What's In Your Lighting Kit?

During the pre-production stage of your digital video production you should consider everything you can for the production and post-production stages. It’s not just a matter of writing a script and running out to shoot. There’s lots of peripheral equipment and supplies that might be needed on a regular basis.

One very important consideration is what your lighting kit should contain on
any given shooting day. Your lighting equipment requirements will likely be
different for each setup and location.

Obviously you’ll need extension cords and lights but different situations may require more fixtures, less fixtures, different wattage ratings for intensity, etc. You’ll have to figure out these variables on your own. When thinking about how to make videos, here are 6 important lighting tips:

1. Always Take Spare Bulbs for your lights in whatever wattage rating you need. Having a bulb go during the shoot with no backup can be a real pain. If you can’t get a replacement in a hurry it could mean you’re done for the day.

2. Bring Good, Heat Resistant Gloves. If your lights have been on for a while and you have to make an adjustment to the fixture, tweak the barn doors or change a bulb, you don’t want to burn your fingers. Good heat resistant gloves will also come in handy when putting in a fresh bulb. You shouldn’t touch the glass of the new bulb because skin oils can cause the bulb to heat up unevenly and it could explode.

3. Bring Lots of Diffusion Screens & Material and Gels. As well as standard color correction gels, a selection of “rock ‘n roll” colors, gels for enhancing skin tones, and neutral density gels can be very useful.

4. Use C-47s as Barn Doors. If the barn doors on your lights don’t have built in clips or frames for gels run down to the dollar store and pick up some C-47s (that’s industry talk for clothes pins). Always use wooden ones. The plastic ones tend to melt.

5. A Tool Kit Can be a Life Saver if the electrical connections in your light fixtures go hay wire. Make sure it has needle nosed and regular pliers, a wire stripper, a small soldering iron with solder, electrical tape and a small screw driver set. The electrical connections in a light fixture are pretty simple for anyone to figure out and fix.

6. Use a Light Meter to Balance Your Lights. An incident light meter is a handy device to make sure your lighting balance is correct. We usually don’t use a reflective meter for digital video production. Regardless of what you use, be sure your meter is capable of determining the amount of light from each fixture. By reading each light separately you can balance your lights for the proper key, fill and back light ratios.

If you aren’t up to snuff on lighting for television production or digital video production you might want to check out my eBook, “Mike’s Textbook of Digital Video Production” at http://www.mikesdvp.com. There’s a large chapter on lighting that covers all the basics and then some.