How Adam Savage's Workshop is Lit for Filming Builds!

The Art of Lighting: A Hands-On Approach with Amaran and Aperture's Speed Rail Rig Setup

We've had the privilege of working with some amazing tools and equipment over the years, but our latest project stands out from the rest. Our speed rail rig setup has been a game-changer for us, allowing us to experiment with new lighting techniques and push the boundaries of what we thought was possible. In this article, we'll take you through the process of setting up our speed rail rig, exploring its various features, and highlighting some of the cool tools we've discovered along the way.

As we began working on our project, it quickly became apparent that our speed rail rig would be a key component in achieving the desired look. We started by experimenting with different lighting setups, trying out various combinations of colors, effects, and intensities to create a unique atmosphere. One of the most exciting aspects of our setup is the ability to play around with colors and effects. With Amaran's RGBW lights, we can achieve a wide range of hues and shades, from warm and cozy to cool and edgy.

We took some time to mess around with the dials and experiment with different looks, eventually settling on a style that we're really happy with. One of our favorite features is the ability to add pulsing effects to our lights, which adds an extra layer of depth and visual interest to our scenes. We also discovered that the speed rail rig allows us to achieve some incredible lighting effects, such as lightning strikes and faulty bulb simulations. These added elements help bring our scenes to life and create a more immersive experience for our audience.

In addition to its impressive lighting capabilities, our speed rail rig setup also comes with a range of other features that make it an incredibly versatile tool. We were able to play around with the iPad's built-in effects, experimenting with things like spotlights, backlighting, and even creating our own custom effects using the app's intuitive interface. The app itself is incredibly powerful, offering a wide range of options for adjusting color temperature, brightness, and more.

We also explored how to utilize the speed rail rig to create some amazing lighting effects on set. We took advantage of the iPad's ability to add shadows and contrast to our scenes, using the backlight feature to highlight Adam's features and create a dramatic effect. The blue light we added to the wall created an incredible level of depth and texture in our shots, adding an extra layer of visual interest.

In terms of lighting control, our setup allows for a great deal of flexibility and precision. We were able to adjust the light intensity and color temperature using the iPad's interface, allowing us to achieve a range of different effects with ease. We also experimented with using egg crates to narrow down the spread beam of the lights, creating more defined shadows and highlights in our scenes.

As we continued working on our project, it became clear that one of the most exciting aspects of our speed rail rig setup was its ability to be used in a variety of creative ways. Whether we were trying to create a specific mood or atmosphere, or simply experimenting with new techniques, this setup gave us the freedom to push the boundaries of what was possible.

In terms of practical applications, our speed rail rig setup proved to be an incredibly useful tool on set. We found that it allowed us to achieve a level of control and precision that would have been difficult to achieve using other lighting setups. The speed rail rig's ability to adjust to different shooting styles and formats made it an essential component in our production.

One of the most exciting aspects of our project was the opportunity to experiment with some truly innovative techniques. We spent hours playing around with the lights, discovering new effects and experimenting with different color combinations. Our use of the speed rail rig and Amaran's RGBW lights has opened up a whole new world of creative possibilities for us, and we can't wait to see where this journey takes us next.

As we look to the future, it's clear that our speed rail rig setup will continue to play an important role in our creative process. With its impressive lighting capabilities, intuitive interface, and versatility, this setup is sure to be a valuable asset in our toolkit for years to come. Whether we're working on a new project or simply experimenting with new techniques, we know that the speed rail rig and Amaran's RGBW lights will always be at the forefront of our creative process.

We'd like to extend a huge thank you to Amaran and Aperture for sponsoring this build and providing us with the opportunity to work with their incredible tools. Their support is invaluable, and we're grateful to have them as partners in our creative journey.

