Prolycht Orion 675 FS full spectrum RGBACL color spotlight

[Mitch Gross]

Mitch, any images of the hard case for the 675? Inside and out would be great, if possible.

It hasn't been finalized yet, but it will be a hard-shell case with wheels. We are still finalizing the design of our fresnel, and once done we'll see if we can make a case that could also hold it or hold the fresnel & barndoors instead of reflectors, or if all that will simply make the case too big & bulky. The light doesn't ship until September so plenty of time to finalize the case. Back in my days at AbelCine I designed dozens of cases for our rental department so I know the pitfalls of smart case design.

 

[chris_f]

Thanks for the extra details Mitch. Have already placed my preorder, but now I’m even more pumped for this.

Will the single lock off yoke still have the quick release feature? I quite liked the idea of that.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Thanks for the extra details Mitch. Have already placed my preorder, but now I’m even more pumped for this.

Will the single lock off yoke still have the quick release feature? I quite liked the idea of that.

Yes, the angled yoke will still be a quick release.

 

[Grug]

Hi Everyone, I've been so busy with NAB and stuff after that this is my first time back to the forum in several weeks. I'll try to answer all the questions and coments I can.

The beam of the Orion 675 FS is considerably wider and more even than that of the Orion 300 FS. This was in response to user feedback. It is an 80 degree before it drops to half of highest brightness, but the usable beam spreads well beyond 100 degrees.

Integrated ballast was a topic of many discussions. In the end if we had separated them the head would still have weighed around 15 pounds or more, so it just didn't make sense. In addition to the free phone/tablet app, there will be a wired remote accessory for those who prefer it.

Double-sided lockoffs are going away. The production model will have an angled yoke with a single lockoff.

Thanks Mitch. If it would have been 15lbs for a separated head, I think you guys made the right call to just integrate it all. A 15lbs head + ballast would kinda be the worst of both worlds.

Great to hear about the wired remote and single-sided yoke! Those are my two biggest operational concerns addressed.

If I can throw out a suggestion for the wired remote - some basic clamp or attachment system to mount it securely to the stand would be much appreciated. Remotes dangling/lying on the ground can be a real pain. Hanging it from a lockoff knob on the lower stage of the stand (via a small cord/string) can just be a bit too fiddly/precarious. There are cheap/cheerful little v-mount clamps that can do this sort of thing well.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Thanks Mitch. If it would have been 15lbs for a separated head, I think you guys made the right call to just integrate it all. A 15lbs head + ballast would kinda be the worst of both worlds.

Great to hear about the wired remote and single-sided yoke! Those are my two biggest operational concerns addressed.

If I can throw out a suggestion for the wired remote - some basic clamp or attachment system to mount it securely to the stand would be much appreciated. Remotes dangling/lying on the ground can be a real pain. Hanging it from a lockoff knob on the lower stage of the stand (via a small cord/string) can just be a bit too fiddly/precarious. There are cheap/cheerful little v-mount clamps that can do this sort of thing well.

How about a magnet on the back so it just sticks to the stand wherever you place it?

 

[Grug]

How about a magnet on the back so it just sticks to the stand wherever you place it?

That sounds perfect. It'd be tidier and faster than anything else.

 

[cpreston]

That sounds perfect. It'd be tidier and faster than anything else.

This is what the Arri Skypanel has using a basic USB cable and the design is near perfect.

 

[chris_f]

To Mitch:

Just saw a youtube video by Dedolight offering a 15% discount on Dedolight optical accessories when purchased with the light. Keen to take advantage of that offer as I’ve pre-ordered… but I’m in Australia.

Any other news on this?

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Mitch Gross]

That's the deal Dedolight is offering in the territories it sells Prolycht. Dedolight is our distributor in parts of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Not Australia, sorry.

Prolycht will distribute the Dedolight accessories for the Orion 300 FS and Orion 675 FS to the rest of the world. We will offer pricing soon on the Dedolight accessories.

 

[chris_f]

Thanks for clarifying. Looking forward to hearing some more details.

 

[rob norton]

I pre-ordered an Orion 675 FS. Now I just need to land a Coke commercial..

 

[CharlesPapert]

I pre-ordered an Orion 675 FS. Now I just need to land a Coke commercial..

Well this is a contrived segue but I was just recounting this story yesterday.

In 2013 Coke ran a campaign for the Superbowl that involved three groups racing towards a bottle of coke in the desert...honestly it was pretty odd.

I had just shot a couple of successful ads for Pepsi Max with my Key & Peele director Peter Atencio, so we were tapped again by Pepsi to make a cheeky response to this spot intended to run on the web. The Coke spot posted one week before the Superbowl, so we had something like 4 days to put this whole thing together:

https://vimeo.com/319371900

Post was finished Friday night and the spot was sent off to Pepsi. By the next afternoon (day before the game) we received word that it had gone up the flagpole to the top corporate level to great enthusiasm, and they wanted to pull their planned Superbowl spot and replace it with this one. Bear in mind that we made this thing for relative peanuts compared to the usual Superbowl spot budgets. We were all pretty excited about the prospect of having a Superbowl ad until word came back that the network required 48 hours for approval and we were within that window, so no dice. It lived on the web for a bit, but since the Coke campaign disappeared after the weekend, the relevancy faded fast. Ah well!

