UPGRADE YOUR iPHONE CAMERA FOR £15

It's probably not ground breaking information anymore for someone to suggest that you can shoot movies on your iPhone. These days people are doing it all the time and there are some fantastic results out there (Hooked Up and To Jennifer are a couple of great horror examples) that prove that anyone has the power of filmmaking in their pocket and with the newest models shooting 4K, it seems more and more like a legitimate filmmaking tool.

YOU CAN APPLY THIS TO ALMOST ANY SMARTPHONE THAT RUNS ANDROID OR IOS.

I've been shooting stuff here and there on my iPhone now for a few years, I don't do it all the time as it not usually the tool that best suits what I'm doing, but I made a micro short for some film students a couple of years back on an iPhone 4 just to show that can be done. Of course, like I said, these days that is common knowledge.

My biggest problem with shooting on an iPhone is that its fairly basic when its comes to actually filming with it. There are rigs out there that are fairly inexpensive like 'The Beast Grip' (£150-£300) that allow you to do things like use pro lenses on the camera, but at that point I start to think that maybe you should just go back to your normal camera and just spend that money on a Canon Rebel or GH1. Also I'm not sure about dropping an extra £300 on my already £600 phone. So as usual I started looking for a more low budget solution.

The biggest upside of shooting on an iPhone, as far as I'm concerned, is that its so portable, Mainly because it fits in your pocket. Adding rigs and lenses and such starts to take away from its best function in my eyes, the fact that its almost invisible, this also make its great for guerrilla filmmaking without drawing attention. So I was looking for a way to just make the phone function as a camera without turning into something the size of DLSR.

What I've put together here is a list of add ons that I picked up to helps give me a little more flexibility with phones camera and the whole set should cost you less than £15/$20.

FilmicPRO (£8/$11)

FilmicPRO App for iPhone

This is the foundation of turning your automatic phone camera into a useable camera for shooting. It was available for £2.50($3.99),  but checking whilst I updated this, I found they had raised the price a tad to a whopping £8!. Its fair enough, its a great app that allows control over White Balance, Exposure and Focus and the ability to lock them once you have your image the way you want it. 

Depending on your phone you can shoot up to 4K resolution at 100mbps and its give you greater control over other input like audio and data rates as well as giving guides for various ratio sizes and will even export in your chosen ratio should you wish. Pro seems to work on anything for iPhone 4s and upward and for a HUGE 79p there is FilmicClassic that gives you the same functionally (without the higher resolutions) on older models. 

The app is also available for Android devices too. I got it for Free a couple of years ago during a promotion so its worth watching out when they do something like that again, but if you dont want to wait, £8 isn't much to drop for such an impressive video app.

Check it out FILMICPRO Official Site for more info. 

MINI TRIPOD (£1/$1)

The PoundShop/DollarStore is a wonderful, magical place. One of the reasons is that they sell things like this. A tiny tripod with a phone mount at the top. Now on its own this thing offers up increased stability just using it as a mini camera handle. It just removes your hands from the actual camera to give you more stability in your shots. 

The main reason to grab this, is for the actual phone grip at the top, this is because it has a 3 1/4 inch screw that fits to most tripods and rigs. This means that I can effectively use the phone camera on my nice tripod, My slider, my crane and even my steady cam if I wanted to. It just makes your Phone camera that much more adaptable if you're shooting on it.

SELFIE STICK (£1/$1)

I hate these things, for their intended purpose anyway, I initially picked on up at the Poundshop/DollarStore to use as a quick boom pole for a shoot just to get my on board mic a little closer to the subject. It, again, came with a camera grip and I soon found that I could get some interesting shots using it with the phone, due to how light weight it was.

Since then I've been messing with it and, using two of them, have managed to make a basic shoulder rig and even mimic crane shots. Like I said, its also worth having to get your external mic in closer too, but in all honesty its a fantastically adaptable little tool. 

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CLIP ON LENSES (£5/$7)

The camera(with FlimicPro) is pretty awesome in terms of functionality. Its not going to give you quite the depth that you get with a more expensive camera and really operates more with the functionality of a Camcorder. One of the biggest sticking points that I came up against was the fact that the camera had limited lens options apart from being able to zoom slightly, or move closer or further away.

