Free Work Lights vs DV Creator 1 vs 10 days Arri rental

I'm shooting a horror short at my parent's cabin so I'm looking at different lighting kits for the interior shots. I have an option of getting any of these work lights for free. http://www.tpicorp.com/01-MenuSystem-CatalogPages/05-FostoriaLightingEquipment/PortableUtilityLights/ProdDisplayPage.htm

Or I'm willing to maybe spend the cash to get the Lowel DV Creator Kit for around $750. But for that same amount of money, I could rent a nice Arri softbank kit for nine days. The great thing about owning the lights would be that I could leave them set up in the cabin when I'm not shooting. I'll probably only be shooting during the weekends. And I do have a good bit of experience lighting narrative scenes, but just not with work lights.

So if the answer is the work lights, which ones would you get?

Thanks,

-chad

It depends what's in the Arri kit. I had the lowel, and it's good, but I also bought 3 extra lowels and had some softboxes to go with it. I would not go without the extra lights and definitely not without the softboxes. I would stay away from the work lights.

I've been very happy with my Lowel kit, but it's often not enough. Gage is right that you might need extra softboxes, plus the right gels to get your mood right for horror. Some tips off the top of my head:

* Use China Balls instead of soft boxes. They're cheap. And if you're concerned about the color of light buy some 3200k photoflood bulbs for them. Just be careful because it's hard to find fixtures for a China Ball rated to the wattage of a photoflood. If the socket is plastic, it will melt. Trust me I have experience with this.

* If you can't gel your softboxes or China Balls, you might get away cheating it by white balancing to a not white reference point. I think a little pink will cool the tone, but you'll want to experiment.

* Color correct in post. Just make sure you maintain detail in the shot and you'll have plenty of room to get your look.

* Shoot day for night when you can - available light is a great thing.

* Plan your practicals to be your key light wherever possible and fill with softboxes, China Balls, or bounced light from Lowel Omni, Tota, or Pro lights. Again, photofloods in practicals can help with light color, just use your ND filters and/or negative gain to create negative fill.

* TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MAGIC HOUR. It's the best free light effect ever.

I wouldn't recommend worklights. They're a pain to work with and a bigger pain to gel. They can work in a pinch, but they aren't incredibly versatile. A light kit like the Lowel is a good thing, but not cheap and sometimes lacking. Renting gear is the way the big boys do it because it's the most versatile - you get what you need when you need it - but rental quality gear is rented because it's expensive (sometimes impossible) to buy, so it ain't cheap to rent either.

In the end it comes down to the ultimate DV Rebel question: "Which do you have more of - time or money?"[/list]

I have a bunch of different kinds of lights -- work lights, bare-bulb lights, Lowell soft lights, Smith-Victor photofloods.

I rarely use those, however. I almost always use fresnel lights. The ability to vary the beam from flood-ish to spot-ish, the consistent 3200K color temp, attachmetnts such as barn doors, steel scrims, and snoots, and the durability of them makes the choice 95+% of the time. You can mount a sheet of diffusion in front of a flood-adjusted fresnel and get diffuse light just like a soft light.

You can find them used if you look. Mole-Richardson lighting instruments are the Hollywood standard and are built like battleships. I also like LTM Peppers. Lowell products are incredibly lightweight but don't seem nearly as durable.

My fresnel kit includes:
3 -- 200W Peppers
2 -- M-R 650W
1 -- M-R 1K

The Peppers also take a 100W bulb but I rarely use it. If I had it to do over again,I'd get 420W Peppers, which also take a 200W bulb.

I haven't had occasion to use a China ball, but I'd be careful to use a low-wattage 3200K bulb inside. The last thing I want is a piece of movie gear catching on fire directly over the talent.

I haven't used the work lights yet. For a horror flick, the harsh quality might be exactly the right thing.

I have required all of them exactly once, for a long shot of some action behind an industrial building. The 1K was on a roof 2 storeys up.

