Gaffering a commercial shoot in London I exploited some benefits of the Arri SkyPannel S60 to save time changing setups and save the production money in consumeables. This fully colour temperature and hue tuneable led fixture provided ample soft light output. Using two of these heads as side lights for our subject allowed my sparks to quickly change from setup to setup and saved the production the expense of gelling these lights with different effect and colour temperature gels. With the S60 patched into a lighting desk, full control over all of its features could be had on the desk dimmer channels. There were a few additional technical requirements to consider, however, such as the number of channels available on our lighting desk. The S60 has several DMX protocols to choose from on the head that allow either control of only a few features such as colour temperatures and plus and minus green, using only a few channels, or full control of all features at once using as many as 20 channels per head. Another challenge was accurately checking the current temperature and hue from a lighting desk with no digital display of the settings. In future I would consider adding a colour metre to my kit list so these settings could be checked manually. The shoot itself went well and the clients and director of photography were happy with the results. I look forward to utilising these amazing lights to their fullest on future projects.
SkyPannels in daylight for this mixed colour temperature setup
A tungsten OctoDome on a megaboom arm allows a soft light to be placed above camera
SkyPanels let us switch to a very different setup quickly and efficiently