and more precise. 3/4 back and sidey "keying" with your kinos sounds right. good luck TG airboxlights.com

-pars -honda 2ks You can get a lot of bang for your buck with either black par cans as were previously suggested or even more efficient, source four pars/altman starpars. Go with a spot lens or no lens and they punch really hard. Great for deep deep background stuff. Inexpensive from a theatrical style rental house. Really do go to the other rental house; getting theater stuff from film/video rental houses is significantly more expensive, at least in new york. What I like to do in these situations is get a couple little honda 2k generators since they're so little and portable, get a bunch of pars, and send them way out deep in two different directions. Bring the honda 2k with you and put it right near the light. Saves a LOT of stingers. I love the glowing LED resin pebble idea! Seems a bit of a science project though. What's your budget like? Does it include science projects? Hudson sprayer for very portable wetdown sheen on your pebbles. Don't know if it works through a sprayer, but add a little glycerin to the water, that's how that super-drippy-beady athlete sweat is done in various athletic gear shoots.put that on the pebbles for extra wet-look glistening. good luck