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How can I hang a Kino Flo from the ceiling?


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Hello everyone

 

I'm the DP at a shoot next week, and in on scene in a small office, I want to hang a Kino Flo (4ft 4bank) over a table. In the close up's, we will do it with a Stand, but for the wide shots this will not work,

because the room is very small and it would be in the shot. A wallbreaker will not work too because of the windows on one side. The height of the room is standard (about 9 feet).

Will I be able to tape it to the ceiling or is it too heavy?

 

Thanks for your help

Jonas

Office_neu.pdf

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Hello everyone

 

I'm the DP at a shoot next week, and in on scene in a small office, I want to hang a Kino Flo (4ft 4bank) over a table. In the close up's, we will do it with a Stand, but for the wide shots this will not work,

because the room is very small and it would be in the shot. A wallbreaker will not work too because of the windows on one side. The height of the room is standard (about 9 feet).

Will I be able to tape it to the ceiling or is it too heavy?

 

Thanks for your help

Jonas

 

 

http://www.filmtools.com/matscisclamw.html

 

Or you could hide it ABOVE the drop ceiling, letting the light through, if your shot shows the ceiling.

 

 

I had to use this very clamp last week to hang a backlight. :)

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Drop ceiling scissor clamp is probably your best approach. When short on scissor clamps, I've also used Cartolini and Maffers claps to achieve the same effect. If you need it to be higher and there are removable ceiling tiles, you can even hide the light above the ceiling. There's usually quite a lot of space to rig up there unless its taken up by an AC vent or pipe or something.

 

With any overhead rigging, be sure to use safety cable!

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I agree on hanging it above the drop ceiling tiles if possible. Then you can make it nice and safe by clamping to solid structures.

 

You definitely cannot tape a kino to the ceiling, but you can tape the bulbs if they're removed from the unit.

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Thanks for the advice everyone!

But well.. it simply has no drop ceiling.

It's just a normal flat ceiling, without anything to attach anything to.

But I'll probably go with the 'take the bulbs out' method.

 

Thanks again for the help

Jonas

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Sounds like you aren't working with drop ceilings, correct? Because if you are, you could rig to a scissor clamp and grip head, or (carefully) bite to something above the panels.

 

But if you've got a regular ceiling, I can think of two options:

 

Most Kino units have little gold eyelets for screwing into ceilings. If the place you're shooting at will let you put holes in their walls, this is a solid option. Be sure to screw into as many set of beams as you can and use dry-wall anchors where you can't. Test the weight before you put actors underneath.

 

The other way is to remove the guts from the backing and tape it. Take out all the bulbs and header cable and use paper tape (perhaps on each individual bulb) to keep them up. To control spill, take some duvateen and tape it in a rectangular shape around the bulbs, creating a skirt.

 

 

And if neither of those works, use china balls!

 

Let us know how it goes!

 

 

EDIT - And somehow I missed that there are already a million replies to this thread. My work here is done.

Edited by Matt Hingstman
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How big is the room? I'm thinking if you can't drill into the ceilings, you might be able to work with the walls and create a four corner support structure--essentially your own overhead rig. I did a similar thing about a year ago in a room that was about 20 feet by 20 feet and it worked great, very solid. The shot was wide but not wide enough to see the corners of the room so it was perfect for that application.

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Hello everyone

 

I'm the DP at a shoot next week, and in on scene in a small office, I want to hang a Kino Flo (4ft 4bank) over a table. In the close up's, we will do it with a Stand, but for the wide shots this will not work,

because the room is very small and it would be in the shot. A wallbreaker will not work too because of the windows on one side. The height of the room is standard (about 9 feet).

Will I be able to tape it to the ceiling or is it too heavy?

 

Thanks for your help

Jonas

what exact effect u wanna archive? soft, harsh backlight or something else? why dont u try to hang a reflector on and a redhead with snoot on the floor instead of a kino (4x4)? Just another idea i did before and it work pretty cool with my scene.

Edited by Alex March
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Hi all

 

So we finished the shoot about two weeks ago and this is how i made it.

The guy at the rental house suggested it to me and with some sandbags at the other end, it worked.

Int the image below you can see what it looked like.

 

Thanks again for the help

Jonas

post-50955-0-14514500-1305044787.jpg

post-50955-0-16618900-1305044876.jpg

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