MJ Dixon is an Award Winning Filmmaker and Director of Low Budget worldwide releases includingSlasher House and Legacy Of Thorn. He has also seen over 30 music videos and shorts appear on major TV channels around the world as well as running filming workshop The Micro Budget Massacre. He mostly spends his time leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home.
READ FIRST!! Once again, please understand that this is just my outlook and opinion on aspects of filmmaking, Im not saying its right or wrong, it's just how I do things and how I view things, Filmmaking is about listening to everyone, your peers, professionals and everything in-between. This article is here to be nothing more than helpful to people looking to make movies, hopefully thats you.
The simple fact is, production gear can be expensive. Sometimes really expensive, I lately looked into getting some professional led panels for studio shoot and discovers that to get 2 (in reality I would need at least 3) would cost me well over £1000 . Which as a low budget film producer and video director just doesn't come easy. I also understand that money doesn't grow on trees for those of you just starting out, who want to learn the craft of filmmaking.
A few years ago I was booked by a band to make a professional music video, It was one of my first as an official company and so I wanted to keep it self sufficient. I didn't have a lot of gear at the time as I was just starting out. The video needed some lights and a black backdrop and through some careful planning I managed to pick that up with the deposit the band gave me. However it left me little money left for the rest of the video.
A lot of the scenes they wanted in thier story element needed to be shot outside on the streets and I couldn't take my newly bought plastering worklights because I couldn't afford a generator at the time to run them. So I knew I needed a portable light of some kind, however anything useable and bright enough was well out of my budget. After wandering around the £1 store one day, I came across the I perfect solution.
I found some ultra bright head torches for £1 each, they ran in AA batteries and were pretty bright, brighter than any other LEDs I go had come across. But not still bright enough. I needed a way to triple the power of them.
Hollow Demise Video Still. Lit with LEDs in an underpants box.
At home I had a cardboard window box from some underwear I had had gotten for Christmas. I bought a couple of the lights and realised that they lights slotted in perfectly. I dropped 4 lights in and closed the plastic Perspex of the box top over the lamps and it worked perfectly. Actually, too perfectly, the light was too harsh. A sheet of kitchen roll later and the light was diffused enough to use, Albiet handheld.
Being made of a cardboard box meant that the light probably didn't have too much shelf life, but it worked in the in the rain for the duration of the shoot. It did however mean that I could reinvent the light to have more longevity.
So I invented the Tupperlight.
Tupperware tub £1, Bright LED Head Torch £1 x 3, 12 Kodak Batteries £1
Make sure your box fits the lights tight to stop them from moving during use.
Add A thin sheet on Kitchen roll for Diffusion if needed.
This is by no means a 'perfect' solution, it has to be hand held for a start (although i'm sure it would be easy enough to mount of a light stand), but it works and is perfect on a low budget. Everything I needed to build this light featured here, I picked up for £4 (+ £1 for 12 low voltage batteries), This one has three lights, which is fine, my original had four, Although you can make a bigger one with a larger casing with as ,many lights as you want. No budget Filmmaking is just about being creative with what you have and even though i have since replaced this cheap solution with more reliable lights I still use the Tupperlight every now and then.. You can check out the video that I used it on below.
MJ IF YOU FOUND THIS HELPFUL OR HAVE ANY QUESTIONS THEN PLEASE DROP THEM IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.
MJ Dixon is an Award Winning Filmmaker and Director of Low Budget worldwide releases including Slasher House and Legacy Of Thorn. He has also seen over 30 music videos and shorts appear on major TV channels around the world as well as running filming workshop The Micro Budget Massacre. He mostly spends his time leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home.
READ FIRST!! Once again, please understand that this is just my outlook and opinion on aspects of filmmaking, Im not saying its right or wrong, it's just how I do things and how I view things, Filmmaking is about listening to everyone, your peers, professionals and everything in-between. This article is here to be nothing more than helpful to people looking to make movies, hopefully thats you.
