• Lighting Design

  Lighting for B-roll where you don’t have power

  Posted by Neil Myers on July 13, 2010 at 3:45 am

  We shoot case study videos for clients who sell computer and networking gear. Their customers are typically very large enterprises. We usually are not allowed to shoot inside the data center for security reasons, but sometimes we can.

  But, when we can there are a always several restrictions:

  1. Now power available
  2. They are antsy and want us in and out as fast as possible
  3. We are shooting in tight spots
  4. The gear we are shooting is sometimes inside the rack mount and thus shadowed.
  5. The ambient light is harsh and uneven florescent

  For example:

  

  Is there a create way to light with battery powered lights in this kind of environment?

  Neil Myers
  Connect Public Relations
  CS4 Master Suite, 3DS

  Rick Wise replied 15 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Mark Suszko

  July 13, 2010 at 2:08 pm

  Small, LED based battery-powered lights for this, add lots of diffusion to it for lighting up the inside of the racks, to kill the harshness of shadows. For stand-up speeches next to the racks, a large but foldable foil-covered bounce board or a foldigng “flex-fill” will bounce the existing overhead light back onto the talent at a more flatering angle, and costs no energy, just a warnm body to hold/aim it.

  I’m surprised you can get useable audio in a server room with all the fan noise.
• 

  Neil Myers

  July 13, 2010 at 2:28 pm

  Thanks, I’ll research those type of lights. We aren’t going for any audio … this is just b-roll to cut away to.

  Neil Myers
  Connect Public Relations
  CS4 Master Suite, 3DS
• 

  Mark Suszko

  July 13, 2010 at 3:21 pm

  Something like this maybe:

  https://www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/detail.asp?sid=451&sortby=&page=2&rpid=0&rvid=0&swid=0&searchid=0
• 

  Rick Wise

  July 13, 2010 at 5:30 pm

  The short answer is, there are always creative ways to light, regardless of what powers the light — bounced, AC, DC. The considerable advantage of LED lights is that they are very light and consume very little power so that running them off batteries is a decent option.

  Here’s a list of them that run ad/dc, from low to high: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?ci=12248&Ns=p_PRICE_2|0&N=4294551085+4289308679+4289308678/BI/6544/KBID/7158

  No matter where the power comes from, the last place you want the light, except for a little eye-twinkle, is on or near the camera. That means you need at lest one other person to hold the light(s). Sometimes you can press one of your “handlers” into becoming a brief human light stand….

  Rick Wise
  director of photography
  San Francisco Bay Area
  and part-time instructor lighting and camera
  grad school, SF Academy of Art University/Film and Video
  https://www.RickWiseDP.com
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
  email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com

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