Well, the shooting hasn’t begun yet… but we have all the lights now, which is good.  There are two worlds of lighting in the film; the lights you can see in the set, and the lights you can’t.  Practical and external.

I’m learning what I can about both, though there is obviously a lot to learn.  I’ve been lucky to have help in all lighting matters so far.  The practical lights are done — Brian Parkinson (a.k.a. Parki) has spent many an evening and Saturday working away on these darned things.  Here’s the results…

Parki assembling the lights while his girlfriend Kim assembles tiny fingers…  (Note size of coffee cups — this was a Saturday morning.)

To the left, the diagram that Parki’s coworker John, an electrical engineer, made to map out the dimmers for the lights.  Whew!  To the right, the diagram Parki made for me to explain how to attach the wires together for my platform…

And, here it is!  The platform, all cleaned up.  This is the result of my first ever soldering project…

Platform from below.  The wires are so tidy now; I wish I’d taken a before picture — they were a mess.

… and now we’re plugged in.

With candles!  These are on a dimmer, so they’ll be able to flicker…

Here’s what’s behind the scenes of what Parki put together for me — I’ll be labeling these soon…

Here are the inner workings of the candle lights.

And here are the lights and grip things, waiting for the first shot to be set up…  I’m hoping to learn a few things about lighting from Marcus when he’s able to stop by, but there’s so much to do and he’s a busy guy…  I’m also hoping to get this first shot set up in the next couple of days, and start shooting this week.  We’ll see!

In the meantime, back to soldering…