Lighting in Remote Jungle

[Alex Rubin]

Need some advice.

I will be shooting an anthropological short in an incredibly remote location in Indonesia. 

Any ideas for small bundle of items that will be necessary in order to get the best lighting possible given the circumstances?

Crew of 3. No access to outlets or generators on location.  

Thanks

[David Mullen ASC]

If you don't have any power, then how would you use lights - batteries? Then how are you going to recharge the batteries? Or the camera batteries? Or download the footage? Do you go to a place every night with electricity?

Perhaps one LED unit with batteries that you can charge at night, otherwise you're going to have to rely on white cards, bounce cloth + available light.

[Alex Rubin]

Hey David,

thanks for getting back.

Yes, will have access to generator from 6am to 8pm in place where I am sleeping, but not on location.  

I have 2 small LEDs, a couple reflectors and white cards. Was worried I might be missing something useful/obvious. 

[David Mullen ASC]

Black flags for negative fill, cutting off weird spots of sun on the actors, etc. But with only three people, you don't have much ability to rig & support grip items safely. Maybe a 4x4 diffusion could be handy for a close-up to soften the sun.

[Robin R Probyn]

Battery LED panels I guess as far as actual lights .. you cant take over 160WH batteries in a plane though .. and only 3 X 150WH.. so I would go with as many 98WH (there is no limit) as 3 people /weight limit allows ,check with the airline .. also I would take one of those 5 in 1 .. expandable round reflectors .. the larger size  phones / tablets  now can also be a small lite panel .. if you in a dark enough environment.. and small subject like a face .. 

[Alex Rubin]

thanks guys. 

appreciate the advice 

[Stephen Sanchez]

David Mullen's advice would be a standard go-to, with powered fixtures as extra. To add to David's gear list, Mathews makes 24x24 reflector boards. A DP friend uses those on MOS shoots for kicker/backlight. They're small and pack small. The 4x4 ones are bigger, but those smaller ones are a gem for travel.

Good luck my friend!

Edited July 9, 2020 by Stephen Sanchez
Phone typos

[Vital Butinar]

Well as far as the lights I honestly don't know. But recently we had a shoot for a tv series pilote episode and we shot on a remote location where we didn't have access to any power for two days. Just the crew, camera, sound and light bounces. Anyway we used the BM Pocket 4K and had it connected to a V mount battery and the damn thing ran for two days straight and the battery drain was only about about 3/4 drained and the camera ran almost all the time. 

We literally had to change storage cards more and completely forgot about the batter. 

It was the same with the sound recorder and mic receivers that ran off another V mount battery but that one got only 2/5 drained. 

[James Compton]

Connect with the local Asian rock climbing community(it's real) on Instagram. Hire two guys to climb high up the tree canopy and rig reflectors. It will add a moderate boost of sunlight or shafts of light, depending on the scenario. Use fire and reflectors for night shoots. Keep your firewood dry(Monsoon season), and bring turpentine to paint on wood in your surrounding area to keep soldier ants away.