As we wrap up this article, we can't help but feel excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. With the speed rail rig setup and Amaran's RGBW lights, we know that we'll be able to push the boundaries of what's possible in lighting and create some truly stunning visuals. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, we hope this article has inspired you to explore the world of lighting and discover the incredible possibilities that await.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey there hey there hi there ho there hi everybody Adam Savage in my cave and if my cave behind me looks darker than normal that's because the cave behind me is darker than normal Joey and I tested we are about to put in a new lighting grid so we've got this ceiling here we've got this ceiling here that is um here actually let me all right so here is the ceiling of my cave there's a lot going on there is a lot going on yeah it's really important that I get this before see all this crap all this crap is not good we don't need all this crap we don't we got to get rid of some of this crap oh we're come over here and spin around so you see all the stuff here yeah there we go that so that's the cave as it currently stands and recently we did this very nice video we'll include a link in the description for the lighting here um these soft boxes are part of a package that we can control with an iPad and I can turn it into into playtime or I can go to drama o oh or I can go back to regular yeah this is really going to be awesome and we're about to add that exact same functionality to the roof here um but in order to start that I need to pull everything out of the roof now what what does it mean to install a lighting system in here what it really means is that we're going to hang a grid of a 2-in aluminum pipe that is uh 6 feet wide and 16 ft long uh that will fill the space in here and it'll have a couple of crossbars and then we're going to hang lights from that grid so uh I'm going to oh right how am I hanging a lighting grid this grid of aluminum I'm glad you asked I've got these things that are um beam hangers here so I put in some lag bolts in this and this attaches to the beams up there in the ceiling um and it's yeah basically I'm Distributing this load across six of these the amount of lighting I'm hanging on here is maybe 100 lb total across this whole grid so I'm Distributing that across six steel hangers and uh braided cable a distributed system is a is a safe system it means that there's no single point of failure um I believe that any one of these cables could hold up all the lighting that we have to hold up here and so six is plenty uh but the next thing I'm going to do is actually start to hang the first pieces of this grid and I'm going to measure from some places and kind of it's a whole thing um hm I just realized something I need to worry about all right give me in just a second anyway um yeah so hang in a lighting grid today we're going well Joey and I now have four of the six hanging points installed um I really I can't emphasize enough that this is not a tutorial about how to hang stuff in your shop do not come at me and say that you learn from here this is there's a whole bunch of stuff about rigging I am not explaining necessarily and it is tenuous and difficult and dangerous to hang things above yourself so I just really want to make sure that uh this is not a video to teach you how to hang stuff from your ceiling please um that's just what happened when I hung stuff from my ceiling oh there's some more dust and dirt and then we're going to start hanging some uh some pipes and the grid is in this is a hard thing to see there H yeah yeah there's the grid hey hey folks uh it is Joey here I am on Adam's iPhone rig to give you a final tour of the rigs that we set up the speed rail rig all the lights the app control and all that I'm going to give you a little bit of a tour of what we're thinking we're going to be doing with this stuff in these two different areas of Adam shop that we shoot in uh but first I want to give a huge thanks to amaran and aperture that's the company who has supplied all of these lights for us they are sort of a sponsor of this build we've been using their light since day one I've been in close contact with that company um and so we have a a pretty big partnership we're fans of theirs they're fans of ours and so this made sense um and of course even if we weren't I would still be using these lights cuz I am a huge fan of what they put out so let's walk you through some of the basics here um you last saw Adam was setting up some of the speed rail I was Drilling in holes we got all that stuff set up on um safety cables and then after that I just went through and put up lights uh in various areas that can do multiple looks there's a couple different philosophy Rees on how we were approaching this um first and foremost right now there's no lights on it's a little bit of dark here uh and but being that it's so dark you can sort of see where the iPhone sort of falls apart a little bit in low light situations it gets really grainy it gets really noisy um the image come becomes a little bit blurred because the iPhone's trying to do certain things here with the you know the sharpening the aliasing and kind of trying to clean up the image and so we want to avoid that by giving this room a little bit more light cuz naturally uh there's not a whole lot of window we have a