Has anyone done this?

Derkoi

Derkoi

Well-known member
For my new movie i need to shoot some night scenes out in a forest with a DVX100.

It's all very low budget and i have no power supply to hand so i was thinking about the possibility of using a wind up lamp.

I don't need masses of light, just enough to illuminate the actors so it still looks dark but i can film it.

Has anyone used wind up? I'm looking for the brightest i can find. Any suggestions?
 
Not wind up but we've used rechargeable spotlights and LED flashlights many times. If you can get a car to the edge of the area you're shooting too, headlights work very nice too for ambient light.
 
In my experience you need at least a 50W halogen reflector lamp if you want to get a useable exposure from a single light source in total darkness. Even then you might need some gain, depending on the distance you can get the light in.
If you can get very close with the light, less is okay, but you don't only want close-ups, do you?
 
I don't think i'll be able to get a car nearby where i have in mind.

Shooting close ups will be done, i could maybe shoot just as light is fading to get the wide shots. That may work?
 
be careful with that, lighting changes awfully fast that time of night. you might deal with continuity issues
 
Everts said:
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How would one go about that Inaki ?
Click to expand...

You know that there are inverters that you can hook to the car cigar lighter. They convert the 12 volts of the car's battery to 120v or 220v depending on the inverter you use. Those same inverters usually have a way to connect them directly to the battery and get enough power for a 150w fresnell, so you could take a battery with you an inverter and a 150w fresnell (or with some even a 300w or 150w cdm for 650w output.....).

The only thing that you have to take into account is the duration of the battery......

I've only tried this once and it powered an hv20 a charger and 50w light at the same time without any problem.


for example, a 1200watt inverter:

http://www.dcacpowerinverters.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=PW1100-12
 
I know you said you don't have much of a budget, but if you were to rent a honda generator for the night, it wouldn't be to expensive. The quiet ones can be placed behind a building, tree, ditch, at a distance, and they are not audible.
 
I used a rented generator for this very reason. I needed some lighting and fog in a dense forest. The generator worked great running my lights and fog machine.
 
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