A good starting point for no budget lighting is the use of security lights. In the UK you can get them in many flavours, including construction lighting. Try to get the ones without a PIR sensor.

You can get a bunch of them real cheap and with different power, 150w to 1000w.

In reference to a film light they are very similar to BROADS but can still be used quite creativly, scrims, barn doors, gels and diffusers can all be made with a bit of trial and error.

Hope this helped.

Scott Reed.

That's what I used for my first shorts, though I never got sophisticated enough to make barn doors :).

Have you checked your area for places to rent lighting kits from? Usually a lighting kit will provide three lights, three stands, and some reflector umbrellas. There's a couple of places around me that rent them for $20/day, but I'm not sure what the prices would be where you are.

Otherwise, check out some clamp lights at your local Home Depot (or whatever hardware store is near you). If you have the money, buying some blackwrap (cinefoil) is usually a good idea, too, because then you can better angle your light or flag off some of it.

------------------------
Bruce Campbell - "So you want to get into show biz?"
Me - "Yeah, I'd really like to direct movies."
Bruce Campbell - "Cool. Just don't suck."

Like this sort of thing:?url? http://www.lightinguniverse.com/fixtures/Hinkley-Ext-Flood-Lights-121093.html?/url?? I think we might have some of those lying around . . . What is a barn door?

Thank you so much,
Silja

Barn doors are metal panels that are attached to the front of a light that are used to control where the light from the bulb falls in the scene. You can see a picture of some hand-made barn doors here (in section 4.9):

http://www.cvisual.com/film-books/nuts-and-bolts-filmmaking-table-of-contents.asp

Click on the picture to see a larger version. If you're handy, you should be able to construct them from the picture. Otherwise, I have complete instructions in the book.

The ones in the picture are made with flashing you can get down at any home warehouse store (Home Depot, etc.). Cut them to shape with tin snips and spray them with BBQ grating paint to make them resistant to the heat of the light. Mount them on your light. They work great.

Hope this helps.

Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"
http://www.cvisual.com

Okay, cool. I'm sure I can "volunteer" one of my friends to make barn doors.

As for renting lights, I think that would get really expensive, really fast. We're filming in our school, 2-3 hours a day at most, and it'll probably take us a couple of weeks. I want to be able to mess around with set up for awhile, too, just to see what works with our shots and the lights already there.

I'll head down to Home Depot some time this week and get a couple of lights. Thanks so much!

Silja

Dan, that looks like a fascinating book. It looks like exactly the kind of thing I'd be interested in reading. I'll try to pick it up sometime, though right now I'm saving for a camera. Onto the wishlist it goes.

we filmed using halogen worklights that you can find in any hardware store... they were about 30 dollars cdn each, and the strength from each light was pretty good. we added dimmer switches to each one too, so we could adjust the strength. the biggest problem though is that the light is this pale, sickly yellow glow...

we're thinking of filmming next time using mostly a 300W light bulb within a chinese paper lanterns.

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Delorean-- Thanks. I put a lot of work into it and it's been getting great reviews, so I hope it's a useful resource.

As for cheap lights: have you looked at Sylvania Sun Gun & Sun Gun II? They're really cheap (run under $10 per light on eBay), supply daylight temperature light, and have a screw mount that lets you put them on any consumer-level tripod.

I'm found them extremely useful on low budget shoots.

Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"
http://www.cvisual.com

what about shooting with 'some' money...

can anyone recommend a good, yet not ridiculously expensive lighting kit that will have the bare essentials, and maybe some filters/gels for changing the colour of the light??

what i had in mind was creating deep red colours like in Won gKar Wai's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE... how would i go about that effect? just using red filters over the lights?

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