CAUTION : Obviously working with any electrics that create heat is dangerous, make sure any lights you get have the required protective glass and caging and of course just like tungsten lights be aware that, if not set up correctly, then it can, like anything on set, be very, very dangerous. Last week I talked about my standard light set up, using tungsten worklights. Tne set up itself cost very little and is extremely useful and very bright. However it does have draw backs, mainly in regards to how hot these kind of lights get. Although trust me, shooting in the winter in Northern England you'll apprecaite that a little more.
However our set up has evolved over the last few years to include LEDs. LEDs are cooler, lighter and most of the time safer than having lights that intergaret hot glass and Sensetive bulbs. This being a low budget filmmaking blog though, I have a duty to look at the cheapest alternative first and of course that is certainly tungsten worklights.
The problem with these lights is that they each run at 500w each ( that's just work lights, we're talking 800w upward for pro lights) so if your heading out to location you're suddenly talking, large loud expensive generators and when you are running and gunning, like we have to do 50% of the time, you need something much more reliable and subtle to get the job done.
This is where I employ Led worklights. We picked up 3 of the brightest we could find (I think 108 LEDs) they cost about £50 each and they are rechargable, making them a great portable solution at about a quarter of the cost of 1 professional led panel. They fit to most light stands and last about 3 hours of constant use, so if you are careful with your usage you can get a full nights shooting out of them.
They have some drawbacks like anything, but low budget filmmaking is about jumping over hurdles in order to bring costs down. Now first of all, led lamps are not quite as bright as you would like unless you start moving into spending a few hundred, so most of the time you have to double the light source. These particular lights are rechargable, making them very portable. Downside is that they can't run off the mains without damaging the battery, so they need to be fully charged after they die out, which takes 3 hours. Heres an ebay link for the model we use HERE
And just for price comparison heres the same size tungsten (They are about £5 more with a stand) which is twice as bright HERE
Now the simple solution to this, is to have them on charging rotation. But of course that doubles the price of your set up. If your after something to rival the brightness of of a standard tungsten light you'll want to double that again. So we go from a £150 set up to a £600 set up. This however is still about the price of one pro led panel. So it's still a great option on a low budget production and an option I recommend can you afford to shell out a few hundred pounds/bucks on lighting.
However bare this in mind, no lighting solution is the best solution for every situation. Some days LEDs just ain't going to cut it. Sometimes you need something more powerful. We use anything from homemade LEDs to plastering lamps to pro stage lights depending on the job. Knowing what the best tools to use for each job is what will make your films look better, not the fact that you spent $7000 dollar on lighting panels.
A lot of our pickup outdoor scenes in Legacy Of Thorn had to be quick, All of them were lit using this portable set up and available light and that is really the secret to make LEDs work in large areas. Using them to highlight what is already there. This way you can still have control over what your film looks like, whilst utilising the light around you. Especially if you do your research into the locations lighting ahead of time.
The trick with lighting is understand the strengths and weaknesses of different types of lights, tungsten lights are still cheaper and in my opinion give a warmer, nicer, brighter light despite thier drawbacks. But I certainly can't deny the usefulness of LEDs and I certainly intend to replace my tungsten kit with them eventually, but for the level of light you need on a film set you can be looking at some serious money.
But a few hundred pounds is still a lot of money for low/no budget filmmakers. However there is a slightly cheaper option when it comes to portable LEDs if your willing to put some time in, but I'll talk about that next week ;) MJ IF YOU FOUND THIS HELPFUL OR HAVE ANY QUESTIONS THEN PLEASE DROP THEM IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.
MJ Dixon is an Award Winning Filmmaker and Director of Low Budget worldwide releases including Slasher House and Legacy Of Thorn. He has also seen over 30 music videos and shorts appear on major TV channels around the world as well as running filming workshop The Micro Budget Massacre. He mostly spends his time leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home. READ FIRST!! Once again, please understand that this is just my outlook and opinion on aspects of filmmaking, Im not saying its right or wrong, it's just how I do things and how I view things, Filmmaking is about listening to everyone, your peers, professionals and everything in-between. This article is here to be nothing more than helpful to people looking to make movies, hopefully thats you. CAUTION : Obviously working with any electrics that create heat is dangerous, make sure any lights you get have the required protective glass and caging and of course just like tungsten lights be aware that, if not set up correctly, then it can, like anything on set, be very, very dangerous. Lighting is the most important tool at your disposal when in comes to shooting anything. That sounds obvious, I know, but in advent of DSLRs and their ability to shoot in low light conditions, I slowly watched a lot of filmmakers around me slowly begin to ignore lightning all together as they struggled less and less to get a 'usuable' image, and slowly they stop reaching for the best image.
