How do I dilute 500-1000 watt work lights?

They most certainly are not "specifically designed" for filming situations. But they have been used MANY times by MANY people.. The bottom line is they put out a lot of light and cost virtually nothing.

You can bounce them off a wall, but in most cases a using one as a direct key light works great. Don't expect that you can use one light to light your entire shot though. There's only one light available that can handle that (and even it isn't enough in many cases), but you can't buy that light, because it's the massive fireball in the sky, generally brightest around noon or so.

simplest way to "dim" the worklight is to excercise the inverse-square law...move it farther away from the subject (or the subject farther away from it). Bouncing off a wall is an option, or off a card or piece of plywood/sheetrock/foamcore/whatever (so you have a modicum of control over where it goes). Another way is to point it at your subject with about 10'-15' between the light and your subject, then drape a white shower liner ($3 @ walmart or other store like it) about 8' in front of the light (so 2'-7' from your subject). This will end up giving you a HUGE softlight...keep in mind it'll have spill, so you'll need to be careful with your backgrounds or they'll be brighter than you want.

Shoot test footage!

thanks guys. However, wont these things potentially catch on fire?

1. Bounce it - walls, ceilings, poster board, shiny board, reflector, whatever you can get.
2. Put diffusion in front of it - Parchment paper, real diffusion gel, diffusion reflector inserts (like the ones from amvona), umbrellas, soft boxes, etc.

Now these put off real heat so whatever you do:

1) Give it ventilation.
2) Don't get your diffusion or bounce material too close. I have made several burn marks on poster board from this. Don't drape gel over the light.

Hey, making movies is cheap and easy. Nobody ever said making good movies is cheap and easy.

Any high wattage light with a resistive element (tungsten, halogen, etc.) generates a lot of heat and produces a fire hazard. Where that is not acceptable, you must use fluorescent or LED lights. As far as I know, those are the only lights that don't use resistive elements (i.e. create light by super-heating a small piece of metal).
The only disadvantage to the work lights is that they aren't designed for barndoors, gel holders, and other control gadgets. Otherwise, a halogen light is a halogen light. If you're having trouble affording the work lights, you probably won't be purchasing barndoors or other custom gadgets anyway. As Knightly already explained, you can hang things between your light and the subject, or use reflectors. All of these things will require their own supports, because you can't safely attach anything to the light itself, but it only requires some creative thinking and a gadget bag full of clamps, tape, some PVC pipe or 1/2" metal conduit, etc.

Side note about PVC pipe, vs. 1/2" metal conduit ... I use both of these, but I discovered you cannot get T connections for conduit so I had to make my own. PVC pipe, although it's a bit bulkier, has a wider range of connections.

yes, fire danger, keep enough distance between your light and the interruptive materials to prevent this.

You can add barndoors to work lights, ( http://www.coollights.biz/wordpress/archives/21 ). With that, I'd recommend using the springs and screws on the hinges rather than the pop rivets, my barndoors are floppy, but I'm taking a cream for it

knightly said:

This will end up giving you a HUGE softlight...keep in mind it'll have spill, so you'll need to be careful with your backgrounds or they'll be brighter than you want.

Click to expand...

One solution to this is buy some cheap aluminum foil - 79 cents a roll - and wrap the sides of the fixtures to block the spill (leave the tops open for ventilation - you'll still get spill on the ceiling but it likely won't be in the shot). These work lights generally have a protective steel cage covering the lamp face; use wooden spring clips (aka: clothes pins) to secure the foil to the cage.

Knightly, I guess I should have been more specific in that I was speaking of what one could purchase, ready-made specifically for light control. You can build just about anything if you've got the tools, materials, and time.