Lowdown, pt1

A few weeks ago I started my work placement, in the electrics department on an ABC comedy — Lowdown, written by Adam Zwar and Amanda Brotchie. Production goes on as we speak, but I’ve already wrapped because I went to Bali for a week and got replaced. Fair enough. But still.. it frustrates me that I couldn’t come back in some capacity, as I was just starting to feel comfortable doing my job before I had to leave, and being on a professional set was an incredibly valuable experience in general. Sucks that I couldn’t stay on for the 6 weeks of shooting. But that’s the way it had to happen, as I’d already locked down other commitments before I knew that I’d have the work attachment. I got a call from Rachel Wilson and rocked up to production the next morning, very short notice, and as a result my working schedule was very erratic.. I tried to fit Lowdown in wherever I could. Anyway, it pains me that I couldn’t work for longer, but regardless, the placement was awesome, so all is well.

Right. So technically I was working as a “lighting assistant”, under the command of Darryl (the gaffer) and Chris (the best boy, but a gaffer in his own right). On a professional shoot there are so many more roles, a much larger and more disciplined hierarchy, and even the lowest roles are occupied by extremely skilled people (I’m not meaning me). Chris gave me great guidance throughout my time on Lowdown, and Darryl made sure I learned from my mistakes. It feels quite harsh at first, very old-school to be verbally punished for slipping up, but it works. You grow a thick skin and make sure to do things better next time.

For now, I want to regurgitate some of the things I’ve learned about lighting while on set.. technical things. I’ll come back to my actual experience of the production at a later date. So.. from here on, it’s all raw information. Enjoy.

HMIs
HMIs are extremely efficient lights. A 1.2K HMI outputs about as much light as a 5K tungsten lamp. Hence you can blast your scene with light without tripping any circuit breakers as you’re well under 2400W. HMIs are also extremely expensive and potentially dangerous — all HMIs are covered by a special sheet of UV-filtering glass. Without this sheet of glass, the light could literally burn your skin off because of the extreme UV output (you can get sores from ~1-2 minutes of direct exposure). Note that UV is on the complete opposite side of the light spectrum in relation to red and infra-red — the primary output of tungsten lights. Hence it follows that HMIs have a stronger output of blue light, running at 5600K (daylight temperature), and are used to mimic sunlight (which is why ARRI’s HMIs are labelled ‘ARRISun’). Also, as the light functions by sending an arc of electricity through mercury vapour, the current would alternate and the light would flicker without a ballast. The ARRI ballasts are relatively small and extremely quiet, but as a rule, the ballast must be connected to the HMI BEFORE it’s plugged into power, or there’s a chance that the ballast explodes.. not pretty. As with other high output lights, HMIs become extremely hot, meaning that if cold rain falls onto the lens or UV-filtering glass, the drastic change in temperature could crack or shatter the glass.. again, not pretty.
Anyway. If someone asks for a 575W HMI PAR to be set up, here’s what you need:
The lamp itself (an ARRIsun 5, or 575, is about the size of a 1K ARRI tungsten lamp, very high output for such low wattage)
The header cable (connects lamp to ballast)
The ballast
The lens box (PAR lamps are used with lenses that disperse the light in various ways. The default setup is to insert the green lens unless otherwise stated)
The stand (generally not a C-stand, something sturdier such as an Avenger combo, made specifically for lights, with two sizes of spigot)
A shotbag

Fluorescents
A 4-ft kino box is freaking heavy. It’s long, unwieldly, and does my back in. Seasoned gaffers and best boys obviously get by, but otherwise it’s a two-man job.
A 4-ft kino runs at 75W per tube on high power. We were using a 4-bank (ie 4 slots for tubes) which ultimately pulls 300W max.. that’s incredibly efficient, considering the light output of the 4-ft tubes. The kino ballasts allow for each tube to be turned on and off individually, so that intensity and colour temperature can be manipulated on the fly. Each kino box comes with a set of tungsten and daylight balanced tubes — you can tell the difference by the colouration at the ends of each tube (blue socket means daylight). A “mixed grille” is where you’ve installed one tungsten tube, then a daylight, then a tungsten, then a daylight. This makes the colour temperature 4400 — right in the middle of 5600 and 3200. It’s important that you alternate between tungsten and daylight tubes to ensure the colour temperature remains even.. or else half the frame will be daylight and the other half tungsten.. you get the picture.

DIY Lighting
On many days of the shoot, Darryl chose to use home-made lights for different purposes. The most popular was the China ball, which is exactly what it sounds like. A regular tungsten bulb inside a china ball to soften the light and spread it in all directions. Good for a fill, but it’s a bitch to gel because you’ve got to get a sheet of CTB inside the ball and clamp it into position without hurting the paper on the outside.. c’est difficile.
Another DIY light I saw on set was the spacelight. It consisted of 4 long incandescent bulbs arranged on a metal cross inside a cylinder of diffusion. You unzip the diffusion like a tent if you need to gel it or change the bulbs. I’m fairly sure that you hang the spacelight high above the scene to provide a reasonably soft toplight and/or fill. It’s a lightweight construction, easy to hang, and provides quite a bit of light as it’s made from 4 redhead bulbs.

Frames, grids and diff
Lowdown is an ABC comedy. Lighting on set required a great deal of softening compared to what I was used to on student films. To simulate the sun, we’d run the big 1.2K HMI behind a mammoth frame of grid or diff. Essentially, you piece together a large metal frame and tie a large square of diffusion material to it, then clamp the frame onto two C-stands and set it up in front of the light. The diffusion material comes in various strengths, and ‘grid’ is different to straight diffusion (or ‘diff’). Softness also varies depending on the distance between frame and light source. The further away you move the frame of diffusion, the greater the softness, but light output lessens dramatically as well. Hence you need huge lights behind the frames if you want to make the scene ultra-soft. And the larger your frame, the softer the lighting quality, hence the huge frames that must be broken down into separate components to fit into the truck

Lighting safety
Shotbag everything.
Gaff down cables where people are likely to walk
When lighting indoors, watch for water sprinklers, and if necessary, tape a cup over each sprinkler to make sure it doesn’t overheat and destroy your equipment. (when taping things to ceilings, stick the tape to your shirt a few times to make sure that it won’t pull paint off the walls)
When lighting outdoors, prepare for rain by pegging rolls of hogwire over lights and ballasts. Hogwire is a robust mesh coated in waterproof resin.. it’s very noisy, so you’ve got to be careful with it during a take.
When hogwiring ballasts, make sure that there’s enough space for them to ‘breathe’.. they need some space around them to prevent overheating.
Don’t touch lightbulbs that draw more than 200W of power. It’s a universal rule.. I previously thought it only applied to Quartz-halogen bulbs, but the deal is that anything drawing so much power will run extremely hot— touching these bulbs impregnates them with natural oils from your skin, and said oils will superheat and may explode the bulb.. so many potential explosions in lighting dept..