Low Budget Lighting

Being a director of photography who has shot a number of no/low/modest budgeted movies I thought it was about time I just wrote an article on how to light on the cheap.

So you've squandered almost all your money on a cool DV camera, decent microphone, tripod and some tasty food for your crew (don't skimp on food because a crew travels on its stomach), but now your actors are standing around in the dark because you don't have any lights. What do you do? First, you get in a time machine and go back a few days so you can start gathering your jiffy, on-a-tight-budget light kit.

I'm a big believer in getting the right tools for the job, but sometimes you just can't afford the right tools. Here's where ingenuity comes into play. First, where do you find cheap, or if you prefer, inexpensive, lights? Hardware stores, auto parts stores, Salvation Army stores, Goodwill, garage sales, camera shops that carry used stuff, local production houses and rental houses. You have to keep your eyes peeled and be open to possibilities.

WORKLIGHTS

A good key light for cheap is a 500 watt tungsten work light which can be found at hardware and car parts stores. They come with their own stands, but I do find the stands a little short.

There's some power here, but it's hard to control, so I recommend that you don't aim them directly at your actors. Bounce them off a wall or ceiling to create a nice soft light. If you want, you can put them outside windows and blast them through the openings. These lights can get hot, so be careful moving them around. I've found them as cheap as $10 and can run up to $30. (11/03 I saw an ad for Kragen Auto Parts in LA had them at $10.) They can be found with two heads that makes 1000 watts of lights.

HOW ABOUT A SHOWER CURTAIN AS DIFFUSION

One thing you can do is get a frosted shower curtain and hang it from a stand and then place the shower curtain in front of one of these babies to create a wall of soft light. Again, don't get too close otherwise you might melt a hole in your pretty shower curtain. (I have to give credit for Bruce L.)

CHINA LANTERNS

China Lanterns are great. I've seen them on the sets of movies costing many millions of dollars. They are paper material which can be expanded into a ball (and now different shapes like squares, rectangles and ovals). They come with a wire support for the bulb.

You need to get a socket and cable and they are usually sold in the same place you find the lanterns. I put a regular 200 watt bulb inside and they make a great soft light for close-ups. If the lantern's big enough, I'll put two 200 watt bulbs in and I can light a small room with them. Be careful with them because they're made of paper and can burst into flames. They run $3–7 depending on size. You can find them at Target, Ikea and Pier One Imports, to name a few places.

If you're handy, you can pick up a socket and some zip cord, otherwise known as household extension cord, and make your own cord for the china lantern.

SEALED BEAM HALOGEN

Then you have small sealed beam halogen lamps which cost $4-10. You put these in a socket, clamp them onto a stand, then aim away. It makes a great kicker/backlight and is great for lighting special items in the background. They come in different beam patterns, from narrow to wide. I tend to go for the medium and narrow. The wide is, well, too wide of a beam.

SCOOPS

The old reliable metal scoop light which comes with a handy clamp is a great option. Pop a 200 watt bulb or a photo flood in it to light your set. Supposedly this is what Robert Rodriguez used to light "El Mariachi."

DEALS ON PRO LIGHTS

How about putting a light kit together of real, pro lights? That's how I did it when I started out. I'd find a deal on a 1K (1000 watt) open face light for $30 and snatch it up. Camera stores that carry used gear are great for deals. A while back, I picked up two 1K fresnels (these are lights with a glass lens that focus the light) and a 2K fresnel (with a roller stand) for $50 a piece. The stand alone was worth $50. Now they didn't have barn doors (metal leaves that allow you to control the light), so I had to scrounge some up. I found one set for $10. So for $160 dollars I had 4000 watts of light.

Sources for used gear include:

-Local camera stores
-Goodwill & Salvation Army - it's rare, but sometimes there are deals to be had
-Ebay - get online and start searching under movie and video equipment
-Local production companies - sometimes they clear out older gear.
-Talk to friends who work local production and see what's up
-Local Rental Houses - occasionally they sell off older gear
-www.visualproducts.com - they sell used camera gear, but have lights
-www.woodennickellighting.com - Hollywood rental house that sells used gear

There are plenty of other sites. Get on Google and see what you can find.

Mark the editor adds - substituting high wattage bulbs in the room's existing lighting fixtures can greatly improve overall lighting. 250 to 500 watt photo bulbs are available. Being that these light sources are natural and make sense in the shot, you don't have to worry about hiding them or framing the shot to avoid them. Another good trick is to use reflectors. You can use either white foam core to provide soft lighting or an aluminum foil board to provide more of an intense light. I've used reflectors to bounce sunlight coming in from windows as well as using reflectors to bounce and diffuse light from work lights and spotlight bulbs. Large white foam core pieces about 4 feet x 4 feet are quite handy. I've created my own aluminum reflectors by covering both sides of a 4x4 piece of rigid cardboard or thin plywood with aluminum foil. On one side, glue down shiny aluminum foil. On the other side, crush the foil first, and then flatten it out a bit to create a crinkly surface.

SUPPORT

So you've found some lights, but how the heck do you support them? I recommend all filmmakers get at least one decent light stand. You can clamp things to them, like the shower curtain mentioned previously, place lights on them or hang props off of them. Again these can be found used. I'd plan on spending $20-50 on a good one or even two.

If you have some extra money lying around (yeah, like indie filmmakers have any spare cash) get yourself a C-stand. This is the staple of any pro movie set. It's a collapsible, three legged stand which comes with an attachable arm that can be used for an infinite number of tasks, like holding lights and any number of other items. Used, they run as cheap as $75. Brand new they're $170.

Get yourself a mafer ($20-40) clamp. It's a device which clamps to about anything and has spud for lights. You can use it to clamp lights to set walls, doors, tables or light stands so you can have two lights on one stand. Lowel makes a lightweight clamp called a total clamp ($15) which does most of the same things, but is smaller and cheaper.

