Wetlook World Forum

Styx's outdoor and underwater lighting comes from three 135 amp hour batteries (about double the weight of a normal car battery). Try lifting one, let alone carrying three on location! Even then you get barely one hour of decent lighting, before you have to spend two days re-charging them. Generator? even a a 1 kilowatt generator is hardly portable, then you need to convert to DC current.

I dare say all the producers would like to have hollywood style set ups- are you guys prepared to pay for it?  because it gets added to the cost of the material we produce. If you sell 50 tapes and add on $10 per tape for equipment- you don't get much for $500, equipment wise.

Polarisers are great- but they work best at 90 degrees to the light source- however if you reduce the angle the effect reduces, eventually to nothing. They also reduce the amount of light, so you have to double or quadruple the lighting (volunteers to carry 12 135 amp hour batteries? plus 3 weeks charging between shoots) In addition, as the subject moves you have to physically rotate the filter to get the polarising effect, thus missing the action. You can only use them with fairly stationary subjects- unless of course you can afford a "focus puller" to do it for you- back to having Hollywood Epic crew sizes again :)

Most producers work miracles when you look at the budget they have to work with- feature films work on budgets of maybe $50,000,000- wetlook producers have to do it for $2,000 (including the cost of their equipment)