skylight on that side of the cave um but that is very inconsistent and sort of direct and a little bit wonky at times so first and foremost we wanted to bring all the ambient light up in this entire place which required a lot of area lights a lot of space lights um which is totally fine for the main shoper room where he does all the Machining but in this room we got you know a little bit of a shorter ceiling and so we can't put down big area light so the first things we needed to think about was how are we going to provide enough ambient light that's not going to be in the way but also not going to feel like a set um which is another big important thing for what we're doing here this is Adam's space this is his the space where he feels comfortable working where he wants to be and we don't want to be blasting down huge um studio lights into his eyes all day long and so Comfort was a big thing those were the things we need to think about bring the ambient first of all bring the ambient level up um make it comfortable make it have the option the option to be comfortable that's the the key thing here and that's where the app came in with the cus link and the amaran epure stuff um make it comfortable make it controllable and then figure out what kind of different looks that we wanted to do so that Josh or myself or anybody else that comes in and shoots in this location can have the option to change up the looks without tearing things down or setting up more stuff um you know the speed rail was a big part in making this mobile making these lights mobile making things a little bit more malleable without having light stands on the ground or mounting things to the walls so what we have here is um two massive rails coming through with like a almost like a figure eight with three smaller rails going on either side uh we put that up cuz we knew that we were going to be putting lights all around the spot because he's in um this is probably the area that's a little more inconsistent because of that Skylight that Skylight brings down um an incredible amount of light in certain points of the day and so we wanted to combat that a little bit and the way we did that was we added um a couple apertures here uh or amarand rather we have an amarand f22c which is this Light Panel it's a panel that goes uh it's almost like a mobile panel it folds into like four pieces folds out and then you can add this layer of diffusion and this little softbox around it um completely controllable so we added that there and then we added in aperture two I want to say 200 uh uh chip on board light this is like a a little Spotlight um that we have over there as well I'll show you what the difference is but here we have a soft volume attachment like basically diffuses and spreads out this light and the same light is used over here as a spotlight this is the amaran 200 so this the same light sitting up there just with a spotlight attachment I need actually need to put a Fel I'm going to put a Fel there and that's going to be giving back light I'll demonstrate some of that stuff with the our cameras uh and me standing in these locations I'll turn all these on in just a second but I just want to give you a little torque um F22 another f22c gave me a nice big soft box uh source and then a couple of these little spots here these are aperture 60 XS which are like these scoop lights that are going to be giving some background lights uh those things are not going to be really light and at them at all they're really just going to be adding pockets of light in areas that we want to either bring up the values on or even in this case in here I'm adding some some Shadow some cool light on the back bricks but then also punching it through the thing and some of these cables to add some shadows and some death just try to make this place a little bit more threedimensional and then I have a couple of Lights here that um are actually on this rig but are shooting into the next space which we will go into now this was the room that needed the most light levels brought up uh and unfortunately not a whole lot of room to you know make those like those area lights that you saw those volumetric um spherical lights hang down so a lot of the stuff here was toplit unfortunately so we have two F22 C's which are those light panels here coming down on some of these work tables there's another one coming down and then we have a couple um we have a couple those 60 XS adding some little pockets of warm light over like his tape and just to give it a little bit more uh something harder something to contrast with some of the areas here so you know you get some you know various looks and various light levels tonality stuff throughout that area and then I have a bunch of tube lights in here so these tube lights are uh sort of the MVP here there's a lot of fluoresence in this shop and the tube lights here are meant to replace those and a lot of regards the his fluorescent lights actually don't have a a terrible light quality or a light uh a color meter reading that's two off the charts and so we have used we have utilized some of them but some of these we've just taken offline and then put these amaran uh tube lights here and then Adam built some foam core sort of coverings here to keep that light directly you know blasting in his eyes as he's working and so those are set up in various areas of the shop just to give that work space fluorescent fixture look to it um over here I did something