February 11, 2010
These fixtures offers both punch and a greener production profile.
By Iain Stasukevich
After more than 20 years working as a grip and an electrician, Jim Sanfilippo has seen a lot of interesting things. And while on a job for visual effects legend Doug Trumbull and the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, he had his first exposure to LED lighting.
“We were using high-brightness red LEDs as beacon lights for these flying spaceships, and we had to dim them because they were too bright for motion control work,” he recalls. “I thought there was huge potential here, because there was nothing was out there that I thought was bright enough to replace film and TV lights.”
Sanfilippo was looking for a way to increase the efficiency of his lights on set, so he started by putting together a little fixture of high brightness LEDs for his personal kit, all the while thinking of the ways he could apply them on a larger scale. In 2001, he began studying the thermodynamics of LEDs and their unique power needs, and found that none of the commercially available LEDs had the proper photographic quality color capabilities to make them practically useful.
By 2007, cleaner and stronger blue LEDs were more commonly available, allowing Sanfilippo to launch a demo of his first custom fixture, the Nila JNH, a modular LED system that can be grouped in configurations of double, triple, four inline, five inline, 2x2, and 2x3, providing up to 1200 watts of daylight or 2000 watts of tungsten light while drawing only 390 watts of power. 
A selection of the LED fixtures offered by Nila.
“We were anticipating to release the system in 2008 when [cinematographer] Roberto Schaefer, ASC saw it at Cinegear and asked to get a demo for Quantum of Solace,” says Sanfilippo. “His needs for that particular project were for lights that could handle the rigors of shooting in remote locations; something with a low-power draw and durable enough for any situation.”
Sanfilippo flew his prototypes out to London for the demo and received an order for 30 fixtures for the run of the show. “We were able to exceed Roberto's expectations on the durability side, the light to power draw, and reduced heat and air conditioning load,” he mentions. “They started using the Nilas for the scenes with Judi Dench, using bouncecards with a 2x3 JNH all day and not have to worry about overheating the her or the crew.”
On the set of Quantum of Solace, Schaefer used a 2x5 configuration in his driving shots, for which Nila custom-machined a 10x yoke. “I chose to use the Nila lights especially for process trailer and free diving car shots,” notes Schaefer. “They provide an extraordinary amount of controllable light from a really small, robust, silent-running fixture. The fact that they are almost indestructible and self-dimming makes them perfect for mounting on cars. I've been able to use them for completely controllable fill light on car interiors even in bright Caribbean daylight.”
Cinematographer Christian Sebaldt, ASC is also a fan, employing the JNH in his work on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: “I use the Nila lights because they're compact, easy to use, strong and don't get too hot. For us they are most useful as hot accent lights on the set, or backlights on the actors. Since they are flicker-free I don't have worry if we shoot the occasional off-speeds at 48fps.”
"They're designed for punch,” says Sanfilippo. “Put a JNH brick in someone's hand and shine it at the wall across the room and the first thing they want to know how is how we get all that light out of one thing.”
Nila is conducting its business with an eye for the environmental benefits as well, using the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive as a roadmap. RoHS is an EU directive that bans the placement of electrical and electronic equipment containing more than agreed levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants onto the European market.
While the the goal of the company is to replace all tungsten and HMI sources, Sanfilippo realizes it's going to be a long, uphill battle. “An HMI is hard to replace,” he concedes, “But they're inefficient and they're full of toxic heavy metals. Mercury is the catalyst to light the phosphor. A 200W HMI has more than ten times the mercury vapor than a fluorescent tube, and at 12KW and 18KW the mercury levels increase. If you're standing around when one explodes, you'd better hold your breath!”
The clean design of the JNH also makes it easy to recycle. Nila even has a program that lets customers swap their old fixtures out for new ones. Depending on the condition of the LEDs and the aluminum housing, recycled lights are repurposed for use on set, or for practical use. Nila also puts pressure on its hardware suppliers to send them components in less packaging, even to the point where they'll switch to another vendor with a better environmental approach.
“There's value in these things. By the time you add up a 1,000 lights being recycled, that's a lot of material you've just saved,” Sanfilippo explains. “We tell our customers we have a buyback program when we sell them the lights. Given the average LED lifespan – around 200,000 hours – we haven't had to recycle anything yet, but we anticipate in another year it'll start happening.”
Sanfilippo is pleased that so many of his current customers are impressed with Nila's environmental stance, but realizes that ultimately it's not a huge sale point to producers. “Sustainability is a big draw for some people,” he points out, “But at the end of the day they have a job to do. If the product doesn't perform the job, it's not the right tool for them.”
Financial issues must also be taken into account. “We have government customers who are attracted by the fact that we're a U.S. manufactured product, and we'll meet their sustainability goals, but at the end of the day, it's the financial metric that they're concerned about,” he says.
Sustaining sustainability can be a difficult task in the motion picture industry, which is what makes the Nila perspective so unique: hardware and sustainability going forward hand in hand. “If we're only doing a return on the investment and didn't care about sustainability — and vice versa — I'd lose my motivation,” Sanfilippo remarks. “It's a lot harder than it should be, but I think it's worth it.”
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