You light up my life

I've been scoping out various types of filming gear on line. One of the consistently expensive items is lighting. Sadly, one of the things I've learned is that you can't go wrong with decent lighting. My DV camera auto adjusts for darker areas, but the image comes out dull looking. So lights are a good idea if you want your footage to look anywhere near good.

I've had mild success with clip on desk lamps, which work fairly well. The up side is that they fit party bulbs, allowing you to emphasize colors and add contrast to a shot.
I quite like using the black light party bulbs to make whites pop a bit more than is natural.
The down side is that you need an awful lot of them to get a decent amount of light. They're just not that bright, even if you do something silly like putting higher wattage bulbs in than the labeling calls for.

I was recently art directing a photo shoot and chatting with the photographer about his lights. You can spend hundreds and hundreds on photography lights, easily. For a full set you're looking at thousands. EEEK!
After asking about various options he admited that he's shot using everyday work lights before. He does a lot of work for the Red Cross, so I imagine that emergency situations call for all sorts of odd lighting.
The downside is that they're not very adjustable and not necessarily the best quality of light. You can't turn them up just that wee bit or down that wee bit when the situation calls for it.

The upside here is that they're a fraction of the cost of the photo friendly versions. I picked up this little gem at OSH for $20. Replacement bulbs appear to run about $4 a pop. The thing runs very hot so you don't want to use it while filming around lots of gasoline soaked paper, but I'm not sure I was going to be doing a lot of that anyway.
There are also models that come with tripods for a little bit more, which I think are a bit more versatile. I may get a couple of them next weekend.

The way I figure these puppies aren't what the pros are going to use, but I'm not a pro. For my semi-pro status I'm pretty happy with something that lights the area up for one tenth the cost.

My next project for them is to try and make diffusers and gels of some type for them so that I can have a more general light with less shadows. It never ends you know.

Hope for amateur actors everywhere

So the Scream Queens finale was this week, and we have a winner. Sometimes it's hard to get an idea of what's actually going on in a reality show. They can work magic with editing and showing things out of context and other devious bits of creative story telling where there was no story. But based on the parts of the performances we got to see Tanedra really was the best of the batch. I'd go so far as to claim she kicked ass.

According to the VH1 site Tanedra "obsessively watched movies and television shows in an effort to teach herself how to act." Sounds pretty DIY to me.

The thing is that you don't have to have years of experience to be successful at this crap. It just helps a whole lot. Actually getting a contract with a studio to be in one of their big-budget wonders? I couldn't even fathom how to do that aside from (now) going on reality TV. But that doesn't mean that you have to be in their club of success to be any good.

I like my volunteer actors and actresses, and Tanedra just gave me good cause to my faith in them, I think.

More editing mayhem

This time I thought I'd point at a trailer that goes the other way. Our happy go lucky Jack appears to have found the boy to open up his heart. Now I bring you the teaser for the story of Scary Mary:



I'm not sure who these people are, doing these alternate trailers. But I'm a fan.

The Wonders of Editing

Someone once told me that it's all in the editing. The best editor can take crap and make it edit well. There's also a lot of control over the tone of a film in the editing.

When all you have to do is fill a one minute trailer? You can completely turn a film around. I give to you, exhibit A: