*This article is in response to the events of Taylor Swift’s Blog post and it’s impact on Apple Music*
You can also read this article at http://zacharywill.com/blog/

As a filmmaker who grew up wanting to be a computer programmer and go to silicon valley I often find my self oddly placing myself more with Silicon Valley’s values. I prefer emails vastly to phone calls. Elon Musk is my hero. And I feel like Taylor Swift’s position on music streaming is somehow unfair.

Youtube, Spotify, and Silicon Valley are vastly changing how we view content and how we pay for it. And Hollywood (including the music industry) is coming kicking and screaming. Just look at traditional TV networks.

But then on the other hand we have Taylor Swift’s post on social media changing policies of the largest company in the world. Oddly most of the people I’v heard from disagree with Taylor Swift and yet they still made the change.

So is art worth anything? Most films and music is stolen. In response, media began to become ad-supported through places like Youtube. Through these sites new artists had a place to showcase their work. In combination with the lower of high quality equipment such as the DSLR video revolution and Music being recording on computers, everyone could start making art. Now we come to today which there is an over abundance of art. Is art worth anything anymore? No and yes.

Maybe art isn’t worth can’t be measured in money. Art’s worth is measured in power. Taylor Swift will never be worth as much as Apple, but a blog post could cost them quite a lot of money.

Advance Lighting Class. Learning about Dynamic Lighting. We had two tweenies (Mole 650w Fresnels) on a triple header on a rolling baby stand to simulate a car behind them. For the Police car we did a similar trick but we added red and CTB gels, however we moved them closer together on the triple header and added dimmers to both having someone dim each one on and off. Above them we had a par can on a boom swinging across which was shut off to swing it back to reset and go back over again. It was used to simulate movement of street lamps. On the other side we had someone pan a betweenie (300w fresnel) to simulate car movement on the other side. In the car we had an iphone flashlight with diffusion and a Kino Flo MiniFlo. Watch and enjoy. Bellow is some BTS to get a better idea of what we did.

Today I got a Luxi Light meter and to test it I decided to measure some light bulbs against a Mole-Richardson kit I have out for a documentary I’m working on (http://bpmdocumentary.com/)

So here’s the results that I got at 6ft, 800 ISO, 1/48th

Mole’s
Tweenie @ Full Spot f/22.6
Tweenie @ Full Flood f/12.1
Betweenie @ Full Spot f/20.2
Betweenie @ Full Flood f/11.3
Mole 800w Soft with Eggcrate f/4.8
Mole 800w Soft without Eggcrate f/5.7

Light Bulbs in Scoop
100w LED with umbrella f/3.4
100w LED without f/4.5
300w Photoflood with umbrella f/4
300w Photoflood without f/5.7
500w Photoflood with umbrella f/8
500w Photoflood without f/11.3

While you may think that something like a 300w photoflood is enough because you could close down to f/5.6, if you want diffusion, there goes a stop. If you want a gel like CTB, that might cost you another stop of light and when you go to a wide, you’ll probably need the lights furtherer than 6ft way. And all of a sudden your left with only f/2 of light. However using something like a Betweenie offers you lots of options with barndoors, spotting and flooding. If only I had the money….Film Life.

Oh and the Luxi Meter is pretty sweet.