For £5 on ebay, I picked up a selection of clip on lenses that simple clip and adapter over your camera  and then allow you ad a variety of different correctional lens over the pre existing camera. With this kit I got, There clip on adapter, A 2x Zoom lens, A Fisheye lens, A Wide Angle Lens and A Macro Lens for extreme close ups. They are a great little collection, especially for the fact that they cost a couple of pounds and they make the functionality of the lens just that little bit better. 

The lenses are great and although, if I have my protective case on I get a little vignetting on the wider lenses, zooming in slightly fixes the problem and they really give me a lot more options when shooting. They also fit in a tiny little bag that comes with them and can fit in your pocket. 

Here are some pictures of a Ninja to give you an idea of the difference they make.

Standard iPhone Lens

Zoom Lens 

Fisheye Lens

WideAngle Lens

Macro Lens

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This lot aren't going to turn your camera into a rival for Arri Alexa or even a low end DLSR, but they will give you more functionality and more options when it comes to shooting. The saying goes that 'The best camera is the one you have with you" and in this day and age your smartphone camera is the camera you are most likely to have on you at any given time. 

VHS App

The camera is till fairly basic and so getting decent professional looking image can be tough going, but the upside is that using your phone forces you to think about things like composition and lighting more, which can only be a good thing. There are some pretty cool apps out there that add different kinds of style to the camera too. We're having a lot of fun at the minute using the VHS app from Rarevision (£2.99) and the Lens+ App (Free) which allow you to recreate old film stocks and video styles which make for some cool and creative shooting. 

Remember, i'm not saying that you should replace your camera with a smart phone, I'm just suggesting ways that you can make a camera that you carry with you everyday more functional, any camera can look bad in the wrong hands and any camera can look great in the hands of an expert, but its worth exploring what you can do to make your smartphone work for you as a filmmaker.

MJ

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CREATING LIGHT LEAKS 'IN CAMERA'

If you've been following this blog or if you watched any of our movies, you'll know that we love to try and do things as practically as possible. We try and capture as much as we can in camera, from colour to practical effects. In the age of 'Fix it in post' I have to say that I've always felt more comfortable getting as close as I can to the final product on set than I do trying to get the same effect in post production. Thats just me and how 'I' do things though. 

Ungraded shot from Hollower (2014).

I get it, digital effects and post production does a lot of good, I do use a whole heap of things from Colour correction to Masking to CG and I'm a big promoter of visual effects and post work, if it is needed,  just not if its done for the sake of it. I've saved many shots and even whole scenes in post, because something just didn't work on the day, but surely the goal is to get it right at 'showtime', or as close as you can. My 'opinion', and thats all it is, on digital effects and heavy post production is that its a great tool to help you when all else fails. You're main goal should be that all does not fail.

I started shooting my fourth feature at the end of 2014, the film, Hollower, is the story of anagoraphobic who can't leave his studio apartment. In the film there was a scene in which he attempts to leave his 'fortress of solitude' only to find that his condition won't allow it. My first thought was how I would present this visually, and I immediately jumped to what digital effects I could add in post production to represent the severity of his illness, immediately light leaks and an adding various blurs and distortions sprung to mind. I stopped myself there and just took a step back and remembered my 'Don't fix it on post' rule. How could I do what I wanted to do 'In Camera'? 

Then I realised I had the answer.

LENS WHACKING

Lens Whacking is an old school and pretty well documented photographic technique, that involves creating light leaking directly onto the cameras sensor rather than being filtered solely through the lens. The technique also adds some very interesting blurs and distortion due to the way that the lens is held in front of the camera. In terms of the effect I was looking for in the film 'Lens Whacking' was clea the way to go.

Interchangeable Lens System Camera (Canon 600d/T3i)

First of all, your camera will need to have an interchangeable lens system, this is much more common these days with the advent of DSLR'S and Mirrorless system becoming a pretty standard part of the No/Low Budget filmmakers arsenal.

