Film Set Lighting Apps

Straying away from my normal blog about film lighting, I am going to be talking about a useful app I found the other day called set Lighting by Enlightened Shenanigans. Set Lighting is an IPhone app that is meant for Director of photography’s, Gaffers, and anyone on the G & E teams. This app has a catalog of any and all Film lighting and electrical we use in the industry today.

        Set Lighting has it all; from looking up information on certain lighting fixtures from Kino to the new ARRI LED lights. If you thought you are intrigued just by that, you also have an area you can look up specs on a condor lift to a scissor lift.

         For all you new bees, say you see something on a truck and you don’t know what it is, simply open set Lighting on your IPhone and find what you are looking for. With pictures of the object your looking for or searching, you should have no problem finding them.

        Normally all lighting apps stop there, but not with set Lighting. You have cheat sheets for distro such as; amp chart, volt drop per 100 feet and max ampacity. It shows distro examples on how to lay out distro on a set. As well as teaching you how to tie knots. Not to mention set Lighting shows you jell swatches and tells you why you should use them.  I can go on and on about how setLighting can help you, but you would have to buy this app for your self. I feel the $9.99 price tag is a great price for this app. You will not find a better app anywhere else. All I can say is, I wish I had this app when I was a new Electric on set.    

G&E Websites

Hello Lighting people. I am going to be talking about Websites in are industry. As well more on the fact of how easy it is to navigate. 

(Disclaimer), The preference in gear i say or use does not mean I feel its the best, I grew up with the gear and I have my own take on it. 

As a Gaffer / Director of Photography, I am always faced with picking the right gear for the job. When I work or hire a truck for a shoot, I love to see ARRI tungsten lights, LTM HMI’s and American Grip. I am starting to switch to ARRI HMI’s after seeing the M18s do the job. 

After going on websites and searching for gear, I find that many grip and lighting websites fall short of the advertising of there gear. Example, American Grip. I love American Grip, but the website is so old and needs to be updated. I need to see pictures and not just stats. American Grip is a house name in the industry for Warner Brothers, Disney, and Universal. When I talk with smaller owner operators of grip trucks, they mainly go with Matthews Grip or Norms. Why do you ask? Because they said they can order online and see what they are buying. Don’t get me wrong, Mathews Grip is a great company and I trust the stands and rigging. Norms has started to come back with force.

Living in todays age, I feel a company needs a website that represents who they are. As well be on the brink of technology for the company. A web site represents the company of who they are and what they stand for. Looking at American Grips web site opposed to Matthew grip and Norms website, I feel American Grip is losing out on potential costumers. 

In todays lesson, I just wan’t to make a point to say, if you have your own company or your a freelancer, It does not hurt to have your self a website for people to go to and research you. With having a website, you have to remember to keep up with the times and always update your site or you may be losing out on potential work. 

Happy Lighting.