kind of unique in that is uh I took a smaller version of that tube light and then I put a pool nle around it it is a um like a white a white pool noodle that helps diffuse that light it brings it down a couple stops but it diffuses that light makes a little bit softer and a little more gentle and spreads it out a little bit nicely um yeah it's a it's a it's a it is a an old technique not old but it's a technique that has been used in the film industry it's not new here um but it's something that I've really taken to uh let's go ahead and turn some of these on I'll show you what they look like what the app looks like right over in Adam's up here we have an iPad that's dedicated to this I have a mini here that's going to replace this big one but let's go ahead and turn this on and you can go ahead and see that I've added a bunch of quick shots here for Adam to just come in and simply turn something on now the reason there's a lot of different settings here is because like I said Adam's Comfort is a big part of this um we don't want to make this like a studio light setup to where he's not going to be comfortable being in here for 8 to 10 hours a day and so I have a standard setup here that's something that he can just turn on on and it gives him it gives him a good amount of light throughout his shop but is also set to be a little bit warmer um our cameras are usually set this is going to begin a little bit in the weeds but our cameras are usually set around 4500 Kelvin which is sort of lands in the middle of tungsten and daylight um that is something that we that is the closest to what was in Adam's um this area of Adam's cave where the Skylight is as that Skylight cuts through that ND sort of bounces around and you think about light it's not really just the light source that's adding light but everything the light bounces off of is is adding some color it's becoming its own light source and so the general ambient Kelvin in this shop usually hovers around 4500 it's like 4,000 to 4700 depending on the day but 4500 is where we landed on he likes his shop a little bit warmer so he likes itting somewhere in the 3800 Kelvin so you're getting to warmer light you're getting more towards tungsten and so that's what we have here and the iPhone can resolve that the iPhone is trying to do a lot it is taking it is taking the light levels and doing its own Auto white balance and giving him um you know normalizing him just a little bit while keeping him a little bit warmer in here and you know we sacrific a little bit of light levels and the iPhone you know tries his best to resolve that but that's the trade-off right when he's shooting here with his iPhone and he wants to be comfortable this is what we're going for the second option is when I when Josh and myself are shooting with the fx6 which which you know when we're in here with our cameras and we're actually shooting um we want the white balance and this room and this room both consistent because even though it's warmer here it's still a little bit manipulated by the the U the Sun the Skylight there and it's that's actually like cooling it down quite a bit and so there's still a bit of inconsistency so I set up a second uh quick shot called the fx6 shoot which is when we're using our fx6 cameras and what that does is it basically just punches all of this light up just a little bit and brings it all back to 4500 which is what our which is what our um our professional cameras are set to so we don't have to roll the iso as high on our Sony fx6 to get a correct exposure um it's a little bit more lit here so like if this was how Adam was working this would probably drive him a little bit nuts because it is just there is just so much light here but also we just have so much more flexibility with our cameras we can do slow motion and we can higher frame rate stuff and not have to worry about dropping down you know our exposure to such a degree that we need to use our gain to amp things up and and do um you know deal with noise or compression issues there and so that's where we landed on on those two main setups and these are where we live most of the time and then also we just have a ton of options to be able to play around so there's a little um event happening here and so we came in here and just started messing with dials and gave it a little bit more of a of a fun look so you know all these things most of these lights are rgbw and so you know now I can give it some blues and some Reds and sort of some pulsing you know pulsing Fireside lights you know it's not something that we normally shoot in or you know maybe we'll Sho some b-roll this kind of stuff um but just something a little more a little more uh atmospheric or uh a little more stylized to um have some fun in yeah you have tons of options with this app of course there's effects built in uh if we wanted to do some like lightning effects or some faulty bulb stuff if we were doing something dramatic in here or we wanted to like play around with um you know something a little bit of a of a flash like I can set the spotlight back here to do a little bit of a Flash and we can throw some fog in when Adam's doing some spacit tests uh and make it a little more dramatic um I have one called uh like a standup you know ad reads or something where he's talking down to the camera you know we have a little bit of a spotlight here to give him some backlight and then I got some front light here and then everything back here dims