Music video lighting with small budget? I'm shooting the main performance and possibly some other scenes of a music video for my band (I'm not in it) and the scene is like this:


In a field or in a forest (some variation thereof).
Guitarist singing and playing acoustic (not looking at the camera).
Lighting needs to be warm, dramatic and background to be quite dark (easily done at night with lower sensitivity). Almost "camp-fire" like.
I need to be able to hand hold at least one light as I want to constantly change the angle of the light on the subject during certain takes.
All lights obviously need to be similar for white balance / grading purposes.
Will be primarily shot on Canon 60D's with 50mm F/1.8 at 23.976fps 1080p with some slo-motion takes at 59.94fps (60p).


We can spend some money on lighting but as musicians we are dirt poor (shock horror). I understand lighting fully (being a photographer) but I fear our budget is probably going to make things... interesting.

Are there any DIY or basic solutions to lighting a video such as this? The main issue is that we'll be shooting in a field with no mains nearby so we'd need a generator or other power source to power the lights. I suspect it to be a few hours of shooting.
For this kind of lighting, I would recommend going down to your local Home Depot (or equivalent hardware super store) and looking for construction lights. They are generally cheep and some run on batteries. They are also generally small and portable. You could also try some MagLights on D batteries (the ones the 5-0 use)

These lights are generally not that "warm," so I would also recommend picking up a piece of plywood and some paint. You can use this as a DYI reflector, and modify the color. More information can be found at Wikipedia



This is what a friend of mine did for lighting. It worked, but it was not the best. You just have to play around, there are many different ways of doing dirt cheap lighting, and you have to find the best. Hell, headlights and a reflector would work.