I’m glad that I had a chance to experiment with the light source I was waiting for such a long time. It’s a brand new Evoke 1200 bi-color by Nanlux. Besides the new Evoke in my short film “The Windmill”, we used Forza 720B, PavoTube second edition and PavoBulbs. Before we start, I would like to thank to Nanlux and Nanlite companies for their support, and for making such great quality products. We tested if Evoke 1200B is strong enough for the scenes which we can often see in the most expensive Hollywood movies or Netflix shows. We will check if it’s really water resistant and if we can use it in the never-ending battle against the sun in the exteriors. I’m very grateful to my friends from Artcore studio rental from Belgrade who made it possible to use Alexa LF with anamorphic lomo lenses and made this short film even more cinematic. From my experience so far, there is no light source strong enough to fight against the sun. Of course, it depends on the frame range and the distance of the light source. So we will see if the Evoke 1200B is a good option for the exterior in some situations. We will use it as a fill light with octa and 216 diffusion cloth. The big advantage of this kind of light source is that you can use it with small generators up to 2kw like the one we had on our set.  One of the most important reasons why bi-color LEDs like 1200B are being chosen for professional shooting is that the color alternation is a lot faster than using gels and filters. What is more, it’s very important that you can change the temperature progressively.

The world is not one color temperature environment, even the sun during the day is not exactly 5600 kelvin, so we can easily adapt to it. Of course, we don’t need to, we can use bi-color Evoke to creatively achieve color contrast in our picture. For example, making our object of shooting warmer tones. Evoke 1200 bi-color is perfect for magic hours and sunrise or sunset periods because you can very quickly change the color temperature which is changing in those moments rapidly. What is more you can be very precise, you don’t have to use a spectrometer and measure the exact temperature in those moments. However, you can do what you feel is good. It’s not unusual to use warmer lights temperature in cooler atmospheres. Sometimes we have to shoot on a rainy day or use artificial rain for our scene. If we want to achieve a softer light, we need to put our light source closer to an object of shooting, which means that the light source in a situation like that could be in the rain too. With the Evoke 1200B and its IP54 standard, you don’t need any additional time for setting up in those conditions or any kind of rain cover. As you can see, you can just leave it in the rain and enjoy the shooting. I wish I also had an IP54. For this scene, we also used Forza 720B for the lighting thunder effect, a PavoTube with its water case and devote the light for the atmosphere backlight. It’s a great feature that you can control all these lights from a tablet or a mobile phone app. For our 3rd location, we use an improvised studio for the detective’s office, we used the Evoke 1200B, Forza 720B, PavoTube and PavoBulbs. For the night scene, we used Forza 720B with octa on 5600 kelvins as a moonlight through the window. We used the Evoke 1200B with Octa 60 for the strong intensity storm effect. I love that there are 12 in-built light effects which are amazing tools for creating great cinematic atmospheres for your movie. As you can see, I used PavoTubes as a backlight to give us that separation from the background, and additional fill light with 216 diffusions for some of the close-up shots. I love using practical lights for my scenes and with PavoBulbs I got full control of practicals within built effects. For the morning scene, the main challenge was to create a light shot through the window. With Evoke and its Fresnel lens, we easily managed. What is more, in only a few steps, we put the collar temperature at 3200 Kelvin to create the artificial sun and had Forza 720B on 5600 Kelvin with Octa as a sky. We add some haze in the space just to give some volume to the lights that are coming through the window. The benefits of using LED technology on any set are obvious. They generate much less heat than ordinary lights and use much less power than traditional Tungsten lights and HMIs of equal intensity.

The conclusion is that it is very convenient, reliable and easy to use. So LEDs should be a natural choice for shooting. I’m not saying that LED lights are fully changing the HMIS and strong tons and sources, however, when we talk about these intensity lights my choice is definitely LED. The great thing is that you can dim it down to 0.1 without compromising light quality and color. And yeah I use it often 0.1 for some night sequences or interior shootings. Now when there is a possibility to have a strong light source with changeable cold temperatures and different accessories, it will definitely be one of the first choices on my light specifications.