down so that most of the level lands on him while falling off in the back to give some light contrast and also color contrast these are a little bit warmer and then I have the blue light sort of shining onto uh the wall back there through the thing adding those shadows and so yeah you just have a bunch of different options on that regard so I mentioned how the speed rail rig over on this side of Adam shop is providing the lights for that side of the shop but also we have on this furthest side of this rail we do have some lights that are pouring in through here to add levels to this side of the shop uh again the ceilings are low on here there isn't a whole lot of wall space and so we can't add a whole lot of lights coming in at a more horizontal uh a more horizontal angle to help lift up some of those Shadows or do some fill light everything is kind of topheavy here um we do have a little bit of help from the F22 C's that are just angled just ever so slightly and they don't have egg crates typically what you want to do uh in more control situations is you have you know they have the soft Source here and then you put these things called egg crates down and they sort of add a grid uh that help that help narrow the spread beam down so like right now my fist is getting light but if you had those egg crates you know there's they're they're they're a black grid and the light would really just be coming downwards and so you would get a little bit less on your hand here but we need that help in here um we need uh a little bit more level on Adam's face when he's just standing here or else it's just going to be these drop you know these big drops of light and so I took those EG crates off um at some point I might add some duotine and and block out some areas I think the next step for this whole area is is to block out like um start removing angles of light that we can add some more tonal contrast to this you know to these scenes basically so there you go um lots of cool fun lighting changes uh toys to play with this is going to be a lot of fun I think the app if these were all just dumb lights where we just turn them all on and and let that be what it is this wouldn't be as exciting but the fact that we can go into this and not only like take this iPad with us and just have us all all the shooters that come through here be able to change to their their own look that they want and then also having Adam be able to come in here have fun playing with this stuff I think it's really really exciting so thank you guys for joining us uh on this speed rail rig lighting build setup and thank you again to amaran and aperture for uh helping us with this um you know sponsoring this build being such a great partner for so many years uh we will see you guys next time on another if we do more lighting as as this evolves and change we might jump in and and do some updates and uh we love to get you guys' thoughts on what you would like to see us do with some of this stuff until then byehey there hey there hi there ho there hi everybody Adam Savage in my cave and if my cave behind me looks darker than normal that's because the cave behind me is darker than normal Joey and I tested we are about to put in a new lighting grid so we've got this ceiling here we've got this ceiling here that is um here actually let me all right so here is the ceiling of my cave there's a lot going on there is a lot going on yeah it's really important that I get this before see all this crap all this crap is not good we don't need all this crap we don't we got to get rid of some of this crap oh we're come over here and spin around so you see all the stuff here yeah there we go that so that's the cave as it currently stands and recently we did this very nice video we'll include a link in the description for the lighting here um these soft boxes are part of a package that we can control with an iPad and I can turn it into into playtime or I can go to drama o oh or I can go back to regular yeah this is really going to be awesome and we're about to add that exact same functionality to the roof here um but in order to start that I need to pull everything out of the roof now what what does it mean to install a lighting system in here what it really means is that we're going to hang a grid of a 2-in aluminum pipe that is uh 6 feet wide and 16 ft long uh that will fill the space in here and it'll have a couple of crossbars and then we're going to hang lights from that grid so uh I'm going to oh right how am I hanging a lighting grid this grid of aluminum I'm glad you asked I've got these things that are um beam hangers here so I put in some lag bolts in this and this attaches to the beams up there in the ceiling um and it's yeah basically I'm Distributing this load across six of these the amount of lighting I'm hanging on here is maybe 100 lb total across this whole grid so I'm Distributing that across six steel hangers and uh braided cable a distributed system is a is a safe system it means that there's no single point of failure um I believe that any one of these cables could hold up all the lighting that we have to hold up here and so six is plenty uh but the next thing I'm going to do is actually start to hang the first pieces of this grid and I'm going to measure from some places and kind of it's a whole thing um hm I just realized something I need to worry about all right give me in just a second anyway um yeah so hang in a lighting grid today we're going well