Remove lens from Camera.

The effect comes from removing the lens and setting your cameras 'Operate without lens attached' to on (It called something different depending on the camera model, but its a pretty universal feature and on the Canon it just involves hitting the Video button without a lens attached) this allows your camera to shoot without having your lens attached (Obviously). 

The option looks different on the Panasonic G7.

Now you have pure, unfiltered light hitting your sensor.  You can now simply hold your lens up to the sensor, but instead of attaching it, you allow light to slip in through the gap between the contacts. Moving it around until you have the desired effect. 

Hold the lens over the sensor without connecting it. 

I've found that the effect works best with Normal or Longer focal lengths and shooting on a Canon 600d (T3i), I got the best results from using the 50mm 1.8 as the shorter focal lengths seemed to give less desirable results. It takes a little experimenting to get it right, but the results can be something fantastic. 

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THE PINSTRIPE PIGEON BAND

A few months after shooting Hollower, I was hired to shoot a video for The Pinstripe Pigeon Band to go with their new track 'Never Be Apart'. The song was a slow ballad and the band wanted something that had a restless, dreamlike feel to go with the song. I immediately thought of 'Lens Whacking' as a way to achieve the look the band wanted. I explained my approach and they loved the idea and so thats what we did, I also shot at high frame rate and played the song a double speed (So that it matched when conformed back to 25fps) to help sell the dreamlike visuals that they were going for and I was very pleased with the results.

Still from 'Never Be Apart' The Pinstripe Pigeon Band

I did hit a snag however. After we shot the story elements using the technique, we arrived on location to shoot the bands 'performance' element. Because we were based about 4 hours away  and the video had come together in relatively short notice, we hadn't seen the location outside of photographs and it was actually much smaller than we thought it would be. This was fine for close ups, but the wide shot was a vfx shot and had to be locked off, this meant that I couldn't take the lens off for the shot and so it suddenly stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the video. 

This was the one place I knew I would have to 'fix it in post' and add my leaks after. It came out ok, saved by some time in the edit fixing the problem, but it really did hit home just how much difference doing something practically actually makes. It also serves a good example of both approaches. You can check out the full video for 'Never Be Apart' below. 

So overall my point is that you should rely on post to save your ass, doing things after the fact is great, but giving a little bit of forethought to how you want your final piece to look can really, doing as much as you can there physically on set can bring your stuff to life, Plus its a lot more fun :)

MJ

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ALSO IF YOU'RE BASED IN UK, MICROBUDGET MASSACRE AND THE MILTON KEYNES FILM NETWORK ARE HOSTING THE FIRST OF THIS YEARS SPECIAL 'MYCHO MICROBUDGET MASSACRE MASTERCLASS' LIVE SHOWS ON TUESDAY 8TH MARCH.  

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TO GRADE OR NOT TO GRADE

I was recently asked by a filmmaker friend, if he should shoot flat to give him some room to colour correct and grade in post or if he should use physical lighting to get the look he wanted. I thought it was an interesting question and it had me look at how I approach that aspect of filmmaking and how and why that has changed since I started making movies. 

Ungraded shot from
Code of Silence Music Video

If you've seen any of my work, you'll know how important colour is to me when I'm putting together ANY project. It is one of the first things I consider when I begin pre production. A lot of inspiration for this comes from Italian Director Dario Argento and his use of colour thematically across his work in the 70's and 80's as well as the fact that I grew up reading comic book and 'marvelling' at their use of vibrant colour as a language. As result colour always seemed like an equally important aspect of any visual medium to me. Especially filmmaking. 

Graded shot from Sinnergod/Blaze Bayley video 2012

Its strange to think that, even as short a time ago as the late 90's, colour wasn't given a lot of thought when putting together the look of a film. Go back and look at almost any big budget film shot in the 90's, they all have a the very same, flat, grey cinematic look, that not exclusive, but for the most part. I mean back in the early 2000's David Fincher was still considered a stylised 'out there' director and he was certainly one the directors who paved the way for this line of thought that 'colour' was, in many ways, as important as anything when telling a story. 

