sci-fi movie production needs help

Hey –

I am the writer/director of sci-fi action movie called OUTLANDER. Its kind of Predator meets Braveheart. In the film we have several high end robotic/humanoid battle suits that are to be worn by the actors, both in and out of the water. Part of the battle suit design incorporates 4 very bright lights in the helmet part of the suit. Although we have some very experienced Hollywood special effects people constructing the suit, none of them are quite sure of how to solve the following problem of creating these small, powerfully focused beams of light in the helmet and make them water proof at the same time. After surfing the net and reading about you guys, I was wondering if we could use some small, supper bright, water proof flashlights. What do you recommend? I would like something that is at or near 100 lumens, keeps its focus well, is water proof, and is as small as possible (The size is a big deal - because we have to fit four of them inside a human sized helmet. ). Battery life is not an issue.

If anyone can avail me of their wisdom it would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,



Howard

Welcome to CPF Howard.

I would say 4 Surefire E1L's may work, they are pure throw with a squarish beam.

There are many here with a lot more expertise who will probably post.

It sounds like you are going to want a LED flashlight that uses a single 3.7V Li-Ion CR2-size or CR123-size or AA-size battery to drive a U-bin Luxeon-III. Is 15 to 30 minutes of runtime ok?

Examples of small single cell lights include the JIL JCR2, JetBeam Jet-I, Fenix P1, Nuwai Q3.

How waterproof does it need to be? Is splash resistant ok, or does it need to go to 3 meters, or do you need a dive light?

I'm sure you'll get lots of advice and suggestions here. Good luck!

How about 4 Pierce M10's?? try the optic version for spotlight type lighting!! Just a thought!! Doug

Hi - It needs to go down to a depth of about 1 meter fully submerged and the length of the light needs to be 4 or less inches. 30 minutes of run time is fine. Get two takes out of it then change it.

All advice is good advice. Thanks. Howard

The Pierce M10's are waterproof and are only 2.5 inches long, also comes in narrow beam or flood type beam. I don't have one but have been looking at them. Doug .875" in diameter, forgot that!! oh, www.piercelight.com

Welcome to CandlePowerForums, Howard.

This movie is in pre-release if I understand correctly. Great. Exciting query.

I'm going to have to think about this question before I can give you a good answer.

Some small LED flashlights can attain 100 lumens. Do you know if you want LED or incandescent? It's good that you tell us 100 lumens is the spec you want. That way you don't have to detail how underwater cinematography works.

FlashlightReviews is a good place to look at for reviews. Also BrightGuy is a nice sight to look at specific lights for sale.

My first reaction is a waterproof Pelican incandescent light.

You've come to right place for expert advice. Other members more knowledgeable than myself are sure to chime in soon.

Good luck with your movie. I like almost all science fiction no matter what the budget.

- Jeff

You might try looking at some of the brighter headlamps which have separate battery modules. You could have your FX guys cut off the lamp portions and mount them on the suits and power them through cables from battery packs elsewhere. The Stenlight uses a 2x3W Lux lamp portion which is pretty bright on high setting. It's also very waterproof. Maybe something like that.

Just a thought. Good luck...

that might be a good idea to seperate the headlamp from the power supply (as long as it is all properlly water proofed.) In that case, what head lamp is about the size of a quater and throws annarrow beam that is 100 lumens?

I don't know a lot about headlamps. Check the Flashlightreviews.com site for reviews. Besides the Stenlight noted above, the brightest one I found was this one. 4 of these ought to cook your actors' heads...

howard2 said:

that might be a good idea to seperate the headlamp from the power supply (as long as it is all properlly water proofed.) In that case, what head lamp is about the size of a quater and throws annarrow beam that is 100 lumens?

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Take a look at FoxFury:
Thread: http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=112177
Website: http://www.foxfury.com/

Perhaps the FoxFury Pro Series: http://www.foxfury.com/products/pro_series/index.htm
(although you might need a semi-custom version to get 100 lumens per LED)

Hello again, howard2...

I guess I might as well add my thoughts on your problem. I think you might have a hard time finding a stock light that is small enough, yet bright enough, for your application. If your guys are pretty handy, they might want to experiment with the optical lenses used on relatively cheap flashlights like the 'River Rock' lights that were available at Target and elsewhere.

The lights themselves aren't bright enough or small enough for direct use, but the optics and heads could be combined with a hand-built LED assembly driving a T or U bin 3 watt LED at high current. They could be made pretty small if you used a separate power pack located on the actors bodies.

The advantage to this approach is that you get a very tight spot of light from these lenses...which make for clean and defined 'beams' which would look very good through a little haze or smoke. These lenses give very little 'sidespill', or light outside the main, perfectly circular 'hotspot', to use some of our terminology.

And the use of custom built LED light sources would give you the 100 lumen output you need. It would also give your costume and effect folks more latitude in helmet design, as these small curved lenses (or the flashlight heads themselves) could be more easily incorporated into a helmet than any production light.

I know this is more involved than an off-the-shelf solution, but I think you might find the result more pleasing on a visual level, than some of the other possible solutions.

I suspect they would give you the beam profile you are looking for and the power as well. What do you guys think? Am I crazy?

