Lights

Now when I– sometimes I go to the supermarket or something, I always check out the lighting department. Because there is so much digital innovation through digital lighting now. So I just brought something in to show you, which is my own very cheap lighting box. I bought this little wooden box from an art shop. I don’t know what it’s for originally. I think probably putting paints in or something. But it’s just a wooden box, quite well made. I then bought three lights, they were nine pounds each. And then I bought some Velcro. So the lights can go on the Velcro or I can stick them on a wall. I have three options. It’s very simple. One light, two lights, three lights.

Now, these are strong. So they’re a little bit crude on the face. If I want to do a horror film, I’d definitely use these to light myself because I know it’s not going to be pretty. But I can also use them to throw light onto a subject. But like I say, I wanted to be a little bit more sophisticated. So I made a frame for myself. Just cardboard and gaffers tape. And I used a neutral density filter called Rosco. But I could just as easily have used baking paper or some kind of kitchen product, which has exactly the same diffusion kind of effect. And so now I’ve diffused the lights. And if we turn off our main light now.

That’s gone. And I just say I could now use this to replace that light. And this cost me 30 pounds. But I could do a 10 pound version or a 20 pound version, depending on how rich I think I’m being. And then it is your duty just to look at, do I look better from this angle, this angle, this angle, or is direct light going to work better for me? Like this. So you use your eye and you just find out where, you know. And hope that our actors are incredibly handsome and in good shape, anyway. So that’s always a help. But basically, there are lots and lots of lights on the market that do exactly what this light does.

And they run off batteries. Because they’re LED lights, they use very little power. So these lights will stay hot and useful for me for really quite a long time. And then you just remember, in between takes, to turn them off. Lighting.