Howdy, friends! It has been suggested to me by a colleague I know and trust that I should make an effort to continue my blogging, despite my busy days. I think he’s right. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually consider music to be my primary talent; that is reserved for writing (at least in my mind). Publicly, it may look as though film and music are competing for my second place talent pedestal, but I like to think of them as being inseparably intertwined. Upon the third place pedestal stands nothing. End clarifying paragraph.

I stated in my blog post about the Canon EOS 60D that video is more about lights and lenses than camera. Your camera is VERY important, but with HD floating around most $700+ dslr cameras, you have HD and decent shallow DoF (depth of field) covered so, I thought I’d share with you my setup.

Now, I’ve only recently acquired my “real” lights, but some light is better than no light so, let’s go over my old gear too.

I used to work with fluorescent ephoto lights that are a little over 200 watts each. They were soft lights with an octagonal umbrella housing. I also had two little lights that really aren’t worth describing. I bought these when I was just getting into more serious video production, and since I’ve had no formal training, I had only my research and study to go by, which at that time was severely lacking. I used these dinky catastrophes in my “Epic Pillow Fight” video and several others:

WATCH: Epic Pillow Fight

So, here’s the cheese on these: Fluorescent lights flicker. They don’t flicker because of a malfunction. They simply operate that way. If you aren’t careful with them, you’ll get banding in your image, exposure inconsistencies, etc., and quite frankly, they just don’t look very good; not to mention the fact that 225 watts per light is laughable at best. Keep in mind, I’m strictly speaking from a filmmaker standpoint. It’s different for photography, and for intermediate photography work, they aren’t too shabby, I guess. But as a filmmaker, buying these will get you a slap on the filmmaker’s inevitable carpal tunnel wrist.

Now, with that said, this is video we’re talking about here. Some lighting is WAY better than no lighting at all. The problem is, if you’re like me, you have no mentor so, you go up to your little Google search bar and type in “video lights,” and what do you get? Yep. You get the same crap I’m talking about. This is because we independent filmmakers are on every block of every city and an easy target for these companies to make a few million. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that the companies are evil or that they’re ripping you off. I’m simply saying that if you dig through the search results muck and mire and truly research these lights, you’ll find cheaper solutions at your local Lowes or Home Depot. Learn from my mistakes. If you don’t have the money for the real deal, go to Lowes, buy a couple of work lights and 2 or 3 small clamp lights, clothes pins (clothes line pins… whatever they’re called… those wooden things), and wax paper. You’ll pay a lot less and get just as good of a result. Even freddiew would tell you that! Buying these cheaper lighting solutions will get you a firm handshake of approval.

If you’re as serious about filmmaking as I am, you want the best. You won’t settle for less. You know how to bake a cake, and you want to eat it all by your lonesome. Well, unfortunately, the old adage “you get what you pay for” is frighteningly spot on in the world of film. I currently have 2 Mole-Richardson Baby-Zip Softlites, which are 2,000 watts each and can be knocked down to 1,000 watts at the flick of a switch (two independently controlled bulbs). For a third light, I have a Mole-Richardson Tweenie II 650 watt Fresnel Tungsten Light, which has an adjustable light spread and can utilize a 500 watt and a 300 watt bulb if you want a lot less light… there’s always scrims… and wax paper.

These lights are the “real deal,” and you can see a significant quality difference between my past videos and the two videos I’ve used them in thus far:

WATCH: Google Plus Acquaintance

WATCH: Quit Bein Lazy

I’ve always been one to just save my money until I can get the nice stuff, instead of wasting money on the junk, but I have to say that lights are different. You need lighting gear, and it’s up to you to decide if you need to stop reading and run to Lowes right now or if you can wait until you’ve saved up enough to go all out.  It depends on how fast you can make money to spare. I still don’t have it all. I could use another one or two of the Tweenie II lights, a couple of lesser wattage spots, and an extremely high wattage HMI light (for competing with the sun outside, but a LOT can be done with reflectors and clever positioning so, for now that’s at the bottom of the lighting food chain). Decide what’s right for you and get to making those films. I wanna see them! Post your videos in the comments and let’s talk about the lighting. Thanks for reading, friends.

See what happens,
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