As we come closer to the new 20's, every film that appears in theatres is now heavily 'stylised' in its own right, a far cry from their 90's counterparts. Grading is now a permanent part of the workflow and it looks like its here to stay. So today I wanted to talk about my approach to colour and grading and how it has evolved over the last few years since I started making feature length films.

*Please remember, as with resolution, lighting, lens choice and compression, Colour and grading is a very small part of what makes an image look 'cinematic'.

TO GRADE OR NOT TO GRADE

Since I started filmmaking I've graded hundreds of projects. Being an early adopter of programs like HITFILM (Back when it was called AlamDV over a decade and a half ago) one of the programs primary functions outside of VFX was colour grading and it was a new an exciting tool for us as backyard filmmakers. Soon everyone was adopting it and grading became a huge part of the no budget workflow in a world where there had been no room for it before and it opened up a world of possibilities for us as visual storytellers.

The problem arose for me when I started to notice a trend, a well documented trend, that you've most likely come across before. All films started to look the same and when Hollywood finally took the tool to its full extension we started to notice that every film came with the same look. 

That 'Orange and Teal' thing that you now see on every big budget movie that hits theatres in this day and age. I hated it. Not the grading itself, I actually really like the look of a lot of these films, but just the fact that all films both low and high budget started to all just look exactly the same and in the medium of visual storytellers that is dangerous ground to walk on. In many ways, 'grading' films has made us lazy, its become the go to tool of the 'fix it in post' generation.

TO GRADE

When I made Slasher House (back in 2010) I didn't have the equipment or the know how to really get the look that I wanted for the film. I had a clear idea of what I wanted and how the final film should appear on screen, but I was left with the option of lighting it flat and colour grading it in post. The film, for better or worse, is known for its 'nuclear' grade' and, for the most part, taking the grading approach and pushing it as far as I did really helped get the film noticed. But for me, I just wasn't happy. It didn't feel natural, it felt artificial. It felt lazy.

Ungraded shot from +Slasher House 2010

Final Grade from +Slasher House 2010

 Grading is an extremely useful tool, when I'm pushed for time on set its sometimes easier for me to shoot with a flat profile and spend my time in post just getting close to the look I want. It is an extremely powerful in terms of setting tone and it can help tremendously if you are relying on your post production time.

Graded shot from the MychoTV web series. 2011.

I directed a web series in 2011, and we had very little on set time. Sometimes about 2 hours to shoot entire sequences and we just didn't have the time or the equipment to light the way I would want to, so shooting flat and taking care of it in post was the best way to go. Its very much the same story on a lot of music shoots, with limited time with bands or performers, I'll make the choice to shoot flat as possible and do the work in post afterwards. For short form stuff, its an approach that works great for me, but in terms of how I want stuff to look, its still a compromise.

The same thing happens when I'm shooting bright, daylight exteriors. Apart from work with colour temperature, there isn't really too much I can do in terms of lighting when I'm working on a low/no budget. So I'll usually make the choice to shoot smart with available light, shoot with a flat or neutral profile and make any adjustments in post if needed.  

For me, this comes with drawbacks, It feels artificial at times and thats not the aesthetic I look for when I'm shooting. After doing this for a couple of years I decided to rethink my approach.

NOT TO GRADE

Ungraded shot used in Legacy of Thorn 2013

For my next feature in 2013, Legacy of Thorn, I was determined to evolve the look of the film and made the choice very early on that I wanted everything to be as physical as possible and I decided that I wouldn't stop with just pour practical effects. I decided that I would shoot everything as I wanted it to appear in the final film 'in camera'. The result was far better, it felt more natural, more real. I'd never been happier with how one of my films looked and I knew, for me, that this was the way I wanted to do things from here on in.

The next too features I worked on had very little in the way of colour correction at all. In fact Cleaver : Killer Clown, had none apart from a couple of slight colour balance shifts and some adjustment to brightness and contrast in the odd shot to match colour, but again, for the most part the film footage you see on screen is the footage I shot in camera with nothing altered. 

