ARRI 'PAX A Lot Of LED Punch'

ARRI has released its latest LED lighting products, the PAX Panel Kits. Available in two configurations, PAX1 and PAX2, the kits fit inside a small carry case and offer an extremely versatile lighting solution, especially useful for cramped sets, remote locations and fast-moving productions.
As part of the extensive research and development of the PAX kits, prototype units were supplied to key individuals and companies for field-testing and feedback. One such beta tester was Sue Gibson, President of the BSC, who was lent an ARRI PAX LED kit by ARRI Lighting Rental in London.
"I first used it back in September 2008,: says Gibson. "I was working on a low budget feature called 31 North 62 East. We were going to Jordan to shoot in the desert and I knew that we’d be an hour and a half’s journey from Petra, through the mountains.
"One of the shots that we had to do was of two cars driving through the desert at magic hour, and it needed to cut in with footage I’d already shot in England of characters talking in a car once it has stopped. I was wondering how to do it because I knew we wanted to get the shot in one and we’d be losing the light.”
In order to light the car interior, Gibson used just one of the battery-powered PAX panels, which measure 8 x 16cm and contain an array of eight multi-chip LED modules.
"I needed something that was portable, that could be charged from the car battery and that allowed me to select whatever diffusion I wanted," she continued.
"The PAX Panel Kit worked absolutely perfectly; you can dial in any colour gel you want and it’s wirelessly remote controlled, so I could stand by the camera and adjust the colour and the dimmer as the light was going. I didn’t have a gaffer, I was a one-man band, but it was simply a question of flipping down the glove-box door and resting the LED panel on that. It worked a treat and I was delighted.”
The second shoot on which Gibson used the PAX kit was a performance in London of John Caird’s Twin Spirits show, featuring the musician Sting and his wife Trudie Styler.
"The brief was that it had to cut in with footage from a previous live performance,” she explains. “There was no audience and I had quite a controlled environment, but we needed to shoot it as ‘live’ as possible so the performers could play off one another. They were sitting side by side, 10 feet apart, and we wanted to move the camera as much as we could around them. This meant that my key light couldn’t be very close to them and I knew that I needed something else just to get some light in their eyes and give myself a sense of security."
Gibson used two PAX panels, one for each performer, and mounted them on small stands so they could easily be moved for different setups. The performance involved various lighting changes, which Gibson was able to match by punching in different gel settings with the wireless remote control unit. “All the different gel swatch books are in there,” she says. “It can be daylight, tungsten; it can be any colour you like and there’s no light loss with the gels – the output stays the same.”
ARRI Lighting Rental also provided the other lights Gibson used for the shoot, to which the PAX kit could be matched quickly and easily. “I used the Chimera with an egg crate because I was in a black studio and needed a soft light that would fall off to black quite quickly,” she says. “I was able to look at whatever quality of light was coming out of the Chimera and change the LED kit accordingly.”
Further information is available at: www.arri-com.
(KMcA/BMcc)