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I'm shooting a music video inside a restaurant with drop ceiling (location) and would like to create practical overhead lighting (like this) to give us more freedom with our framing. In the example above -- it looks like they popped out tiles where they needed light, laid out a large cut of diffusion across several tiles and placed individual fluorescent tubes (astera, quasar or kino?) on each rectangle. What do you think? Can anyone provide any helpful ideas on how to achieve lighting like this on a modest budget? The restaurant also has several 3-bank T12 fluorescent fixtures already installed. I'd like to replace these fixtures with T12 kino tubes but the location is pretty dated and I'm worried about flickering because of old ballasts. How can I tell if the ballast will produce a flicker? I looked around the fixture and didn't find any specs printed on the side.

I have a short coming up where I'll be shooting in a subway car standing set. I need to accomplish two things: a chase for the lights within the subway tunnel and a flicker of the overhead practicals. For the flicker I'd like to see the practicals themselves. Unfortunately I have yet to scout the set as production is a mess. This is a really low budget shoot so I need to figure out something crafty. My immediate thought for the practicals was to replace the existing units with Quasar or Astera tubes (especially since the Astera can be used wirelessly). The chase and the flicker will occur in the same scene. Any advice/ideas is greatly appreciated!

What do I need to Connect Tube lights like in the photo here? I'm a complete newbie to them and want to be able to make my own designs.