Film and television lighting used to change at quite a slow pace (in the old days) The old days being before digital video that is. Incandescent lighting fixtures, carbon arc (before my time) and HMI lighting fixtures were the go to lights when all we really shot on was film.
Then along came video and digital video cameras and the game changed. We as lighting suppliers, technicians and gaffers were somewhat buffered against the fast moving world of video, that is to say for quite a while our equipment that we used wasn’t changing as fast as the camera world was.
Fluorescent lighting became more prolific, as well as advancements in brighter more efficient HMI fixtures, as can be seen with the Cinepar type lights. However as higher resolution cameras with faster and faster ISO’s were introduced at a rapid rate, so too did lighting begin to change at a rapid rate. I am talking about LED technology.
With today’s cameras we are able to light with a lot less light, I don’t mean with fewer lights, I mean we don’t often need as bright a light any more. Today’s high end cameras have a far greater latitude and ISO than ever before, film lenses are also incredibly fast at the moment.
For example, we would almost always film commercials, movies etc and never leave home without the work horse of the industry, the 18kw HMI, often two to three would be on set each day. These lights would of course need big 100 to 200 kva generators on the back of 8 ton trucks, as well as big, heavy expensive cabling.
We are now starting to achieve the same look and feel with much smaller and more efficient lights, namely the ARRI Max lighting range and the Filmgear Faceted lighting fixtures. When we needed soft light for interiors we would bounce a 5 000w tungsten light or 4kw HMI. We now have LED lighting which can mix any colour temperature you like for a fraction of the power consumption, think Kino Flo Celeb or Arri Sky Panel.
We now get away with smaller generators, often a 60kva trailer mount will suffice, smaller cabling, smaller distribution etc. All a potential massive saving to productions. Also, the cost savings to suppliers and productions is the incredibly long lamp life of the LED fixtures, often up to 50 000 hours, in stark contrast to the 650hrs to 900hrs of HMI’s.
Orbital Lighting is keeping up to date with the advancement of these modern day lighting fixtures, investing constantly in this now rapidly changing environment. Exciting times for lighting and the film industry as a whole!
By Dave Howe, gaffer and owner of Orbital Lighting
