Thanks for the video.... if you could turn off the other lights when you talk about a light.... if the other lights were off...we could see exactly what that light was doing
"We just film the big ones. If we filmed all the little ones, you'd all fall asleep." No way! Sure, all the small jobs would be too much, but I find both big, complex examples like this all the way down through the smallest setups useful to learn from!
We just do some of Alan’s bigger jobs when I have a day off and can visit the set he’s on... this time he was working in my home town so we were able to tape during the lunch break:) I share plenty of my smaller jobs, LOL!
I totally agree about your comment using snap grids. The only time I pull mine out is when my interview set doesn't offer any depth (like a small doctor's office). Then I can contain the spill and still put a scratch in the background.
All the gear talked about in this episode belongs to Alan. For an owner/op with no employees, Alan has accumulated a good amount of gear that is kept up to date and in good working order. He is my go to source for sub-rentals in the San Francisco Bay Area.
This is great. Would love to see you talk about distro choices ie. balancing, single vs three phase, common issues and solutions, picking boxes and other things the gaffer needs to know about distro. I have some very basic knowledge as an electrician but would like to know the reasons behind choices more
I think this is becoming less of an issue as LEDs take over. On a tungsten shoot on a stage I will typically try to take the easiest route. Since almost all stages are 3 phase you can start with a 5-wire system. Since the biggest light was a 20k which turned into a T12 I knew banded would give us plenty of power at 3 x 125 amps per leg, and since there were two 600A camlok sets out I ran 375 amps to either side. Since we were planning to have a lot of LEDs we added 4 x 100A "lunchboxes" so as to have plenty of places to plug in. Although a 1200A distro box is overkill for banded it gives three 220v Bates out for the bigger 220v lights (the Arri T12 bulbed 220v). I try to keep in mind the cleanest, simplest cable runs.... better to run banded to either side rather than 3-4 100A Bates extensions. Banded is cheap to run... always bring what you think you need and maybe one or two extra. Stages are far more predictable. Location cabling is where everything can change in a moment's notice. Most best boys on bigger locations oversize the cable to be safe after consulting what the lighting list contains. 4/0 and 2/0 cable laying is exponentially slower than banded. Lastly, I dislike 5-wire banded...it is like the mombo-combo stand... pushing the limit of what a guy/gal can carry. Make sure you have cable/muscle carts for heavier cable to minimize wear and tear on the crew. Although many gaffers think big HMIs like 240v single phase power better than 208v threes phase, practicality rules the day. If having the extra hot leg with three phase covers your power needs then that is the better choice. Most big sets I have been on were three phase.
Typically on smaller shoots I don’t specifically plan what light level we’re going to work at, but that said you do think about whether you need to have enough fire power to match windows or create an effect noted on boards or script, so you do think about it in a general way. Today we’re doing high speed, so we definitely discussed light levels ahead of time. If the DP has a very specific idea about the working stop, say on a longer form project or scenes that include special effects, we will definitely discuss in order to make sure we have the right instruments. A DP may make a list, but most seek your input or just trust you to be prepared based on a discussion of what the DP is looking for. Does that help?
Of course it helps, thank you for letting us have a peek in your process. It would be also interesting to see that how do you prepare for a (smaller) shoot when there is no information about the location, there wasn't any scouting beforehand. What kind of fixtures / grip stuff do you load into your truck first?
Well there is usually some notion of what we are up against, but barring a scout or pictures or even a verbal description the nice thing for us is we have small trucks, 2-tons, that are pre-loaded with grip and lighting gear so we can improvise pretty well even with minimal information. With more information we will often add other items from our inventories or subtract to make room for sub-rentals. You can find what we usually have on the truck by checking our web sites. I need to update my pdf download because the base package is more LED centric than before. For instance, I regularly only carry one tungsten fixture, a 1K Fresnel, just in case, the rest are either HMI’s or LED’s... things have changed:)
