Powering Lights in Remote Locations

If you have ever thought about shooting in the middle of a forest at night or in some other remote location where you need lights you may have wondered how you will power your 1000W halogen lights. Well the first and easiest option is to try to light the scene without extra lights.Anything light colored will work as a reflector to bounce light back at your subject. This will obviously only work during the day. But sometimes your shoot will need to be at night. Have you ever wondered what the difference is between day and night? Besides the brightness and color temperature there is no difference. To go from day to night you can just underexpose the shot by 2-3 stops and set your white balance to something blue, 2500K.

If you are really set on shooting at night then you can stop by home depot and pick up a 3000W portable generator for $219. It will provide plenty of power at the cost of a little noise in your audio. Just get a 50 foot extension cord and with a little noise removal in Audacity you should be good to go.

Another option is to find a location within reach of extension cords. I wouldn't reccomend going further than 150 feet to avoid burning out the cords.

The last and most expensive option is to power you lights with a battery. A 10 to 20 amp hour sealed lead acid (SLA) battery will work well. You can find them on ebay for $25-$45 depending on the size. Combined with a clamp light and a 45W CFL you should have light for about an hour.

Clamp Light

The clamp light is the best unintentional invention for film making. They can be found at any hardware store and typically cost about $8. They are essentially a 10 foot cord with a light bulb socket on the end. You can keep or remove the metal reflector dish depending on the kind of light you want. You can put any kind of standard bulb in them as long as it is less than about 500W. I find that 23-45W CFL lights work best because they produce much more light than an incandescent bulb, but if you're on a tight budget you can always grab regular bulbs.

The best place on the internet to find all kinds of bulbs is 1000bulbs.com

Tip: The "standard" socket is called E26 or E27. They are pretty much the same thing.

What It's All About

This blog was created to show how I go about film making. I will show the home made equipment I have as well as the "professional" tools I use. A lot of the home made stuff ends up not working, but I still found that it helped me learn a little more about how the real thing works.

I consider myself more of a cinematographer rather than a film maker only because I have more experience in lighting and cameras. Therefore I will be focusing mainly on the technical side of film making rather than the artistic. I will hopefully cover everything on lighting and shooting films, and also share any other useful information I have discovered on the way. Given that my only source of income barely pays for my gas I will do things the cheapest possible way. My goal is to never spend more than absolutely necessary and to make as much of my own equipment as possible.