Jump to content

shooting in south sudan


ayman

Recommended Posts

hello...am going to south sudan but i have extremely big problemes about the budget in lightening equipments

i also have one night scene and the director wouldnt even use the day for night effect...so the idea i got is to use car lamps which takes the electricity from small generator for the scenes that requires lightening..

the location is a cottage where there is fire in front and there is about 8 people talking around it...so i really need any advices ..am using 5D dslr

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...