120V Power when you have NO Power?

NC17z

NC17z

Well-known member
Hi everyone,
How would one power an Arri 1K Fresnel, Three Arri 650w Fresnels and 2 Arri 300w Fresnels for an outdoor shoot for a music video? Something tells me that I can't do this with a series of car/marine batteries, I probably need to rent a generator... am I barking up the right tree?
 
Yes looks like you'll need about 4000w to 5000w of power according to what you've listed there. More toward the 5000w to be safe.
 
NC17z... Tungsten lights outdoors need CTB ( color temperature Blue) gels.
You must do this so your lights will match daylight. When you gel your lights with CTB, you also lose a couple of F-stops, due to the "filter factor". Your lights may be useless for anything but fill light.You should look into reflectors, shinney boards and LARGE frames that we call butterflies or overheads. It's basically, a round or square tube frame in 6ftx6ft, 8ftx8ft ,12ftx12ft or even 20ftx20ft. Rent this frame with a fabric called GRIFF (white), there are several other options as well, very reflective silver and gold fabrics, a mixture of both colors and diffusion materials. Use this reflector as your key, or fill from the sun. Another large frame might be needed to hang over your group to soften the harsh direct light, and you would "skin" this frame with a diffusion material... You might want to rent HMI's, with electronic ballasts, if you use the generator, so you'll have the "Punch" you need to light up a music video. Hmi's require good, constant power, and sometimes contractor grade genni's from the hardware rental companies, do not provide consistant power. This is where the electronic ballasts come into play...

On the cheap, buy some 4ftx8ft foam core..say 3-5 sheets, and use these as bounce cards. Some larger Home Depot type stores have silver coated insulation board that may also work as a reflector as well..
Good luck.
 
Filmat11, Thank you so much for the advice. I should have pointed out that this will be shot at night (midnight). I could be wrong however, I don't think that I will need to gel my lights because I'm not going to try to match the color of natural light.
I now realize that a generator is the way to go. I have a 10K generator at work that my employers will let me take for the shoot. Thanks for all the great advice.
 
What's in the background of your video ? If it's outdoors, do you want to include any elements of the background ? My point in asking is that you might want to find a few additional lights, even home depot construction lights, to set deep into the background to light up a building or to even provide additional separation from a dark background to the backs of your subjects.
Good luck on your video..
 
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