Lighting for 16mm film 

Damn, I could listen to this old chaps for hours.

This is now my favourite video on RU-vid.

it's awesome! I've expected to see a guide on setting lights in a scene, with this mature filmmakers showing that all. but, surprisingly, their talk appeared to be much more fascinating! many thanks ♡

this came up again after a long time in the youtube menu and what a pleasure to watch these guys

Really very interesting thanks guys. I only ever dabbled with video for filming. Still have my set of Red heads in the loft. Always dreamed of being a BBC Cameraman. First came into contact with film when I was a cinema manager for the ABC chain. I then moved on to working in a London advertising agency for few years in the preview studio handling 16 & 35 mm, reel to reel video recorders and very early telecine. The telecine l always remember for 35mm film was a pair off modified cinema projectors with arc lamps for a light source which shone through a prism to the video camera which had a very large number of ND filters stacked in front of the lens. Not quite BBC kit! I did however get a job offer from the BBC later but just at that time l my wife had an outbreak of twin daughters which made it impossible for me to accept the position.

2:37 I used 800watts spotlights by Ianiro (the "redheads" - or "mandarines" over here) for ages as a RAI cameraman and freelance DP before the advent of LED and the bulbs never suddenly explode on me (provided you always switched them off every time you moved them, even while figuring out a lighting setup). The 2K blondes, on the other hand, had a 50\50 chance of sending sparks everywhere all the time. I remember the first time it happened to me, we were filming inside a high precision mechanics workshop, where every machine was plugged into industrial sockets and the flying sparks fell very close to one of the power grids. It was scary.

I'm watching this next to my gear shelves, I'm unwittingly continuing the BBC legacy with my 3 red heads, single blonde and poly...

Lol, funny to hear them say "absolutely appaling" while not pointing to the Laniro/Red Head lights but naming basically the exact same problems (except for the color-shift between each lamp). My video teacher was from the old days but was absolutely fed up with them for the problems of not being able to spot them well :P. I have a video of one of the RED Head bulbs that blew while on-site somewhere but fused the glowing wire back together while partially outside the glass housing. A colleague who had been a cameraman for around 25 years (nothing close to the people in the video, but still, to state how rare it was that that happened) was astonished when he saw it, he had never experienced a light blowing out, not knocking out a fuse and also staying lit (allbeit a lot dimmer and with a lot of smoke bellowing out of the fixture after some seconds). I have used the 800W Red Heads mainly for bouncing them against ceilings, that was basically the only thing that they were easily usable for without to much of a hassle trying to sort-of spot them. Interesting video, I liked this a lot. Sometimes I feel regretful not having lived a little bit more in the more analog era of television making (even if it only consisted out of home movies), it feels so incredibly easy just to push a record button right after having switched on the camera (Still then, it was hard to almost impossible to explain to a 14 year old how incredibly easy it is for them to record video of a very decent quality with a telephone, as opposed to the usually really expensive camera's at the end of the 80's and in the 90's that still didn't really came up to the standards of reliability you can expect of a phone these days).

Brian Tufano, my favorite DP.........Mr Wroe's virgins (BBC 1993)

ME too .My Frist station in Springfeild mass had Film cameras left and a video film chain as there were at the time moving over to 3/4 Tape system, That was in the 80s

This is awesome!

Thank You! :)

Awesome video 🙏 thank you

I vaguely recall there being an interview with Fred Dibnah where the film crew ended up paying for a new carpet after they set it on fire

Great video thank you 🙏

very nice

Real Gentlemen! Gaffers are always very serious when it comes to handling their lights. That is the only thing they don't want you to help with.

cool lens video I really wna to be a cinematographer when I'm grow up

Sounds like the ones which were different colours were quartz metal halide, and the Redheads and blonde were tungsten halogen?

The British are among the best in film. Especially the studios Elstree, Ealing, Leavesdon, Pinewood, etc.

Arri lighting far superior for color temp., skin tones, etc.

Looking at all that old gear(kit) reminds me why I'm glade I'm using modern tech instead of that crude matter, especially with the lights. I have been switching from tungsten to LED putting my Arri, Mole Richardson and Lowe lights into semiretirement. Nostalgia is nice and all but best for museums and not in the modern field. Cheers

You should show us a pic! You know, so we can see what it looks like...

In the analog world, you had to be a perfectionist. It was a constant struggle with reality. And today..? Well ... Today, everyone, even a total idiot, has a smartphone in their pocket that does everything for them.

A shame about the modern camera work - complete failure to document the detail of the equipment with close shots. Style over substance