lighting for MMA fights

J

Jeff In Ocala

Active member
Hi all,
I have a gig coming up to shoot some MMA fights in a 33 ft cage. Looking for options to get some even lighting on the whole ring. Ceiling is about 20 ft above ring would quartz work lights like the kind found at lowes or home depot be suffcient? I figure I could hang 4 to six above the ring and get it lit evenly. Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome
Jeff
 
33ft wide from 20ft up... Assuming you could get a beam wide enough to do that with 4 lights, each would have to carry to the center of the space. So 17ft of linear distance, with 20ft of vertical distance... so say 40ft average. Probably going to want it lit to what 150-200FC? I don't know, I'm not that good at scene lighting, but I'd assume you'd want it lit well enough to look like at least a bright office.

So what kind of light can throw 150-200FC of light for 40ft?

Well thanks to Arri's wonderful photometric calculator (http://www.arri.de/prod/lighting/index.htm)

Looks like you're going to be shopping for 4 10k Fresnel lights on flood.

[EDIT]

Guess I shouldn't have dropped out of trig. Actually you're looking at the hypotenuse of that triangle. 26.25ft not 40. So you can change those 10ks to 5ks. I'd probably still go with the 10ks and put some diffusion in front of them though.
 
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i neglected to say that there are already 6 mercury vapor lights hung in the gym above the ring i am just trying to fill some shadowy spots thats why i was thinking the work type lights
 
Uhh, that makes a HUGE difference! LOL!

Well, it solves one problem (maybe), but creates another. What is the color temp of those Mercury vapor lights? Because you're going to want to match colors if you are going to shoot video. Otherwise you're going to get funky color mixing.

Those worklights register around 2700-2900 kelvin if I remember correctly.
 
lol thanks for the reply perrone where in N fl are you? ocala here. the mercury vapor lights seem to be a cool light (sorry not too technical here) like a floresant type hue to em
 
Im in the state capital. If the lights look "cool", then I am going to guess they are in the 5700K range which I saw on the internet for one of the common ranges for those lights. That's an ugly mix. You would need to add a full CTB gel over the worklights to get them even close to the same color. That means your worklights are going to be awfully dim. Maybe you could lay your hands on a couple of HMI lights from someone in the area.
 
hmi's are available in orlando but not in the budget what if i killed the mercury vapor lights and put a crapload of the 500 watt work lights up there?
 
Honestly, dude you're talkin about some serious rigging. Those things kick off a ton of heat and it's going to be rising. I also would want to see them safety cabled since you're probably going to have a live audience around.

Who's producing this gig anyway? And why aren't they contracting lighting? This shouldn't be your deal if you're just shooting it. This is some pretty complicated stuff, and frankly, you'd probably do better with just shooting it with the light you have available. Have you done any tests in that gym to see how much light you're going to have and how much more you might really need?
 
i have already shot an event similar in there and they had like 4 1k lights from a local light and sound company along with the merc lights i did seem to get a good balance so maybe i will just use the same set up wish i had about 5k of led lights no heat!!
 
Yep, some 1ks ought to knock down the shadows a bit. That would probably be about ideal for a quick setup. I've got a 2k and a mambo combo stand I use to get it in the air about 20ft. A couple of those and you'd be all set.

If you get a chance, post some stills or a short clip from the shoot. I'd love to see it. Maybe get a shot of the setup so we can see how you solved the issue.
 
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