To produce Video Game High School the latest feature length web series to air on Freddie Wong and Brandon Laatsch’s YouTube channel the team needed solid mobile and efficient lighting. “That’s exactly what Litepanels LED lights gives us for our latest feature as well as our weekly YouTube videos ” says Wong. Wong Laatsch and show runner/writer Matthew Arnold discovered Litepanels last year when they took a 1x1 on a 10 000-mile road trip project making videos with their fans. “We’re tech geeks at heart ” Wong says. “So I had been following the development of LED lighting closely for some time. When it came time to equip ourselves Litepanels LED lights were at the top of our list. We are now using an array of Bi-Color and daylight 1x1s a Sola 6 Fresnel MicroPro on-camera light as well as the 1K Hilio on our projects.” Wong and team were drawn to Litepanels lights because their shooting schedule and style requires them to move extremely fast in order to make their days. “The 1x1s and Sola 6 Fresnel were ideal for allowing us to light in the cramped spaces of classrooms and hallways as well as to move as quickly as we needed to ” Wong says. “In many cases despite having other lights on the set our DP Jon Salmon elected to go with Litepanels boomed out on C-stands because they gave a significantly faster speed of deployment. Often the last step before we shot was to grab a Litepanels fixture for a bit of fill or an eye light.” On the last day of their recent shoot the trio was out in the desert and ran out of sunlight. Not a problem says Wong. “We simply took a battery operated MicroPro bounced it into a bounce board and used that as a keylight. That combined with the low light sensitivity of the Sony F3 allowed us to get the last few shots we needed.” After this experience Wong and team are sold on Litepanels lights. “It’s clear that the weight and output of these lights make them ideal soft sources especially when combined with cameras that are now becoming more sensitive in low light situations ” Wong says. “You don’t need to blast your actors anymore and make everyone on set sweat – you can move quickly and efficiently while keeping the on-camera talent happy.” As with their other projects Video Game High School will run on the company’s YouTube channel as well as their upcoming portal site http://rocketjump.com. Wong’s http://youtube.com/freddiew and freddiew2 have 2.6 million subscribers and have over half a billion video views to date.
