Challenge

Small production studios have exploded in number in the last decade thanks to rental sites like Peerspace. These studios are a popular choice for music videos, social media content, and other shoots that don’t need the scale of a traditional soundstage. Los Angeles-based Pinkbox Studios co-founders Bobby Astro and Sebastian Kolderup-Lane knew they needed to continue to improve the studio to attract higher-end clients. “We wanted to upgrade the lighting for the cyclorama because it's the number one ticket item at the studio,” Kolderup-Lane says.

Initial quotes proposed replacing the existing three Nova P600cs with 13 traditional 2x1 LED panels, at a high cost. The team sought more options, and the upgrade ended up saving over $10,000 while offering better output, coverage, and color rendering.

Solution

After reviewing the numbers, the team realized NOVA II 1x1s could meet their lighting needs with just 7 fixtures. The upgrade cost ended up at the amount Pinkbox spent on the original lighting, $10,000 below the quote for traditional 2x1 panels. The new array could fully light the cyc at just 25% intensity.

The Pinkbox team also took the opportunity to upgrade the studio’s lighting control, with a Sidus One transceiver and Sidus Link Pro. Running CRMX made lighting changes more repeatable and reduced the need to physically access the lights on the grid. Astro says, “You turn it on, you go to the settings, make sure they're connected, and then boom, it was that easy. If you know how to use a phone, you know how to control 20 lights at the same time.”

Results

The specially-tuned BLAIR-CG engine in the NOVA II 1x1 exceeded Pinkbox’s output needs and deepened the color options available to clients. “The colors are so much more robust,” Kolderup-Lane says. “It's not just like, ‘Hey, what we offer with our lighting on the cyc is yellow, blue, green, red. You could do eight different looks within green.”

The upgraded cyc lighting has led to surprising responses from professionals. Kolderup-Lane says, “[A gaffer friend] saw that we had a CRMX set up, and he felt like we had like taken the next step and that he could recommend us to his bigger clients. We were now considered legitimate because we had stuff that was reliable. And I think reliability is the biggest thing in this industry.”