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essential lighting kit for a short film?


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looking for opinions on having the essentials

of sufficiently lighting for a short film (16mm).

 

right now I have 2 1000w flourescents for softing.

and 9 1000w par64's.

 

looking for personal experiences of whats a

good sufficient lighting setup to have for my

context.

 

thanks yall

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looking for opinions on having the essentials

of sufficiently lighting for a short film (16mm).

 

right now I have 2 1000w flourescents for softing.

and 9 1000w par64's.

 

looking for personal experiences of whats a

good sufficient lighting setup to have for my

context.

 

thanks yall

 

Doesn't it really depend upon what you'll be doing and where you'll be doing it? For instance, if you're doing a lot of work in daylight outdoors, the flo's won't help too much unless you use them at night and really closeup. They are mostly indoor fixtures. HMI units (pars or fresnels) would be needed for daytime work for sure and necessary for indoors when you have sunlight coming through windows. Wattage needed depends upon the scale of what you want to do and how large an area you need to light.

 

Tungsten fresnels have their place too for good hard and undiffused light that can produce great and well defined shadows with hard edges. Fluorescents are great anywhere you would normally need soft lighting--although since you're shooting 16mm you may need some minus green gels depending upon how good your tubes are. Hope this helps.

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we usually bring one 1.2k hmi, one 4x4 kino, two single tube fixtures, and a couple of redheads. plus stands, flags, gels, frames and so on of course. it all depends on what you're doing but this kit has served us well for shorts, features, music videos and commercials, indoor and outdoor, winter and summer. it's very limited for daylight exteriors though, for which you need bigger frames and more powerful hmi's. and forget lighting very creatively. it's all about working with the available light, extend it, fill it, block it. ok, that's creative too but you know what i mean. but hey, it fits in a station wagon.

 

/matt

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For shorts I always throw in a 2.5k HMI. In the UK you can plug into the wall

well, that's really pushing it since i'm pretty sure many breakers are 10 amps there just like here, which at 250 volts means you're at the very limit. i never dared. maybe i should because a 1.2k is a bit limited in daylight, even indoors. of course there's usually a 15 amp circuit or two in most places.

 

/matt

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well, that's really pushing it since i'm pretty sure many breakers are 10 amps there just like here, which at 250 volts means you're at the very limit. i never dared. maybe i should because a 1.2k is a bit limited in daylight, even indoors. of course there's usually a 15 amp circuit or two in most places.

 

/matt

 

I've seen them used on 10amp breakers in Australia and they've worked fine, wouldn't suggest it though - they are really handy as stated.

 

David Tilburey

Lighting Assistant

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well, that's really pushing it since i'm pretty sure many breakers are 10 amps there just like here, which at 250 volts means you're at the very limit. i never dared. maybe i should because a 1.2k is a bit limited in daylight, even indoors. of course there's usually a 15 amp circuit or two in most places.

 

/matt

 

In the UK the standard domestic plugs are fused for 13 Amps and the ring circuits commonly 30 Amps. The 2.5K HMIs are often used this way.

 

Other countries have different electrical systems, so you do have to careful about the loading.

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