Ungraded shot from Cleaver : Killer Clown 2014

After getting through 2 films using almost no colour correction at all, I felt that I had found comfortable space to work in, that really worked for me and the style that I wanted to bring to my films. Using combination of lighting, gels and colour temperature in camera I found it easy to get the look I wanted without ever having to run it through colour software at all. This had some huge benefits for me.

Ungraded shot from Hollower 2015

First off, because I was doing it this way it made me think about the film and its colours in a lot more depth, right down to props, costumes and even hair colour of my actors. The approach 'forced' me to look at how I was using colour to help tell stories and best of all, saved me, literal weeks in post production because the footage was as close as I wanted it to final product meaning that a large part of my post workflow suddenly just disappeared.



Now technically I actually DO do 'some' form of colour grading, the difference being that I do it 'in camera' before I even shoot anything, but I'll talk more about that next week.

SLASHER HOUSE 2

Graded shot from Slasher House 2010

When it came to Slasher House 2 I was faced with an 'interesting' dilemma. The look of the original film had been popular with the vibrant colours of the grade really standing out as a feature, but I had evolved my filmmaking style since then to use as much in camera lighting as possible. The challenge was taking the style of the original film and recreating it, physically, in camera.

The approach I took was using gels to emulated the colours and choosing costumes and locations as wisely as I could in order to keep the unique colour aesthetic, whilst helping it match the 'in camera' style that we had now employed in our filmmaking. This mixed with adjusting the cameras colour temperature and the contrast/saturation on my 'custom picture profile' helped me get the look I wanted, that has way more depth than I could ever add with a computer in post.

Ungraded shot from Slasher House 2015.

The added bonus of this, now that we're shooting our first 4K film, was that I could cut my footage with very little post processing, meaning I risk very little degradation in the image, which is more common when shooting compressed images. It also means that I can work faster and have a finished product in much less time simply by taking a little extra time on set getting it right.

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Overall the most important thing is that this is what works for me personally, everyone has their own style of working and their own way of doing things and above all, you should be finding the approach to the look of your film that makes you the happiest. 

Ultimately my advice to my filmmaker friend was, "do it however YOU want to do it, its your film after all". I understand the importance of both approaches and I've seen some amazingly well graded stuff that puts my stuff to shame, and the same is true when watching people get their look right 'live on set'. It doesn't really matter how you achieve what your looking for, its all about making YOUR films YOUR way. In the end, as always, thats all that really matters.

MJ

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3 REASONS WHY YOU CAN AND SHOULD BE SHOOTING 4K

Before I start let me just say, today, right now, in terms of film production, there isn't a necessity to be using anything more than the standard 1080 HD that ANY camera worth its salt comes fully equipped to shoot. 1080 is perfectly acceptable and then some and it will be for a long time. 4K is not a necessity by any means, At least not yet. That brings me to the main reason I decided to make the jump.

In the late 90's and early 2000's the video revolution was in full swing. Canon had released the XL1, which, thanks to a slew of indie horrors, including Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (which was actually only partially shot on the XL1) became the go to camera for making video features on the cheap and soon places like Blockbuster had their shelves filled with some inventive (some not so much), low budget horror movies. It was a good time to be a horror fan.

Eventually the HD revolution began as the prices for High Definition tape and cameras finally started to come down and the tech became affordable for your average consumer. In 2009 I made an SD horror feature called Creepsville, exactly the same time the next year I shot my first HD film Slasher House. A year or so later when we started trying to sell them I noticed something disturbing.

A lot of the films I loved as I grew into adulthood were now facing extinction because they were we're shot in SD and without brand recognition they weren't being picked up for rerelease anymore. Most of these titles we're now being deleted from existence, from the point of view of the market anyway. It stands to reason that one day in the not too distant future we'll see the same happen to HD (1080). Which brings me to my first reason.

1. FUTURE PROOFING

For most distributors SD just wasn't an option anymore, they were interested as hell in the High Def film, but they told me in no uncertain terms that "SD just wasn't an option for them anymore" in fact they told me that "Anything produced before 1999 in terms of new films was not worth them taking on". I watched a lot of filmmakers face that struggle as we transitioned into the new High resolution technology (of course there were odd exceptions like Marc Price's Colin that slipped through) and failed to find a home for their Standard Def features.

