Look, there’s a lot not to like about NAB: The teeming hordes pressed flesh to flesh, the borderline-extortionate hotel resort fees, and the miserable overpriced food that tastes like brake fluid, but sometimes even I have to say the high price of NAB and the physical toll it takes is worth it. Amid the umpteen derivative products, especially in LED lighting, one does occasionally encounter a gem that can positively absolutely improve the way we work.
Rosco MINIMIX
For instance, the new Rosco DMG Lumière from France represents the perfect confluence of smart design, craft, and hardware. From a company fairly well known in Europe and recently acquired by Rosco, the new MIX fixture — available in two sizes, MINIMIX and SL1MIX, with a larger MAXIMIX coming soon — features micro-controlled LED color-blending in six colors: red + lime + green + blue + amber + white. The proprietary LEDs produce a symphony of color, with much better, more elegant command and control than any currently available RGBW or RGBA fixture.
Attaching the MIX controller
Barry Braverman
The MIX’s rugged modular design with a slotted rear panel allows easy snap-on mounting of a support arm, controller, and a V-mount battery. The unit’s robust positive-lock cable connectors testify to the care taken by the fixture’s designers, who are working gaffers and understand the rigors of what we face in the trenches.
The MINIMIX with a rear-mounted handle for walking shots.
Barry Braverman
Since the advent of cinema, lighting gel techniques have been a core component of our craft. We paint with gel, adding ¼ CTB (blue), say, in the kicker or hair light, or utilizing a ¼ CTO (orange) gel to remove the blue curse in an HMI PAR. My jelly roll, which I’ve had for decades, contains a cinematographer’s typical array of color-correction, diffusion, and party gel. The MIX’s onboard library can recreate the look and feel of virtually any Rosco gel by number and type, considering the light source — tungsten or daylight, and how the gel is being viewed, whether by eye, meter, or through the camera itself.
The Rosco DMG Lumière MIX doesn’t entirely obviate the need for physical gel on a set (to cover windows and practicals, for example, and match other lighting fixtures), but the MIX could certainly put a big dent in the need for rolls of expensive gel, and end once and for all the miserly hoarding of gel scraps.
Maybe now I can finally ditch my old jelly roll. The elastic is pretty well shot on it anyway.
My jelly roll.
Barry Braverman