One of the most important things you can do for your light kit is to make some extention cords (call 'em "stingers" for that genuine gaffer accent) using heavy gauge cable, that is, 10 gauge. You can make them more cheaply than store-bought. Run a light through 100' of 16g extension cord and the lowered voltage will definitely give the light a nice warm amber flavor, which you probably don't want.

While you're hunting for used gear, keep your eyes peeled for used light stands. Try to accumulate 1 for every light you have. But if you have to have new stuff, Matthews used to offer 10% off if you bought from their factory, and another 10% off for cash.

-- Paul

Great information guys! I've pretty much decided to stay away from the work lights. Thanks!

Now, I'm thinking about a Lowel kit in the $1200- $1400 range. It looks like I can get a Omni 4 light kit at 500w per light or the DV Creator 44 with 250w for two lights/ 500 for one and 750 for the other or DV Creator 55 with 250w for one light and 500 for two and 750 for one. Which one would you guys go for?

-chad

I had this kit:

http://www.evsonline.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DV901Z

Which is essentially:

1 Tota (up to 800w)
1 Omni (up to 500w)
1 Pro (up to 250w)

To this, I added 3 more Pros and 2 softboxes for the Pros:

The softboxes are Westcott Mini Apollos and operate similar to an umbrella, without the need for a speedring.

I highly suggest picking up this kit:

http://www.adorama.com/WEMPK.html

It comes with two softboxes, a silver/black reflector, and a reflector arm. All of these are indispensible.

While diffused fresnels are fine for lighting sets, you really want something softer for lighting your talent. Especially if you have women in your films. You do not want hard, directional lighting on your female talent, and diffused does not equal soft. You also get alot of spill from your diffused but unflagged lights. Softboxes will provide a feathered fallout.

Also, the reason I got the extra Pros and not Totas or Omnis is mostly because 500 and 800w was WAY more than I needed 75+% of the time. The 250s were my go to light, and I often dropped below that. Another thing to keep in mind is that while I find anything more than 250-500w too much for indoor scenes, who will need MUCH MORE than that for exteriors. I had 2 big Mole Richardson 2ks for exteriors and that was always supplemented by any other light I had.

Grab a couple more lightstands. Grab a couple used C-stands.

One GREAT addition to my kit was various surface light mounts:

http://www.samys.com/product_detail.php?item=1586

http://www.samys.com/product_detail.php?item=6690

http://www.filmtools.com/maknhe58baar.html

I had a few other types, but cant find them online.

Random clamps at B&H

Also, this stand has been invaluable to me:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/215853-REG/Bogen_Manfrotto_003M_3095M_Backlight_Stand.html

An aside: I just found this site: http://www.filmandvideolighting.com/

Looks like some good deals.

The way to light the talent is all about what you want to tell the audience. Diffusion on a fresnel does not uglify a pretty woman. However, there were a couple of shots in my feature in which I specifically wanted hard-edged, unflattering light. My main actress is remarkably good looking, and the hard light added to her hard-edged performance.

As in everything else in filmmaking, it helps a lot to know just what it is you're aiming for, before you go on the set. The light kit for a romance is going to be diferent from the light kit for a thriller or horror flick.

Of course. with post production goodies like MB Look Suite, you can turn "plain" footage into just about anything. As Stu constantly points out, design for post and make production easier on yourself.

-- Paul

	Quote:
	The way to light the talent is all about what you want to tell the audience. Diffusion on a fresnel does not uglify a pretty woman.

Lighting is my day job - it is what I have done almost everyday for the past 8 years. You are correct, "diffusion on a fresnel" does not "uglify a pretty woman". That does not change anything I've said.

There are people here with alot of professional experience in various areas. There seems to be alot of professional VFX artists here. Lighting is my field. I know it and I am very good at it.

I would recommend to anyone wanting/needing to light something to take a good class or workshop on lighting, specifically different TYPES of light. Not necessarily HOW to light. Learning the difference between SOFT light and DIFFUSED light is KEY to being able to light. PLACING lights is secondary.

