[apdh]

First off I wanted to thank you both for graciously staying two hours late at your recent book signing in Santa Monica to speak to those of us at the very back of the line.

As a gaffer I would say my biggest lighting challenge to date was a short film that was a 9 minute oner with 8 lighting cues I had to trigger via DMX. The stage was a white cyc with a very nice built in softbox using litetile and magic cloth already wired for DMX.

However, as you likely know the issue with fading up most any LED fixture is that the jump from 0-1% is quite noticeable so I had to hide the moments fading up from black within the steadicam moves. I thought I had my timing with the fades dialed after a few flawless takes until the actors changed some minor blocking which I had been using to anticipate the camera tilting up so I was a second late on fading up the softbox. The director didn’t even notice but I was bummed as they wanted to use that take potentially. Thankfully we got 6-7 takes with no issues. It was stressful but a fun challenge.

However, my most frequent lighting challenge is the small white box of a location. People often don’t understand how essential production design is to the image.

[apdh]

As a gaffer I’d say leave it to the gaffer to worry about buying lights. You can own 3 or so solid lights as a DP for small jobs but otherwise it’ll limit your creativity to be stuck with with your own. Also you are correct that there is a never ending ceiling to buying grip and electric gear.

[Author]

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