Joey and I now have four of the six hanging points installed um I really I can't emphasize enough that this is not a tutorial about how to hang stuff in your shop do not come at me and say that you learn from here this is there's a whole bunch of stuff about rigging I am not explaining necessarily and it is tenuous and difficult and dangerous to hang things above yourself so I just really want to make sure that uh this is not a video to teach you how to hang stuff from your ceiling please um that's just what happened when I hung stuff from my ceiling oh there's some more dust and dirt and then we're going to start hanging some uh some pipes and the grid is in this is a hard thing to see there H yeah yeah there's the grid hey hey folks uh it is Joey here I am on Adam's iPhone rig to give you a final tour of the rigs that we set up the speed rail rig all the lights the app control and all that I'm going to give you a little bit of a tour of what we're thinking we're going to be doing with this stuff in these two different areas of Adam shop that we shoot in uh but first I want to give a huge thanks to amaran and aperture that's the company who has supplied all of these lights for us they are sort of a sponsor of this build we've been using their light since day one I've been in close contact with that company um and so we have a a pretty big partnership we're fans of theirs they're fans of ours and so this made sense um and of course even if we weren't I would still be using these lights cuz I am a huge fan of what they put out so let's walk you through some of the basics here um you last saw Adam was setting up some of the speed rail I was Drilling in holes we got all that stuff set up on um safety cables and then after that I just went through and put up lights uh in various areas that can do multiple looks there's a couple different philosophy Rees on how we were approaching this um first and foremost right now there's no lights on it's a little bit of dark here uh and but being that it's so dark you can sort of see where the iPhone sort of falls apart a little bit in low light situations it gets really grainy it gets really noisy um the image come becomes a little bit blurred because the iPhone's trying to do certain things here with the you know the sharpening the aliasing and kind of trying to clean up the image and so we want to avoid that by giving this room a little bit more light cuz naturally uh there's not a whole lot of window we have a skylight on that side of the cave um but that is very inconsistent and sort of direct and a little bit wonky at times so first and foremost we wanted to bring all the ambient light up in this entire place which required a lot of area lights a lot of space lights um which is totally fine for the main shoper room where he does all the Machining but in this room we got you know a little bit of a shorter ceiling and so we can't put down big area light so the first things we needed to think about was how are we going to provide enough ambient light that's not going to be in the way but also not going to feel like a set um which is another big important thing for what we're doing here this is Adam's space this is his the space where he feels comfortable working where he wants to be and we don't want to be blasting down huge um studio lights into his eyes all day long and so Comfort was a big thing those were the things we need to think about bring the ambient first of all bring the ambient level up um make it comfortable make it have the option the option to be comfortable that's the the key thing here and that's where the app came in with the cus link and the amaran epure stuff um make it comfortable make it controllable and then figure out what kind of different looks that we wanted to do so that Josh or myself or anybody else that comes in and shoots in this location can have the option to change up the looks without tearing things down or setting up more stuff um you know the speed rail was a big part in making this mobile making these lights mobile making things a little bit more malleable without having light stands on the ground or mounting things to the walls so what we have here is um two massive rails coming through with like a almost like a figure eight with three smaller rails going on either side uh we put that up cuz we knew that we were going to be putting lights all around the spot because he's in um this is probably the area that's a little more inconsistent because of that Skylight that Skylight brings down um an incredible amount of light in certain points of the day and so we wanted to combat that a little bit and the way we did that was we added um a couple apertures here uh or amarand rather we have an amarand f22c which is this Light Panel it's a panel that goes uh it's almost like a mobile panel it folds into like four pieces folds out and then you can add this layer of diffusion and this little softbox around it um completely controllable so we added that there and then we added in aperture two I want to say 200 uh uh chip on board light this is like a a little Spotlight um that we have over there as well I'll show you what the difference is but here we have a soft volume attachment like basically diffuses and spreads out this light and the same light is used over here as a spotlight this is the amaran 200 so this the same light sitting up there just with a spotlight attachment I need actually need to put a Fel I'm going to put a Fel there and