Lightweight portable setups for learning

[lsanbourne]

Hello,

First, thank you so much to Roger Deakins for the generosity, amazing info, and incredible films. I’m an opera singer specialising in chamber music and concert work, and I also make high-end audio recordings (16 channels of RME+Schoeps) in beautiful historic European venues, often in organ lofts with historic instruments. Classical music is super video focused now, so I started doing video, and I would love your help finding a lighting setup to improve my work and help me learn.

The goal of these videos is eventually to convince major conductors and festivals to hire us. But I realised I have a chance to tell the story of these extremely dedicated and humble people who show up looking like casual laypeople, have a deeply intimate relationship with centuries-old repertoire and instruments, and play like gods. But the emotion we communicate is the most important thing.

For lighting, depending on the vibe of the music, I’ve sometimes worked with candles, overhead existing spots reflected on sheet music desks, etc…but more often we’ve just done the best setup for audio and accepted existing light for video, which looks bad.

So, can anyone recommend a starter setup to improve my 2 use cases?

1. Very portable setup, flying around Europe with a 35kg case that has some room for very flat lights. I considered 1 or 2 Aputure MC Pros + their diffuser, but I don’t know if these are too small to be useless.

2. Less portable setup, working near home – could load some stuff into a cab, but I’m still a solo shooter and often filming myself. Can accommodate slightly more stuff.

All the best and thank you!!

Larry

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