There is now continued interest from distributors in my HD film Slasher House 5 years on, But no distributor wants to touch the SD Creepsville because its not 'viable' for them to try and shift Standard Definition programming anymore, even though ultimately the film wold end up on DVD which is of course Standard Def, distributors now demand a higher quality master.

So with that said, why wouldn't the same eventually happen with 4K? Well, it might, but the life of any films shot on 4k will be longer than anything shot in SD going forward. 4K resolution also boasts the size (from my understanding at least) as cinema screen resolution, which puts it just higher than digital protections lowest standard (2k). There is every reason to believe that we'll sat at this standard for a fairly long time, if not permanently.

2. ITS CHEAPER THAN YOU THINK

"Surely this cinematic quality comes at a price?" We'll yeah it does, but that price doesn't have to break the bank anymore and in 2016 is not really anymore than shooting 1080p. The truth is, that in the last year, 4K has become a very affordable option for everyone. I looked into shooting in higher resolution in 2014 when we came back from the Premiere of Legacy of Thorn and it just wasn't an option for me as a low budget indie with cheapest options being £4000, before adding tens tuff to make them functional.

Today you can start shooting out of the box for as little as £400 (or less if you buy used) as there are now many more options thanks to companies like Sony and Panasonic leading the charge to bring the tech to the everyday consumer. We're now talking the same price as Canon's latest Rebel (T*i) models but with the added bonus of four times the resolution.

The best part is that, this tech is becoming cheaper all the time, its all ready fallen to 10 times less than it was 2 years ago. Next year it'll be available for much less again and pretty soon, shooting in 4K will become the norm and thats a good thing. I mean, even your phones (mainly Samsung) have been shooting 4k for a couple of years now.

I've detailed a list of 4K options in Part 2 of this blog (coming soon) that range from solutions for the penniless filmmaker to something a little fancier for those with a bit more money to spend, but of course I've kept within the low budget ethos of this blog, It really is worth looking at the options out there now as you'll find...

3. IT REALLY IS BETTER THAN HD

Shot from Panasonic LX100 (4K) : Slasher House 2

This seems fairly obvious, as you are working with more resolution. But I often hear, and have been guilty of thinking it myself "How much difference can it make?". I have to say, in a few short months of shooting both HD and UHD (4K), even shooting 4K compressed to a MP4 container, I would say the difference is VERY noticeable and in a very positive way.

I was concerned that it really wouldn't make a difference, and that shooting 4K would ultimately be a large risk with added expense, but the second I got the rushes back from our first shoot I could see a clear jump in quality, even from the 1080 AVCHD that the same camera also shoots.

Shot from Panasonic G7 (4k) : Slasher House 2

Another worry a lot of people have is the expense of things like storage etc, Obviously the files are about 4 times larger. but buying new harddrives didn't break the bank too much as the prices are dropping so dramatically it set me back the same amount as I would have paid 2 years ago for quarter of the storage, so it kind of evens out, I got two 2GB usb3 drives for around £100 (one edit, one backup) and they run fine on my out of the box 2012 Imac (the cheapest you can buy too).

You should take into a account that a low end machine will struggle with 4K playback from time to time and if you don't have a butt load of Ram, you're gonna have a slightly slower machine when it comes to cutting, but I've found a decent work around that I'll talk about in Part 3 (Coming soon).

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I'll try and cover elements here in more detail over the next couple of weeks.

Please note that 4k is not the be all and end all. Its important that you don't worry about this too much, if moving to 4K is an option, you should certainly consider it for the first reason alone, but its more important that you just keep making movies.

Whether it's on 8/16/35mm film, Analogue Tape, MiniDV, SLR, Compact Camera, your iPhone or a 'Red Max Ninja Dragon T2 Turbo : Street Edition', Don't let technology worry you its all there for one reason. To help you tell stories and in the end it really doesn't matter how you do that as long as you do it well.

MJ

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SEEING THE LIGHT : £5 DIY LED lights

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

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