Re: Lighting for a Sitcom

I was also going to suggest Bogen's auto-poles, which can be extended with add-on inserts. The longer you make them, though, the less weight you should hang on them. Lowell fixtures, regardless of what some will say, are at least very light weight, so between Lowels and a bunch of heavier fresnels, you'd get more instruments up there for the same weight, with the Lowels. If you have a lot of lights to hang, you might need to run two parallel auto-poles to create enough truss space for the weight.


Tip about the auto-poles: You can make some extra safety supports out of 2x4 boards with a round or v-notch in them, gaff-taped to the walls, so the auto-pole can rest part of the weight on them. Use real gaffer tape and the wall paint should not get marked up. The bracing boards may need a cut-away at their bases to clear any cove moldings by the floor, allowing full-length contact with the wall. Now, this bracing will lose you the ability to shoot past 180 degrees without seeing a stand, but maybe you can plan around this with the DP so it wouldn't matter. You generally don't want to cross the line of action anyhow, so the braces may not even be a factor for shooting.

I have also seen auto-poles used this way in a too-wide room: set up two poles vertically, floor to ceiling, then hang a third autopole horizontally off them, making what looks like a capital "H" or old fashioned football goalposts. This gives you the overhead truss effect and keeps the amount of stand hardware on the floor down to those two slim poles, which you may be able to dolly around. And the truss section stays shorter and safer with more weight.