Shooting in available light, is great. It's cheap, it's quick and it's easy and it's something I employ from time to time depending on the situation. That however simply doesn't always cut it, especially if you want to make dynamic looking films. Shooting in flat available light and colour grading after is brilliant for a quick fix, but really learning to light your films will a world of difference and will set your films apart from the standard colour graded footage that has become so popular in recent years.
The trouble here, is that lighting equipment can set you back by thousands of pounds/dollars/euros to get a simple set up. The fact is though, it doesn't have to. Our set up cost us, literally, just over £100 and I've never had to replace it. Our £100 Lighting Set Up
I've shot for over 3 years now on a set up that cost me £100.75p (that 75p drove my OCD crazy). It's made up of three 500w work lamps and two 500w floor lamps. All these lights have lit everything I have made in the since 2011, including 2 feature film, half a dozen short films and over a dozen Music videos that have aired on major tv channels across the world. They run off a standard mains adapter and fit in a medium sized travel bag (although it is heavy) and it has never let me down. You can buy these things at most hardware shops and if you shop around I imagine you'll find an even better deal than we got.
For barn doors, my set up becomes super, super low budget. It involves aluminium BBQ trays (6 for £1) and some pretty standard acetate for 50p an a3 sheet from the craft shop pinned to the trays with metal clips that come in packs of 20 from the £store. It's the most low-fi set up you will ever see in your life, but film is about the destination not the journey. For diffusing. I used greaseproof paper, and just cut it to size it cost about 50p a roll. I've bought one roll in 3 years.
When I'm attaching BBQ trays to sheets of coloured plastic and hooking them on plastering lights, clients, crew, cast all look at me like I'm a mental case. However when they see the final product all that goes away when they see the result that I get. It's doesn't matter how you get your look as long as you get it (safely of course).
It may seem a little crude, but it gets the job done and I swear by in for any filmmakers that struggle to afford equipment. The only small drawback is that using acetate this close to heat source usually melts it out of shape after a day shoot. So I find that I buy new gels as needed per shoot, On average it usually costs me £1 to replace them. Lighting Set Up Cost Total = £104.25 The reason they work however is nothing to do with thier wattage, or brightness, or BBQ trays or how they plug in. No they work because I learned how to use them effectively and when you are shooting on something like an SLR, it's more important to understand how to light your scenes than ever, because it's the difference between a 'usable' pictures and something professional looking.
On our latest feature Legacy Of Thorn, almost every scene was lit using this set up.
I learnt to light properly on digital video and transfered those skills in the advent of DSLRs. it an important skill to learn and once you get it it will change the way you think about your films forever. I also understand that LED lights are becoming more common place, but currently a decent 'professional' set up is far from affordable off the shelf, although it doesn't have to be. I'll talk about that next time. MJ IF YOU FOUND THIS HELPFUL OR HAVE ANY QUESTIONS THEN PLEASE DROP THEM IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.
I think its fair to say, that technology has moved on quite rapidly in the last half decade, a positive of this? We now have access to amazing filmmaking technology and that technology is becoming less and less expensive every month. However, the downside? Choosing a camera can be a bit of minefield if you don't know anything about them, and that can lead to worrying about making the right choice. I'm here to tell you that it might not be that important.
When I was a teenager, back in 90's the simple fact was that you just shot on what you could, because not every family could afford the expense of a video camera. So it was either shoot on your Uncle's VHS-C camera, with its blurry viewfinder ( LCD screens were a dream of the future) or nothing. So I learned not to picky early on, and just work with what I had.
