Perfect Doco Location Lighting Package

I would love to hear people's thoughts on what makes the perfect doco location package for travelling. The travel would be across the States, possibly into the middle east and parts of Europe. We are trying to travel light but at the same time cover ourselves.

My thoughts were : Dedo kit, chimera china ball, pocket par, lite panels, Arri kit.

Maybe not all of these, but they would all be useful.

Cheers

Matthew Woolf
NYC DP

>I would love to hear people's thoughts on what makes the perfect doco >location package for travelling

I'd probably want to use a Dedo kit and a Kino interview kit.

Jessica Gallant
Los Angeles based Director of Photography
West Coast Systems Administrator, Cinematography Mailing List
https://cinematography.net/

Kino interview kit? Never heard of that kit. Is it an existing kit - or something you use. Also I imagine that we will be lighting other situations other than just interviews.

Cheers

Matthew Woolf
NYC DP

Jessica Gallant writes :

>>I would love to hear people's thoughts on what makes the perfect doco >>location package for travelling

Perfect timing, since I'm going up to SF next week for that purpose: I have an Arri Kit (4 tweenies w/ one chimera), but the really important piece of gear would be a 4x4' Kino with egg crate. The egg crate is essential because otherwise you need a bunch of hard-to-pack grip stuff. Dedo kit would be next...

Good luck,

Chris Taylor
IA 600/DGA
Santa Monica

They sell two interview kits - a 2 ft. four bank and a 2 ft. 2 bank, and a 2 ft. four band with two 2 ft. 2 banks, and the cases are relatively small and easy to carry.

Jessica Gallant
Los Angeles based Director of Photography
West Coast Systems Administrator, Cinematography Mailing List
https://cinematography.net/

I definitely like de Dedo & Kino combination, I'd just add a 575W PAR and some lightweight collapsible frames and grip heads Lowell makes (or made) so as to be able to stretch solid, nets or diff. and have some light control on a compact package.

Victor Lefelman
Gaffer.

Matthew Woolf wrote:

>I would love to hear people's thoughts on what makes the perfect doco >location package for travelling.

We used, on a doc for shipping company, kino's 4bank and Diva 400 as well as Arrisun 5 and 12. The power demands and light output ratio of the HMI makes them great to use it without a generator. I felt a Miniflo kit and a smaller HMI, like the pocket pars, would have been great and sometimes we needed a big HMI for exteriors but the shooting went out pretty good with what we had.

Regards

Rodrigo Lizana Lamarca
Pixine, Cine Digital
www.pixine.cl
Santiago, Chile

Matthew Woolf wrote:

>I would love to hear people's thoughts on what makes the perfect doco >location package for travelling.

I got a Rifa light for quick interview setups a while back, and I find it hard to beat. The 750W Rifa seems to be hotter than an Arri 1K through a Chimera (though perhaps not quite as diffused). It goes up and down in a flash. Kinos are very useful but somehow I have gotten tired of them.

I have an older Dedo kit, 4x100w heads and ballast, and it is nearly 50lbs even with the focal spot and some other accs taken out. It is useful for backgrounds and backlights, maybe a bounce fill, and occasionally an old-fashioned hardlight key...but I almost never have used all four heads. Though there was an interview job last year with all hard-light headshots, for which the Dedo's were superb.

I am thinking hard about selling this Dedo kit and getting 2 of the newer 150w heads with built-in dimmers. Those, with Dedo stands, could fit easily into a Pelican case with some lighting accs and be much more portable than what I've got. +