Karyn
...
My question is about video lights...
...
Sorry to barge in and hopefully it's ok.
My experience in a TV set was always taught that there is NEVER enough light on a TV set. The problem is aiming it right and not over load the camera or make the camera work un-necessarily hard.
You might stop by a photo shop, and get a cheap light meter, so you can at least have a better idea of how much you need, and then you have a better idea of where you want to be. Video, does not always "conform" to the rigidity of the details in a shutterspeed/fstop situation, but it has certain points that you can draw a line on. You willl know right away that after 5 feet, you have to double the strength of your light, for example. While in film you can work around this with different shots and such, TV is far more static, and STILL not as free and as good with lighting as it "should" be, because it is working STRICTLY off the ambient light, which has shadows, that TV sets work to obliterate.
Now go watch a soap opera, and define on a piece of paper, about 3 or 4 sets, and check out where you are finding the light sources, and how it is shot. This is not hard to do, but you are visualizing two things here ... where the light is, and how the camera is going to adjust to the actors.
Normally in "film" the camera adjusts to the actors. In TV, the actors adjust to the camera, since the movement is limited on the set because of the lighting and such. This, btw, might be why I have not done TV yet. I remember how frustrating it was to get the right lighting, opposite what I had done on the stage with the same play. We did a version of my dad's play for film, and it did not come off as nicely as the stage play did. (An evening of international theater had a play by Peter Handke, Marguerite Duras and Jorge Sena).
The harder part is making sure that the light is not near the filming lens, though many cameras have a light boom of some kind on top of it, though its light is so diffused that it renders it quite useless if you need to get a closer shot, and it disperses all over the place, and wastes half of it.
Video, I THINK, will take about 10 more years, before it can get "closer" to film, and its ability to do dark and light way better. Video adjust by itself, and most "film" was always done manually by the cinematographer, who normally is an expert on the lighting/camera situations, and can light those with aplomb. Video, for right now, does not really do that yet, but it will get there. When you see some of the work by some film makers using video for effects, you know they can tell what they want and are looking for.
See the film "Visions of Light", which is about cinematographers. You'll love it, and find out that some of these guys were fooling around and doing other things, when a shot came and went! There are some very neat things in there!