How can I get flickering lights for a scene recreation?

S

sonofaresiii

Well-known member
So I've decided to take on a stupidly hard scene for a scene recreation assignment for school. Now there's subjects being lit "normally," but in the background, there's these dingy, barely working... FLICKERING lights. Slight flickers, like the power's about to go out any second, bad wiring, etc.

Does anyone have any idea how I can make that happen? (without breaking my wallet?) I have no idea how to do something like that at this point, besides having someone ride a dimmer on the lights and move it up and down really quickly! Just kidding... mostly.

note-- i don't need to show the actual lights, but i do need the lights on the background to flicker.
 
sonofaresiii said:
So I've decided to take on a stupidly hard scene for a scene recreation assignment for school. Now there's subjects being lit "normally," but in the background, there's these dingy, barely working... FLICKERING lights. Slight flickers, like the power's about to go out any second, bad wiring, etc.

Does anyone have any idea how I can make that happen? (without breaking my wallet?) I have no idea how to do something like that at this point, besides having someone ride a dimmer on the lights and move it up and down really quickly! Just kidding... mostly.

note-- i don't need to show the actual lights, but i do need the lights on the background to flicker.
Click to expand...

If you search the web for 'flicker box', or 'light flicker box', you will find a number of DIY hits. As with all things electrical, if you aren't sure about wiring up things... see if you can find a ready made
solution...
 
sonofaresiii said:
great, i'll look into it, thanks a ton. anyone else have any suggestions? Or is this my best bet?
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good bet. I googled it and looks like they are using what I was thinking: A momentary switch feeding an outlet for you to plug incandescent lighting into. Of course you only need to flicker probably about 1/8-1/4 of your BG lighting to have it seem ramshackle.
 
Okay... this looks like something I have no idea how to do. Can't find one ready-made.
Guess I'd better get to learning...

(unless anyone here would be kind and awesome enough to give me a little more explanation?)
 
sonofaresiii said:
Okay... this looks like something I have no idea how to do. Can't find one ready-made.
Guess I'd better get to learning...

(unless anyone here would be kind and awesome enough to give me a little more explanation?)
Click to expand...

In the ancient past, I have made various types of such devices, but not for controlling lights, but to inject power line noise to test equipment
and how well it 'rejected' such noise...

The basic idea is that one wants to interrupt the power to the light bulb, and do it in such a way that it is sort of 'random'. This is not like a dimmer
where the light sort of slowly fades or comes backup but abruptly shuts off, then just as abruptly, turns back on.

The same is true for florescent tubes.

For a totally 'CGI' type virtual 'flicker' I've created a neon tube in After Effects. Here's a tutorial which I found with a quick search...

It may be for what you want, this would be 'better'...

http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/motion-graphics/simulate-a-glowing-neon-light-sign-of-your-logo-2/
 
You're in school , right? Go to the tech director, or the electrical shop and ask for their help. I bet ya $3 they'll help ya!
 
I notice this at an industrial location the other day - old school fluorescents with magnetic ballasts really have a great flicker when you turn them on. I started flipping the switch on and off and though "next music video I shoot... wow". They reached full output in a couple milliseconds it seemed, but the way they flickered up fast was very random and organic looking.

In the pilot of "Twin Peaks" there's an autopsy scene with the exact effect you describe, like bad wiring or aging lights. David Lynch stated in an interview that he personally flipped the switches of the location's existing fluorescent fixtures to get the effect while shooting.
 
Paul Hudson said:
If you need a little more power here is the one I use: http://kayelites.com/osc/product_in...=2126&osCsid=14234ed8fa563ebb37b3812286c31f72
Click to expand...

That's exactly the box I recommended for a lightning effect in another thread a couple of days ago. It is intended to work with incandescent lights, not fluorescents, so it may not work for the OP here (I haven't tried, but typically people manipulate flos differently). I own this box and suggest that anyone who rents one spends some time with it before employing it for a given application - you can dial in a lot of very cool and convincing effects but there are many potential settings and it requires experimenting with the fixture you will be using.
 
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Flicker boxes are great! Though when I was in film school, in a pinch I ended up having a set of lights plugged into two outlets, I needed them to flicker and we had no tools to assist this. So I just plugged the lights in and manually messed with the plug in the socket. Ended up working just fine, though a box would have been much easier.
 
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