[Todd Terry]

Yup. Unless you need to actively change color during a shot, I think a multi-color and DMX-controllable (or app controllable) instrument is probably overkill. Otherwise, gels will work fine.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Yeah, you likely don’t want fan-cooled instruments in such a small space.

I said “likely,” because they aren’t always a problem. I have LitePanels Astra instruments which have fans, and you would never know it (not an appropriate fixture for your job, just an example of fans). They are perfectly silent. I also have some Boltzen fresenels that are fanned but silent. Maybe if you pressed your ear to the body you could hear them, but not otherwise… I’ve never had a mic pick them up at all. Then again I also have some other older instruments where you can clearly hear the fans.

The old-school incandescent Source Fours do not have fans. I can’t say with certainty if the newer modern LED versions are fan-cooled or not (I’ve not had the opportunity to use them). They might, might not… will have to plead ignorance on that. I don’t know if the Hives have fans either.

I completely forgot about another instrument that I’ll recommend you look at, the Source Four MINI… I completely forgot that it came in a mini version….

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=source%20four%20mini&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=

That’s the way I’d go. It’s smaller than anything else, cheaper than anything else, and will do all that you want it to… and weighs only a couple of pounds. Plus the Source Four is the industry standard for exactly the job you are trying to do, especially in a tiny studio space.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I was just now able to look at your links.

The Hive lights are decent… the Leko barrel combined with the little Hive “Bee” light would be a decent combo, and not crazy heavy or outrageously expensive. If you went with one of the bigger Hive lights, like the Hornet or the Wasp instrument that you linked to, that might be overkill… both in price and weight.

Leko Barrel + Bee Light = 2.35lbs total, $1300
Leko Barrel + Wasp Light = 6.35lbs total, $1750
Leko Barrel + Hornet Light = 4lbs total, $2200

All three of those combos do the same thing… it just depends on how much output you need… we don’t know how bright (or dim) your present setup is.

Again, what is killing you price-wise is pattern projection. If you can give up that, you can find a little fresnel that will do the job for a hundred bucks.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

No, you’re right… you definitely don’t want to hang an instrument like that from a scissor clamp.

And I fully understand not wanting to give up the floor real estate.

You could do what I did in my own edit suite, where I hung a big monitor, and also have a drop ceiling (which apparently you do, too). This is a 42′ monitor (not gigantic by today’s standards, but pretty big), and it is a plasma montior, not one of today’s light-as-a-feather LEDs or LCDs… this guy is heavy.

This montitor hangs on a piece of pipe… just steel plumbing pipe, actually… and goes up through the ceiling tile where it is attached to the joists between floors. I couldn’t find a commercial “real” hanging system for the monitor, so I hit Home Depot and built this…

You could hang an anvil off of it. Behind the scenes (or rather, above the tile), it looks like this….

It’s just plumbing pipe, and a couple of T-connectors. The pipe runs through holes I drilled in the floor joists above, and one of the T-connectors allows for an easy cable pass to the monitor.

So yeah, a Source Four is heavy… but I really don’t know another instrument that will give you that kind of punch and that kind of throw from that distance, and be super adjustible and take gobo patterns. It’s really exactly what that light was made for. There could be smaller/lighter fixtures out there that will do similar, but I don’t know what they are. If you are willing to give up pattern projection and some adjustability almost any one of a zillion different little fresnel instruments would work… but no patterns.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Relax, Ty… no messenger killing here.

My comment was mostly in jest, only partially to make a point.

That said, though, I didn’t feel overly helped and did feel relatively chastised for suggesting there might be a more cost-effective way to solve my problem. Instead I was more or less told “that’s what it costs” before the conversation devolved into suggestions like using lavalieres instead of booms… which in no way would have solved the problem.

It wasn’t necessarily you, but everyone (although you did call my camera “cheap” without even knowing what I was shooting with… and, it’s not).

Maybe things are different here on the video side of things, where there is almost always a hack to do something cheaper or different, or a possible way to do the impossible… and a pretty rich DIY culture of helpful people. It’s a different world… I can build a homemade camera crane and the viewer will never know the difference. I can’t build a microphone.

Cheap doesn’t necessarily mean bad. Take the show Modern Family, which is shot with $100K Alexas sporting $100K lenses. Yet all the car interiors are shot with GoPros.

I will say though that the audio forum was recently surprisingly indulgent of one particular longtime troll-poster (who is persona non grata on just about every internet forum).

All that being said, the Source Four is the instrument you’re looking for to do what you want in your studio… whether it be the uber-expensive LED version, or a cheap used incandescent fixture like Rick suggested.

That instrument will do what you want, and make you happy.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

It is expensive, Mark, very… but you have to remember that price is no object to the audio guys.

I learned that recently when complaining in the audio forum about the high cost of one piece of simple gear that I needed (a mic mixer), and found myself fairly berated for wanting something more affordable. I was told by various forum members things like:

“So you are one of those guys”

“…unlike your cheap camera, it will provide years of faithful service.”

“…there is no short-cut or work-around…”

So I figured audio guys would want to “do it right” and budget wasn’t a consideration.

🙂

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Since Ty was wanting color choices and patterns, to me the obvious choice is one of the new LED versions of the ol’ tried-n-true Source Fours…

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1147738-REG/etc_7461a1061_series_2_tungsten_hd.html

…or….

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1147741-REG/etc_7461a1071_series_2_daylight_hd.html

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Ahh… that was you, Bob. I was out on a location shoot, and the editor who answered the call said that somebody called about that, but would email. I guess you were that somebody. Sorry the email didn’t go through, I have no idea why.

Thanks, I’ll put these names on my list o’ Vegas people.

I was able to also hook up with (what seems like) a very good production company there, thanks to the COW’s “services” section.

I’ll be shooting there starting a week from today, and am not looking forward to it. We shoot in Vegas about once a year, sometimes twice… and while the place itself it interesting, the heat is not (and we always have to go in summer). I think last year it was something like 116 degrees. In the shade. At midnight. Fun.

Thanks!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I’ve got one, I’ll see what the firmware version is when back in the studio tomorrow.

If there’s an update it might be a little hard to find, Focus went bankrupt more than 10 years ago and the FS-5 is pretty ancient. VITEC owns the name now, but not the same gear. The FS-5 is a great unit though, I just bought one a few months on on eBay to get more life out of our old Canon XL-H1… was only a hundred bucks or so and works like a charm.

When I get a minute I’m gonna convert it to a solid state recorder… there’s a YouTube video where a guy goes through the steps to make the upgrade, looks pretty darn simple and is actually a very cheap conversion.

Is there a reason you think you need a firmware update? Is the unit doing something weird, or not doing something it should?

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Oh, the other thing you could do it gel your lighting instruments, rather than gelling the monitor. In this case you’d do the opposite of my previous suggestion… rather than turning your daylight monitor into a tungsten profile, you’d be turning your tungsten lighting into daylight.

So rather than gelling the monitor orange, you’d basically be gelling your instruments blue. The gel you’d need in this case would be CTB.

But I generally advise against this, because you’d probably need at least half CTB to get decent balanced results… and that greatly greatly greatly reduces the output from your lighting instruments.

It is another option, though.

T2

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