Monday, October 8, 2007

Equipment Spotlight : Peter's Homemade Light Dimmer

I wanted to take a moment to point out a piece of equipment that came in handy on numerous occasions during the shoot of 'Bystander'. Peter is our resident sound engineer/Inventor/Mad Scientist who's involvement in the production was invaluable. We found early on in the shoot that we could really use some more light control, as night shoots tend to be tricky and those 1000 watt lights tend to be a little unwieldy in terms of intensity. Unfortunately for us low-budget filmmakers (a.k.a. "LoBudgies" or "The Poor"), light dimmers that can handle that kind of wattage go for hundreds of dollars on Ebay.
Peter cobbled this one together in what seemed like 4 minutes, and it performed marvelously. We had (2) 1000-watt Tota lights plugged in for hours, and it provided a huge amount of latitude and control. I almost don't want to know how he did it, but if the magician wants to reveal how he did pull it off, I'll provide a diagram here in a later post.

1 comment:

Landon said...

I've said it before and I'll say it again- Peter is an f'n GENIUS!