GELS AND DIFFUSION

At some point you'll want to add some color or soften your lights, so you'll need something to put in front of the lights.

Things to remember, gels add color or correct color temperature and diffusion softens the light.

First, how do you attach these gels to your lights? C-47 media attachment clips, otherwise known as clothes pins, are great. Make sure to get wooden C-47s, not plastic. The plastic ones will melt. The wooden C-47s can burn, but won't catch on fire. Gels are fairly heat resistant, but you can melt them if you get them too close to the light, so use caution when attaching them to lights.

Gels come in all kinds of flavors. Number one are color correction gels. These are used to make your movie lights match daylight. You'd slap a blue (CTB, color temperature blue) on your light so it matches the daylight streaming in through a window. (Without going heavy duty into color temperatures, just remember that daylight is blue and tungsten light is orange.) If you have a small window, you may place an orange gel on the window to get daylight to match your movie lights.

For other colors, sometimes called theatrical or party gels, you can find about any color under the sun available. Horror film directors are always asking for red. James Cameron must go through a ton of blue gels. Green can be used to make everybody sick. It's all a matter of taste. A single sheet (3x3) of gel can run around $6.

You may want to talk to local production and rental houses to see if they have scrap gel lying around they'd give you. I've snagged plenty of gels this way. In LA, when features wrap, they dump tons of gels.

If you can't snag some for free, camera stores and theatrical supply stores carry them. A cool thing is to buy small packets of gels. Bogen has put together small packets with different groupings of gels. They offer color correction (lots of blue and orange), diffusion and multi-color packets. They run around $20 a piece, which seems a lot for some colored plastic, but if you're careful, you can use these gels for a long time. I recommend the color correction and diffusion packs.

ODDS AND ENDS

Extension cords, or as they're called in Hollywood, stingers, are a must have item. Get lots of them. I'd have at least one 50 foot and a couple 25 foot stingers handy. I like the ones with multi-plugs on the end. Some come with a LED in the end so you know it's plugged in. Get black cords if possible because you can hide them easier in shots than
the bright orange ones which seem to overrun hardware stores. I've had to run cords through shots and have found that if you carefully run them along baseboards or natural lines in the set, most of the time you can never seen them in the shot. (Plan on spending about $40 for the above allotment.)

Power strips are a great little item. Make sure they can handle 15 or more amps. ($4-8)

Cube taps - these are handy little boxes you plug into an outlets which triple the amount of plugs. ($4)

3-prong adapters - in older houses you run into 2-prong outlets. (2 for $2)

Screw in socket to plug adapter - these are handy little things to have. They screw into a light socket and turn it into a 2-prong, so have a 3-prong adapter handy. I shouldn't admit to this, but a couple of times I've been shooting outside a building and had no place to plug in my lights. Well, the outside of the building had a light, so I unscrewed the light bulb and screwed in my adapter, thus making it into an outlet allowing me to "borrow" some power for my lights. ($3)

Spring clamps - get a couple decent sized ones. (2 for $10)

Gaffer tape - get some 2 inch black. It runs around $12-15 per roll, but
is worth it. Duct tape is cheap, but leaves residue everywhere you stick and can pull paint off the walls. Gaffer tape leaves very little residue. I've built props out of gaffer tape, like a bandanna for an actor and numbers for a door.

A cheapie circuit tester - usually around $2. You can use these when you're location scouting to test if plugs that you think you want to use are working or not. Nothing is more a pain in the butt than setting up all your lights and finding out that the outlets you're using are non-functioning.

Hand dimmer - you can find these for household lamps and they will
handle around 300 watts. You can run 500 watts, but not for long or you
will burn it out. These are great for china lanterns. They cost $10, but you can
build your own to handle more wattage.

Gloves - get a decent pair of leather gloves because these lights get very friggin' hot. You'll learn after frying your hands a couple of times that gloves are a must item. ($6)

Black Wrap/Cine Foil/just plain old aluminum foil - black wrap is heavy duty foil painted black and is great to attach to scoop lights and the 500 watt work lights to allow you to easily shape the light coming out. You can use regular aluminum foil, but the reflections off it can cause problems and it's not as durable as black wrap.

Plastic tub for all these goodies. ($6)

WRAP UP

This doesn't cover everything in lighting on the cheap by a long shot, but I hope it gives you some ideas that you can use on your sets. Just a little lighting can go a long way to making your movies look better. Get some lights and play around a little bit.

PRICE BREAKDOWN

-500 watt work light $20
-China Lantern (complete with cord) $22
-Halogen light (complete with cord) $20
-One light stand (used) $40
-Gels (packet if no freebies) $20
-Diffusion (packet if no freebies) $20
-Stingers (extension cords) $40
-Cube tap $4
-Power strip $5
-Gloves $6
-Gaffer tape $15
-C-47 (bag) $6
-Spring clamps (2) $12
-Total Clamp $12
-Circuit tester $2
-3 Prong adapter (2) $2
-Screw in plug adapter $3
-Hand dimmer $10
-Plastic tub for this stuff $6
-TOTAL $265

(Wow, that added up to a big figure, but you can build it over time. Again, deals can be had. If you find a cheapie used stand for $20 and freebie gels, then you cut $60 off this total. Also, remember instead of asking for DVDs for Christmas or your birthday, ask for gift certificates at Lowes or Home Depot.)

Scott Spears is an Emmy Award winning Director of Photography with 14 features under his belt. He's also written several feature screenplays, some of which have been made into movies. You can learn more about him at www.scottspears.net.

Originally posted by Scott Spears at Internet Video Magazine, appearing as: “Secrets of Low Budget Lighting.”