 

[say_doyster]

I can see why they liked it. So much better than 95% of the crap that passes for advertising today!! Make the product a hero and trash your competition without saying a bad word. Love it!!

 

[NorBro]

Although that Pepsi response is great, that Coca-Cola commercial was ahead of its time with what eventually became that alternate, wacky universe creation business model for most of similar marketing today.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Nice commercial, but how did you light it???

 

[CharlesPapert]

Nice commercial, but how did you light it???

with umm lights?!

Honestly it's too long ago now for me to remember a whole lot about it. I was trying to think how I turned the vending machine into a source in the pre-Litemat era, but I'm pretty sure it was just a double-broken 4x4 source next to it (and maybe a couple of tubes taped to the front to wrap it around?) It's actually really interesting to think about work done a decade ago because there were so many tools we have now that just weren't available yet, or were problematic (I can spot things I shot using first gen. Literibbon because of the green cast)! I do recall changing out tubes within both vending machines so we could control the output, and adding some yellow green gel to the ones in the Coke machine to make it look more rundown.

I think the toughest bit was the shot through the vending slot which was a separate piece art department provided. This was the classic challenge of lighting someone who is right up against a solid object. Now we can use LED ribbon in any numbers of configurations, but you still have to contend with talent burning up in level as they get closer to it, giving away the source. I've shot a few people lying on the ground looking under a door, the most well-known being the one from the end of "Office Space" where Peter is trying to get the envelope of money back. For that second unit shot I papered the back of the door and bounced into it, but you have to work with the actor to get them to play back a little bit otherwise it gets blocked out.

 

[rob norton]

Post was finished Friday night and the spot was sent off to Pepsi. By the next afternoon (day before the game) we received word that it had gone up the flagpole to the top corporate level to great enthusiasm, and they wanted to pull their planned Superbowl spot and replace it with this one. Bear in mind that we made this thing for relative peanuts compared to the usual Superbowl spot budgets. We were all pretty excited about the prospect of having a Superbowl ad until word came back that the network required 48 hours for approval and we were within that window, so no dice. It lived on the web for a bit, but since the Coke campaign disappeared after the weekend, the relevancy faded fast. Ah well!

Haha that's a great story, your Pepsi response looks awesome! That's interesting about the 48 hour window, you'd think paying $7M per 30 seconds (or 2013 equivalent) would get you some last minute privileges.

Is there a protocol when film gear is used as set decoration regarding rates? Have you ever seen equipment owners be compensated in addition to their G&E package? I'm assuming for the most part people let it slide but it's still worth having the conversation if tools in the background are helping sell the look.

 

[rob norton]

In anticipation of the 675 arriving, it'd be good to talk about the app's video recording function.

Mitch, you gave the example of simulating changing street lighting for a night exterior with a vehicle.

How does the video recording work - if several colours are present, is it taking an average, or does it select what's most dominant? Is it best to fill the frame with a single colour? Does brightness work the same way?

What other situations can people think of where the video recording would be useful?

This may not be possible but rather than using the phone's camera, maybe there could also be some type of matching what's on the phone screen without using the camera. For example, if dissatisfied with the built in effects for TV flicker, rather than pointing the phone at someone else's screen that's playing your ideal TV effect, you could simply tap into a youtube playlist with different types of videos (fast action, slow changing lazy viewing). I'm sure the light's stock parameters will be fine but I'm just brainstorming other ways to use the app.

 

[CharlesPapert]

Is there a protocol when film gear is used as set decoration regarding rates? Have you ever seen equipment owners be compensated in addition to their G&E package? I'm assuming for the most part people let it slide but it's still worth having the conversation if tools in the background are helping sell the look.

Good question! If the gear is already on the job and we just push it into the frame, that's a gimme. My key grip has gotten a few free plugs for his grip gear company with the logo featured on his truck and other gear, ha. My Steadicam appeared as a background prop in a few different films, most notably multiple times in Big Fat Liar, this particular time with me attached to it:

In the case of the Pepsi spot, the film camera was a rental through Panavision, they have a number of prop packages set aside for this purpose. Of course the film cameras don't work like they used to so they had plenty of those available, the lenses are usually externally OK but otherwise not rentable except as props. When we've rented these in the past, camera dept. is usually happy to help the props department assemble the cameras as it is nostalgic for us (I haven't shot film since 2010).

 

[CharlesPapert]

What other situations can people think of where the video recording would be useful?.

Mitch and I spoke about this recently, the first thing I thought of is doing process driving work, whether rear screen projection, LCD wall or monitors. I've done this in the past using LCD panels displaying one of the driving views as light sources but the color rendition tends to be pretty wretched on those, and they are unwieldy and tough to control (keeping them off rear-projection screens can be really tough). Pushing the Prolycht into a medium diffusion frame equipped with light control grid would be much better. In this instance we'd be able to point the reference phone camera at an off camera screen displaying the appropriate view that matches the position of the instrument, so it would sync properly with the background plates (a given color light source would travel correctly from the Prolycht unit to the plate view visible on camera).

Incidentally if people haven't tried it yet, it's becoming not uncommon to do driving work using a large screen TV, obviously the biggest one you can source the better. Obviously with one screen you have a limited width so this is best used for tighter shots, but I've done it with frontal singles and cross coverage between driver and passenger with a single 65" or bigger screen. You still need to source the driving plates of course, so this isn't a free lunch, but there are many advantages over shooting something like this practically and it's a fun lighting challenge.