Ghetto Lights

[temerson]

So, here's the situation. I'm not a self-proclaimed guru of cinematography by any means, but I can certainly hold my own. Just give me a nice B&H kit, a Cartoni tripod, and a gel kit, and I can make stuff look pretty good. Problem, however, is I don't have money to get a light kit for a project I'm working on right now. And there are no light kits available where I am, unless I want to ask my professional friends who will charge me an arm and a leg for them.

I've already planned to use construction lights, like you'd find at Lowe's. I was wondering if anybody had any advice on how to get that "film" look out of them, whether that means rigging a bunch of lights to a board to create a 15K, or how to build softboxes out of regular boxes (both ideas I've thought about). Thoughts?

 

[PanavisionT2]

Are you shooting on film or video?

The 'film look' does not come from the lights themselves, it comes from the film. There are video camera's out there that can emulate the look of film by running at 24p with the right shutter and aperture setting.

The 'quality' of the light comes from the lights. The reason your professional friends charge you an arm and a leg is because those lights are very expensive (as I'm sure you know from your own research); not only to purchase and maintain, but to insure them as well. If they want to stay in business they must cover their overhead.

The quality of lights such as Arri's, Mole's, Kino's, HMI's and others, is that they are designed and built specifically for use in film and they are balanced to a specific color temperature. Tungsten lights are usually balanced at 3200 Kelvin. HMI's (daylight) are usually balanced to 5600 Kelvin. As the bulbs age, their color can shift.

Construction lights use cheap halogen bulbs and they will almost certainly not be balanced uniformly. Plus they won't give you white light, it will be more of a yellowish-orange, and that will be hell to correct out (I've done it, the look is sickly).

I wouldn't attempt to build a soft box out them either, their liable to catch fire.