that's going to be giving back light I'll demonstrate some of that stuff with the our cameras uh and me standing in these locations I'll turn all these on in just a second but I just want to give you a little torque um F22 another f22c gave me a nice big soft box uh source and then a couple of these little spots here these are aperture 60 XS which are like these scoop lights that are going to be giving some background lights uh those things are not going to be really light and at them at all they're really just going to be adding pockets of light in areas that we want to either bring up the values on or even in this case in here I'm adding some some Shadow some cool light on the back bricks but then also punching it through the thing and some of these cables to add some shadows and some death just try to make this place a little bit more threedimensional and then I have a couple of Lights here that um are actually on this rig but are shooting into the next space which we will go into now this was the room that needed the most light levels brought up uh and unfortunately not a whole lot of room to you know make those like those area lights that you saw those volumetric um spherical lights hang down so a lot of the stuff here was toplit unfortunately so we have two F22 C's which are those light panels here coming down on some of these work tables there's another one coming down and then we have a couple um we have a couple those 60 XS adding some little pockets of warm light over like his tape and just to give it a little bit more uh something harder something to contrast with some of the areas here so you know you get some you know various looks and various light levels tonality stuff throughout that area and then I have a bunch of tube lights in here so these tube lights are uh sort of the MVP here there's a lot of fluoresence in this shop and the tube lights here are meant to replace those and a lot of regards the his fluorescent lights actually don't have a a terrible light quality or a light uh a color meter reading that's two off the charts and so we have used we have utilized some of them but some of these we've just taken offline and then put these amaran uh tube lights here and then Adam built some foam core sort of coverings here to keep that light directly you know blasting in his eyes as he's working and so those are set up in various areas of the shop just to give that work space fluorescent fixture look to it um over here I did something kind of unique in that is uh I took a smaller version of that tube light and then I put a pool nle around it it is a um like a white a white pool noodle that helps diffuse that light it brings it down a couple stops but it diffuses that light makes a little bit softer and a little more gentle and spreads it out a little bit nicely um yeah it's a it's a it's a it is a an old technique not old but it's a technique that has been used in the film industry it's not new here um but it's something that I've really taken to uh let's go ahead and turn some of these on I'll show you what they look like what the app looks like right over in Adam's up here we have an iPad that's dedicated to this I have a mini here that's going to replace this big one but let's go ahead and turn this on and you can go ahead and see that I've added a bunch of quick shots here for Adam to just come in and simply turn something on now the reason there's a lot of different settings here is because like I said Adam's Comfort is a big part of this um we don't want to make this like a studio light setup to where he's not going to be comfortable being in here for 8 to 10 hours a day and so I have a standard setup here that's something that he can just turn on on and it gives him it gives him a good amount of light throughout his shop but is also set to be a little bit warmer um our cameras are usually set this is going to begin a little bit in the weeds but our cameras are usually set around 4500 Kelvin which is sort of lands in the middle of tungsten and daylight um that is something that we that is the closest to what was in Adam's um this area of Adam's cave where the Skylight is as that Skylight cuts through that ND sort of bounces around and you think about light it's not really just the light source that's adding light but everything the light bounces off of is is adding some color it's becoming its own light source and so the general ambient Kelvin in this shop usually hovers around 4500 it's like 4,000 to 4700 depending on the day but 4500 is where we landed on he likes his shop a little bit warmer so he likes itting somewhere in the 3800 Kelvin so you're getting to warmer light you're getting more towards tungsten and so that's what we have here and the iPhone can resolve that the iPhone is trying to do a lot it is taking it is taking the light levels and doing its own Auto white balance and giving him um you know normalizing him just a little bit while keeping him a little bit warmer in here and you know we sacrific a little bit of light levels and the iPhone you know tries his best to resolve that but that's the trade-off right when he's shooting here with his iPhone and he wants to be comfortable this is what we're going for the second option is when I when Josh and myself are shooting with the fx6 which which you know when we're in here with our cameras and we're actually shooting um we want the white balance and this room and this room both consistent because even though it's warmer