Is this 100 lumens per LED, or 100 lumens total? 100 lumens total would be extremely easy, but there might be some problems actually getting 100 lumens out of each LED. The U bin Luxeon III can hit 100 lumens at the emitter level, but 100 lumens going out the front (after reflector/optics losses) can be tricky. A Luxeon V can hit 100 lumens much easier, but the shape of the die is such that it has wider, floodier pattern and is much more difficult to get focused without having huge reflectors or optics (probably too large for your headgear).

Another concern would be heat. 4 U bin LuxIIIs driven at those levels puts out quite a bit of heat. On one hand you'll want to insulate the unit from the actors' heads and anything possibly meltable (or flammable) on the costume, but on the other hand, you still need to disappate the heat or the thing will fry. I'm sure your S/E guys could come up with something that looks futuristic enough, while being functional. I think an external power source would be essential, partially to keep the batteries from overheating, and partially to ensure enough runtime with a larger battery. There's small, extremely bright lights like the Orb Raw that are small enough for your sort of application, but we're talking 15 minute runtimes here because the batteries are so small.

Something like this might have to be competely custom built, although cannabilizing existing flashlights might help a lot. Come to think of it, a few of these wouldn't be a bad idea. Output on "Turbo" is screamingly bright, and you can get (or make if necessary) different optics for different focus patterns. Put like one of them on either side of a helmet, maybe jazz them up with some futuristic embellishments, and you'd be good to go.

BTW, is this the movie you're making? Looks like you're just starting it (or the imdb page is far behind). Karl Urban was pretty cool in the LotR movies and the Bourne Supremecy.

from one source

Karl Urban will play a man from another galaxy who crash-lands on Earth at the time of the Vikings, bringing with him an alien predator. The alien in the film (called Moorwen)

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Interesting...

If they had not been mentioned yet, I probably would have mentioned the StenLight S7 and the FoxFury Pro Series also.

Depending on the light, you are planning to put them in a case or built in the suit/helmet in order to fit with the costume look?

100 lumen is going to be pretty hard to achieve at that size. I think the closest thing will be the Orb Raw... But it has only 15 minutes runtime. Good thing Orb sells parts too... just get all the bits for the front part of the light (bezel, lens, reflector, emitter, driverboard, heatsink) Solder wires for an external powersupply to the driverboard, and fill up the remaining space with epoxy. now you have a very small (20mm dia x approximately 20mm long), very bright (77 to 100 Lumens), very waterproof (due to the epoxy) light with leads for an external powersource...

ps, don't forget us in the credits if you use any of our ideas :laughing:

4 Raw Ns's www.theorb.co.uk
I'm sure rob will help you out and they are TINY and have the biggest lightout for their size out there,
Runtime is like 12 minutes continuous and they have O-ring seals so they are waterproof AND tiny

Flashfirstask?later said:

If they had not been mentioned yet, I probably would have mentioned the StenLight S7 and the FoxFury Pro Series also.

Depending on the light, you are planning to put them in a case or built in the suit/helmet in order to fit with the costume look?

Click to expand...

The FoxFury Pro Series seems to be a production headlamp that is very close to fitting the requirements. It has 4 Luxeon LED's, is waterproof to 6m (20 feet), has a separate battery pack, and produces a total of 144 lumens, according to the manufacturer's info (which seems pretty reasonable for 4 Luxeons). If you really need a lot more output, FoxFury can probably build one with brighter LED's, they make lights for a lot of specialty markets but I think a movie might be a first for them.

With the multiple mention of the Orb Raw lights.......I thought I'd add the Orb lights ARE NOT waterproof, and not even water resistant. They are also slippery to hold when wet.

There are several lights that might fit your needs, and the HDS EDC lights ARE waterproof, and quite bright, although, not 100 lumens. They are electronically controlled for multiple brightness levels, as well as some computerized light effects such as SOS, strobe etc. They are quite small, but not as small as some others. Their regulated circuit also provides long life. They use the more common CR123A, LIR123, or CRC123 batteries. Many consider the HDS lights to be the very best EDC flashlight, although not the prettiest or smallest.

The Jil lights are excellent and very small, and one model has similar features to the above mentioned HDS. Jil lights use the smaller CR2 battery.

The Amilite and Pierce are also quite nice, and other favorites include the CR2 Ion and Firefly III. The Firefly III is currently in production, and may not be readily available, but features an electronic circuit with features similar to the HDS Ultimate lights.

Some new lights from Huntlight, Ultrafire and Luxogen should be considered as well. They're quite a bit cheaper than the other brands I've mentioned, so you'd be able to purchase more of them with whatever your budget might be. Take a look at the Dealer's corner on this site, and you'll find the vendors for most of the lights. Most of the dealers are highly regarded and members of this forum.

Good luck with your project and please keep us informed on what works or not, and when the picture will be released.

lightningbug said:

With the multiple mention of the Orb Raw lights.......I thought I'd add the Orb lights ARE NOT waterproof, and not even water resistant. They are also slippery to hold when wet.

Click to expand...

That's why I suggested to use them as a base for modding. I'm pretty sure that with some epoxy they can be made waterproof enough And holding them when wet is not an issue, as the lights are going to be mounted on a helmet...

lightningbug said:

With the multiple mention of the Orb Raw lights.......I thought I'd add the Orb lights ARE NOT waterproof, and not even water resistant.

Click to expand...

Although the original Orb Raw does not have o-rings and is not water resistant, the newer and smaller Orb Raw NS does have o-rings and can survive a dunking.