Gage,

No criticism implied. I am not a lighting professional, but it doesn't take rocket science to figure out that every type of light source puts out different kinds of light. So I am perfectly happy to accept your distinction between soft light and diffused light. I have a couple of 2K Lowell softlights which I got for making 4 industrial videos, and the main difference between those and a sheet of Rosco diffusion in front of a fresnel is that they are less directional. There may be other differences, but that is what I perceived in using them. Once in place, the camera could go anywhere on the set.

However, I am also a microbudget (i.e. "Rebel") filmmaker and one the basic ideas behind that is to use the minimum investment in equipment, the smallest possible truck to cart it around, to get the maximum production value and make a C-note look like a million bucks. So what's the least stuff to cart around to get the maximum number of visual qualities?

I'd love to have a 5-ton grip/electric truck. Even a 3-ton. I'd love to have cheap, smoooth, *curved* dolly track. I'd love to have more different kinds of lighting appartus. But something has to give if cash flow is a consideration. So while I fully acknowledge the expertise you've acquired, I'd still recommend to the new reb filmmaker: stick with fresnels, they are the most versatile units, get different gels and diffusion sheets, experiment before the shoot day, then go out and create any kind of shot you want.

-- Paul

Gage and Clinco,

You both bring up good points and now my head is swimming. On one hand, the work lights could provide a cool "horror" look, but I'm guessing that the result on tape wouldn't be as flexible in post and they would be a royal pain in the butt to use. But they wouldn't cost me a dime to get.

From my experience using Arri Fresnels in school and some Lowel kits, the Arri's were a dream to use while I thought the Lowel's were cheep in comparison and a slight pain to use. This was probably due to the fact that they weren't fresnels, but I could be wrong.

For some reason, I'm really trying to convince myself to not rent the lights. I've rented from post houses before and time becomes the main issue. This short really needs to be great, so I don't want to have to make compromises because of time issues. But I know that time is always a factor anyway.

And I guess it just comes down to money. Here's how much I've spent so far.

HV20- free as a Christmas gift
$500- Tripod
$300- shotgun mic
$200- wide angle lens
$100- Mattbox with Cokin P filter holders
$100- ND Cokin P filters, UV
$1400- Final Cut Studio 2
$150- extra batteries and travel charger

So i've basically spent right under $3000.

And another thing to remember is, my parent's cabin is pretty small.

I'd love to just suck it up and buy an Arri kit like this one http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=NavBar&A=getItemDetail&Q=&sku=333258&is=REG&si=acc&showAll=1#more_accessories

This kit has three 650 Fresnels that can also be used with 500w or 300w bulbs. I would also purchase some sort of softbox as well. And then if I had to light outside, I could use the three at 650w and then rent the rest. Or is there a better Arri kit for what I need? The one major thing that gets me with this ideas is that I don't know how much use I would get out of those lights after this short.

Decisions, decisions...

-chad

	Gage wrote:
	I would recommend to anyone wanting/needing to light something to take a good class or workshop on lighting, specifically different TYPES of light. Not necessarily HOW to light. Learning the difference between SOFT light and DIFFUSED light is KEY to being able to light. PLACING lights is secondary.

Classes and workshops aren't really an option for me, given my work schedule and location. Are there any books, videos, or online materials that you could recommend for lighting? I've read a few books on the subject, but nothing that's really wowed me.

- Boz

_________________
Filmmaker Redux
twitter: "bozfx"

There are, as you've discovered, a number of basic books on lighting.

For specific instances of how scenes were lit, you might check out AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER magazine. While many beind-the-scenes views show oceanic amounts of gear in use, the concepts are often adaptable to reb style. Occasional articles discuss the cinematographic concept for an entire movie, how design decisions were reached, and so on. Consider it more inspiration than instruction.

-- Paul