Keeping Your Cool Over Lighting Up
American video producer Richard Andrewski has solved the studio director's double dilemma. First, how can you keep people comfortable in a studio sweating under from high-wattage floodlights all pumping out plenty of heat along with plenty of light?
Second, how can you get enough cool light instead and keep it under control, without breaking the bank?
The answer could well be Andrewski's own creation; Cool Lights. Fluorescent DIY film lights of correct colour temperature that are both safe and practical, are cheap to make using standard hardware store and electrical parts. They are an efficient low cost cure to hot studio conditions. Everyone can keep their cool, including film crew and the talent in front of the lens. Cool Lights are a win-win film lighting solution and they stay, as well as look, cool.
Producer Andrewski is also a product developer and he's a capable handyman who has used electricity and electronics carefully throughout his life. He lost no time in employing all these talents to produce and present an 89 minute NTSC video on DVD. Andrewski demonstrates to filmmakers exactly how to convert a standard construction site halogen floodlight into a more useful environmentally friendly film light, complete with barn doors to direct the beam. He goes on to show a variety of build projects based on his system. Between them they should provide almost any film-set lighting solution for videographers or low budget filmmakers.
Safety in electrical or electronic work is always paramount and there's a sidebar presentation on safety whilst working on these projects and safety reminders pop up in appropriate places throughout the video. European light constructors will need to make allowance for the different wiring colour code in this part of the world and will need to source parts designed for European 240-volt systems rather than the 110-volt system used in the States, but he basic principles of electrical safety are universal, so if you follow the safety code Andrewski presents, you will be safe and you can have full safety confidence in what you build under his video guidance.
There is more good news to come. Andrewski discovered basic metal boxes to construct lights bigger than halogen light cases allow were impossible to find, so he had to spend extra time building his own using sheet metal and hand shears. He's been on a recent visit to China where most of the world's household and industrial electronic parts are manufactured, where he presumably also addressed the metal box shortage while he was there. Complete parts kits are soon to be made available from his Cool Lights website. Further instructions and plans will appear there soon and I'm told the components he sells will all be universal voltage, so no problems on different continents - and I was right about him sourcing complete boxes from China, so I guess he'll soon be able to offer complete low cost fluorescent rigs of various specifications.
Low budget filmmakers could well be in debt to Andrewski's ingenuity for some years to come. Fabricating lights enabling cash-starved filmmakers to sidestep very costly professional fluorescents and hard lights gives them a chance to do a really professional job with kit that will cost far less to make than hiring regular pro lighting from film service companies. The bonus is, you get to keep the kit afterwards, so the next shoot is even cheaper. At 49 USD (about £25 UKP) plus shipping this DVD is a real bargain. If you make films, can you afford not to have it?
We appreciate a producer with this sort of vision. Nice one, Richard Andrewski - he's the Cool Dude.