I just wanted to make movies and it wasn't important to me that I couldn't get hold of the best cameras on offer, I just wanted to make movies and that was that, I would jump any technical hurdle to do it. For me, things have not changed, although they have become much, much easier.
KNOW YOU ENEMY
First of all let me start by saying that, it IS important to choose the right camera for your project. The approach now for newbies is just to grab a DSLR with a kit lens and think that it will solve all your problems, but the fact is that SLR's aren't suited for everything, although I do agree that they are at least a pretty well rounded camera for a beginner or those on a low budget when it comes to imagery alone, they do come with 'hurdles' that must be jumped. But I'll talk about that another time.
My point is that choosing the right camera for your project is important. To a degree. Depending on if you're shooting a documentary, a promo, a music video or a narrative will most likely dicatate what kind of camera your going to use. If you have a budget then your choices will grow and if not chances are you'll have to work with what you've got, but none of that should ever stop you from shooting something, because a camera does not dictate how good of a filmmaker you are, how you solve problems does.
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Camera's are more accessible than ever now, you can pick up a DSLR that shoots Hd footage brand new for £200 right now and start shoot nice looking footage. You can get an HD (Shooting in 1080!) camera with Ninja Turtles stickers on for £30 right now and just start shooting. It's just about knowing your limits, jumping the hurdles and working with them to solve the problems they present to you. You can shoot a movie on you phone now with relative ease, ON YOUR PHONE!!! (Note : this blog was written in 2014)
We shot a little practical joke Trailer for April 1st in 2014, and we decided to try and utilise stuff we had to hand, which was an iPhone and an old rowing machine that we dismantled and used as a slider. It had a few draw backs, but it came out ok for a first crack at using a phone to shoot a movie.
WHAT YOU SHOOT ON IS NOT IMPORTANT (Kinda)
I went to University with people who wouldn't shoot on anything but film, they refused. They we're waiting till they could afford to shot thier 35mm feature and as a result a lot of them are now married with kids or have full time jobs at a supermarket or a call centre and, of course, never made their movie. The same goes for a lot of filmmakers I meet now, the are waiting for their budget so they can shoot on a 'Red' but of course that budget doesn't come because they won't budge or compromise and so haven't proven they can make anything and probably never will. By the time they can afford to shoot on a Red it will be dead tech and we'll have moved onto 17K or whatever is the future of film format happens to be.
In 2009 I planned to shoot my first feature Creepsville on a £300 Panasonic 3ccd Camcorder (man was 3ccd important back then), about a month before shooting, the Univeristy stores guys told us they had some Sony V1 cam's and that we could borrow them after hours outside of term time when no one was using them. We jumped at it, because although it's important to get by with what you've got, it's also important to shoot on the best possible equipment that you can, as long as it's not harmful to your movie.
On Slasher House I looked at renting a Red, however the rental for 2 weeks in 2010 was about £5000, that was our entire budget, so that would have left us no money for location, costume, travel, resources, food etc. I decided that it wasn't worth struggling through the rest of the movie with no more resources and so we shot on a Canon 550d (back then with 2 lenses and an SD card cost me £1000) which I bought rather than rented, which meant that we had it permanently for the rest of the films shoot.
The fact is that, you should of course use the very best equipment that is available to you (but that is completely relative) if you can use a Red or a Black Magic or a GH4 or whatever and can afford the extra cash for storage, then by all means do it. As long as it not detrimental to your project. Ultimately though the truth is this, you can shoot on whatever you want as long as you have a great story (and decent sound!). As long as its engaging your general audience doesn't care if shot on a £40,000 Red setup, a DSLR, A phone or a £30 quid HD camera with Ninja Turtles stickers on it. There really is no excuse.
Now go shoot something :)
Just remember that what you shoot on is not a substitute for talent or skill and no camera is going to make you a better cinematographer or filmmaker the same way that no camera will make you a worse one.
MJ IF YOU FIND THIS BLOG USEFUL. PLEASE SHARE.You can keep up to date with our filming goings on at our FACEBOOK PAGE :)