here it's still a little bit manipulated by the the U the Sun the Skylight there and it's that's actually like cooling it down quite a bit and so there's still a bit of inconsistency so I set up a second uh quick shot called the fx6 shoot which is when we're using our fx6 cameras and what that does is it basically just punches all of this light up just a little bit and brings it all back to 4500 which is what our which is what our um our professional cameras are set to so we don't have to roll the iso as high on our Sony fx6 to get a correct exposure um it's a little bit more lit here so like if this was how Adam was working this would probably drive him a little bit nuts because it is just there is just so much light here but also we just have so much more flexibility with our cameras we can do slow motion and we can higher frame rate stuff and not have to worry about dropping down you know our exposure to such a degree that we need to use our gain to amp things up and and do um you know deal with noise or compression issues there and so that's where we landed on on those two main setups and these are where we live most of the time and then also we just have a ton of options to be able to play around so there's a little um event happening here and so we came in here and just started messing with dials and gave it a little bit more of a of a fun look so you know all these things most of these lights are rgbw and so you know now I can give it some blues and some Reds and sort of some pulsing you know pulsing Fireside lights you know it's not something that we normally shoot in or you know maybe we'll Sho some b-roll this kind of stuff um but just something a little more a little more uh atmospheric or uh a little more stylized to um have some fun in yeah you have tons of options with this app of course there's effects built in uh if we wanted to do some like lightning effects or some faulty bulb stuff if we were doing something dramatic in here or we wanted to like play around with um you know something a little bit of a of a flash like I can set the spotlight back here to do a little bit of a Flash and we can throw some fog in when Adam's doing some spacit tests uh and make it a little more dramatic um I have one called uh like a standup you know ad reads or something where he's talking down to the camera you know we have a little bit of a spotlight here to give him some backlight and then I got some front light here and then everything back here dims down so that most of the level lands on him while falling off in the back to give some light contrast and also color contrast these are a little bit warmer and then I have the blue light sort of shining onto uh the wall back there through the thing adding those shadows and so yeah you just have a bunch of different options on that regard so I mentioned how the speed rail rig over on this side of Adam shop is providing the lights for that side of the shop but also we have on this furthest side of this rail we do have some lights that are pouring in through here to add levels to this side of the shop uh again the ceilings are low on here there isn't a whole lot of wall space and so we can't add a whole lot of lights coming in at a more horizontal uh a more horizontal angle to help lift up some of those Shadows or do some fill light everything is kind of topheavy here um we do have a little bit of help from the F22 C's that are just angled just ever so slightly and they don't have egg crates typically what you want to do uh in more control situations is you have you know they have the soft Source here and then you put these things called egg crates down and they sort of add a grid uh that help that help narrow the spread beam down so like right now my fist is getting light but if you had those egg crates you know there's they're they're they're a black grid and the light would really just be coming downwards and so you would get a little bit less on your hand here but we need that help in here um we need uh a little bit more level on Adam's face when he's just standing here or else it's just going to be these drop you know these big drops of light and so I took those EG crates off um at some point I might add some duotine and and block out some areas I think the next step for this whole area is is to block out like um start removing angles of light that we can add some more tonal contrast to this you know to these scenes basically so there you go um lots of cool fun lighting changes uh toys to play with this is going to be a lot of fun I think the app if these were all just dumb lights where we just turn them all on and and let that be what it is this wouldn't be as exciting but the fact that we can go into this and not only like take this iPad with us and just have us all all the shooters that come through here be able to change to their their own look that they want and then also having Adam be able to come in here have fun playing with this stuff I think it's really really exciting so thank you guys for joining us uh on this speed rail rig lighting build setup and thank you again to amaran and aperture for uh helping us with this um you know sponsoring this build being such a great partner for so many years uh we will see you guys next time on another if we do more lighting as as this evolves and change we might jump in and and do some updates and uh we love to get you guys' thoughts on what you would like to see us do with some of this stuff until then bye\n"