Velvet Power on Location in Jamaica

Make a comedy movie in 18 days, they said. In Jamaica during monsoon season, they said. It will be fun, they said. When Cinematographer Jesse Brunt called and said he wanted to move lightning fast, on the beach in Jamaica, I immediately set up a meeting at Premiere Lighting in Los Angeles, to demo the Velvet Power series LED fixtures. The timing was perfect, as I had recently seen the Velvet units in action lighting a network show, so I knew they would be up to the challenge. With an IP rating of 54, we were able to power the Velvet fixtures with gold mount batteries on the beach, in the rain!

There were some set ups, where I was able to use the Velvet fixtures to light the actors and the set, with nothing more than a briefcase generator!

One memorable set up, we have a night exterior with the full cast of characters arriving at the entrance of a large hotel. It's raining and there's no time to light the exterior, but it's dark outside and you can't see the trees and the lush green of the resort behind the cast. With one Velvet 2x1 Power hidden left of frame, and one right of frame, the volume of these fixtures easily lit up the hotel courtyard!

For one big club scene, we relied heavily on the Arri Skypanel S-60 units and my 4ft Quasar Science LED lamps. We had excellent support from Phase 3 Productions in Kingston, Jamaica. They provided a 3 Ton Grip Truck and 2 Honda 7000 portable generators. With these, we could power Arri 4K HMI units and a couple of Arri M18 HMI fixtures, as needed.