Reviving Old Stage Fresnels

[Jordan Scott Price]

Alright, here's the report from the field.


Shoot: Two-day short shot over the last weekend - Sunday and Saturday - about 10 hours a day.

Locations: Three-car garage and a large, old, dim concert hall in Dallas.

Light kits: Two 1200W HMI PARs; two 4' 4-bank Kino Flos; my four 750W-lamped Altman's; four 150W, one 300W Arri fresnels.



I was DP for this film, and we were switching back and forth between two main camera units - a rigged-out 7D for shooting most of the film, and an HVX200 set at 720p60 for Twixtor - and they were constantly shifted from sticks to dolly to slider. I prefer to operate, so my Gaffer and his crew took care of all of the lights so I could stay around camera. But I can still comment on how they held up during the shoot and relay how our crew felt about them.


Pros:

• They're Fresnels, so they are simple to set up and don't have a ton of pieces (compared to Kinos and HMIs) and
• The light output is a strong, beautiful beam that is easy to manipulate and shape.
• We had one 750 float around with a Chimaera and a dimmer, which made the CU shots after the Wides fast and easy.
• They're lightweight and can be set up in seconds. In a minute, they can be hung on a C-clamp, which is great for rigging the lights on trusses/t-bars in the garage.
• A (Harbor Freight) dimmer on each light was perfect for controlling output without having to clip grades of ND on the barn doors or set up nets on a C-stand. It also facilitated getting the gritty look of the garage and the warm look of the concert hall.
• The barn doors I bought - not specifically made for this light, but they were all Barbizon had when I had to snag some quickly - have a color holder slot, which was useful for throwing in cookies and texturing background light.

Cons:

• These lights are HOT. I mean fire hazard hot. You really need to be careful using these around anything that can char or melt, and you cannot hot-handle these. Standard protective gear is a must. My Gaffer wanted to shoot me after the first day. He was wearing gaffer's gloves with a pair of thick leather gardener's gloves on top of that. I asked one of our electricians to move a light once, and he replied disgruntled, "You mean the one made of fire?"
• The bolt that holds the yoke to the light (on the opposite side of the T-screw you tighten it with) kept coming loose after the light was tilted to the desired angle. This was especially maddening when the lights hung high slipped, requiring an electrician to bring it down on the stand or get a ladder for the ones on C-clamps, tighten the T-screw and the bolt, and then loosen both again when the light was to be used elsewhere later. This chomped off loads of precious time in a tense key moment between the actors. To make matters worse, the lights were made of fire.
• At some times, it seemed like setting up the HMI on a mombo combo was easier than adjusting one of these babies.
• I bought Matthews TVMP adapters for two of the lights and used Smith-Victor plastic bail blocks for the other two. The Matthews were actually finicky and not very sturdy, whereas the Smith-Victor tightened more securely.
• No safe-to-touch knob on the back of the light to allow you to pan/tilt the light without coming into contact with its piping hot surface.
• Flood-Spot mechanism on the base of the light can be a pain to adjust, mainly because of its unusual location compared to a typical movie Fresnel and the fact that it's just a wingnut holding it in its place, which you have to loosen to be able to flood-spot. The lamp assembly sticks while flooding-spotting, so asking an electrician to "spot it in slowly" is better replaced with "just spot the @#$@ in." These lights are just so not meant for the specificity of a film's lighting design
• The lamps are moderately expensive and huge. The base they sit in was designed by people who like putting square pegs in round holes.

In short, these lights are beautiful, pliable, and perfect for creating pools of light, backlighting talent, punching them into grid cloth to create a big diffuse source, or floating them around with a Chimaera and a dimmer for lighting, well, anything you need to light softly.

I didn't feel it necessary to have some with 1K lamps and some with 500's. The combination of dimmers, gels, diffusion, and nets on a C-stand at any given point really made having +- 250W of light a nonissue. I could see the various wattages being more useful in tight spaces, like the garage, where you can't rig up a ton of grip gear or walk the light back, but I cheated and dimmed everything in the garage to get the off-color grimy yellow I wanted. I have a shoot later in the week that takes place in a bedroom, so the true test will probably be there.

I really must find a solution for the loose bolt problem. Other than that, and the fact that one light can keep craft pizza warm for an entire shoot, these old Altman's did their job and did it well.

 

[Svart]

True story.


Although with the ARRIs, they get hot as balls too, regardless of where there is a "safe touch" spot on the light.

We shot in a non-heated room in the dead of winter with 4 ARRI fresnels and two broads, all 1k. The room stayed a manageable temperature.

 

[Jordan Scott Price]

True story.


Although with the ARRIs, they get hot as balls too, regardless of where there is a "safe touch" spot on the light.

We shot in a non-heated room in the dead of winter with 4 ARRI fresnels and two broads, all 1k. The room stayed a manageable temperature.

On the feature I gaffed over the last winter, there were few complaints of the heat (except for one scene in a bathroom with a Mighty, a Baby, and me in the bathtub, but that's another story). The open garage scenes we shot last Saturday in 102 Texas heat was a whole 'nother matter.

The sub-1K Arri fresnels don't get NEARLY as hot as the Altman's, though. You can hot-handle the Arri's if you need to make a fast adjustment. If you do that with the Altman's, you risk a serious burn. I'm actually concerned with using them in a small indoor location because of the hazard.