Please recommend Light for lighting backgrounds during interviews

[John Sharaf]

Two words: Source Four

JS

[Mark Suszko]

Two more words:
back aches.

The Source Four Junior is a great and versatile light, but not what I would call easily portable.

[Dan Brockett]

I agree, a Source Four/Leko would be ideal for lighting BGs and throwing patterns. The only possible challenge might be that Source Fours/Lekos are relatively huge and heavy if you are a one man band or throwing a small kit together to travel.

Even though your LEDs are most probably daylight balanced, my favorite small and light travel BG light would be an Arri 300 or an Arri 650 Fresnel. Throw a piee of Cinefoil with some holes punched through it and perhaps a colored gel and life will be good. I mix daylight LED and tungsten a lot, it gives your BG light an appealing and instant warmth. Most of the directors I shoot for always want to warm up the BG, so this is an easy and effective way to do so.

Enjoy!

Dan

A Producer Who Is Also A DP? Yep, that’s Me.

http://www.danbrockett.com

[Mark Suszko]

Dan, I do the same trick wth black foil, punched thru with random holes using a pen, and put in the gel frame of a Lowel Omni. One time I did this with two lights, one gelled blue the other, bare, and ion the places where their patterns overlapped, I got a very convincing sky/cloud effect. One of those serendiptous things.

My vote (as usual) would be for a Lowel Omni or Omni-Pro. Not as easy to use pattern gobos as the Source Four, but very easy to travel with.

[Anderson Black]

Thanks guys. Yeah I checked out the Source Four and it’s too way heavy duty for my needs. I’m a one-man band. It seems like a solid pro-gear. Something you would use if you had a crew.

I was leaning more towards the tungsten and cinefoil+color gel combo and you guys confirmed that.

THANKS!

[Bill Davis]

I too think that you’ve got a problem.

If you bought LEDs in daylight, and you mix tungsten, then you’re ONLY going to be able to do warm backgrounds/fill without losing a LOT of efficiency by doing CTB color correction. That means you’d likely NOT get enough punch out of a 150 – and possibly even a 300 fresnel. So you’ll probably have to lug around a 650. Not fun. Remember one 650 fresnel will draw HALF the available power in a single 15A circuit. Leaving less for everything else. Same with a 750 Omni or similar.

Plus, you’re going to have to lug around a much heavier gauge stinger to power one of those than you can use for EVERYTHING else.

See the issue? LED lights are ONLY soft/broad lights. They can’t do anything else. But they’re LESS soft than tungsten in a bag. They are efficient, but they are NOT cuttable and won’t throw anything like a pattern.

That’s part of why I STILL don’t get why everyone seems to buy their LEDS in 5600k when they’re also available in 3200 which balances MUCH better with 90% of the existing pro-lights on the planet.

But that’s another topic for another day.

[Anderson Black]

mmm interesting.
Ok here’s what I was going to do, let me know what your opinion is of this gear.

To light subjects I was going to buy 1 LED 600 (5600k) and 2 LED 256 (5600k) from Cool Lights (https://www.coollights.biz/). Then use a tungsten to light the background, throw patter etc.

The reason I’m going with the 5600K over the 3200K is I figured I could use it outdoors as well.

What do you think of this set-up?

[Peter Ralph]

I use a 56K on cam light for run and gun – but daylight balanced fixtures have to be very beefy to have any impact on a scene lit by the sun.

For background/rim light I think the light is less important than the light stand – get an articulating/boom stand which allows you to position the fixture wherever you want.

[Todd Terry]

Personally, what I would do is use one or two small tungsten fresnel instruments for background. I personally use (and like) LTM Pepper instruments, but there are a lot of fans of the others out there as well (Arri, Mole, etc).

One issue you might run into with your daylight vs. tungsten theory is, that while it would be nice to use those instruments outside as well, they sure aren’t going to have much punch for an exterior shoot. Maybe if you were shooting a fairly close shot of someone you could put it close enough to the talent (just out of frame) for it to do some good, but otherwise they are not going to be super effective. Think of it this way, if the color balance was right, how useful would a 650 tungsten be outdoors? Not very.

I’d say the main reason to buy daylight-balanced LED instruments would be so that you have the flexibility to mix with other daylight instruments for interior shoots… Kinos, HMIs, etc. Otherwise you might be better off with tungsten-balanced instruments.

All that being said, I personally think you can mix light temperatures a lot more that some people do. For example, I predominately do daylight lighting… usually with HMIs, and occasionally with flos. However I have no problem in many instances with using a tungsten fixture as a back/side/hair light. I often like the warmer look of the tungsten backlight. Same for lighting on backgrounds, sometimes if it is a bit warmer than the principal lighting that looks perfectly ok, often it is even desirable. Just depends on the exact look you are going for.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Anderson Black]

wow so many ideas!
I appreciate all this input.