• Content Library
  • Shop
  • Pricing
  • Blog
  • Subscribe Now
  • Login
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
Lighting

Building Medusa: The Perfect DIY Fire Light

Hand conjuring fire rotates

Take Your Career to the Next Level with Unparalleled Filmmaking Education from an ASC Cinematographer.

Get Started with Shane’s Inner Circle Now.

 Join now and never miss another article like this!

You will learn:

  • How to use a Medusa Light for a scene.
  • The tools and materials needed to start building.
  • Use practical sources from home to create your light.
  • How to use this tool safely on set.
  • How to manipulate fire looks by using DIY sources.
  • Understanding how to use an uneven source to create cinematic images.
  • Understanding how to properly use dimmers to get your look.
  • Which gels to use to achieve your light quality?
  • The tricks and tips when using this light source on the job.

The look of fire has always been one of the most alluring sources that one could harness. The uneven and organic look of the light is dream-like and hypnotizing. While it looks beautiful, it doesn’t always emit a lot of light and can be extremely hard to control when on the job. Once you bring in a bunch of other lights and solutions, it becomes cumbersome and too much work.

Shane Hurlbut, ASC designed a versatile and mobile solution to creating that fire look. Utilizing only items from household and store items, he created a fire light that is based on Medusa’s hair. It creates an easy-to-use source that anyone can build for a nominal fee. This article breaks down what tools and materials you’ll need to create this light. You’ll leave with a tool ready for your next shoot!

Get this now in The Filmmaker’s Guide to DIY Lighting

Schedule 1-on-1 Video Call with Shane Hurlbut, ASC

Looking for mentorship in the film industry? Schedule a 1-on-1 meeting with Shane Hurlbut, ASC today! This is where you can get expert advice from an industry professional on your career or a particular project. 

About Filmmakers Academy Cinematographer Mentor Shane Hurlbut, ASC

Director of photography Shane Hurlbut, ASC works at the forefront of cinema. He’s a storyteller, innovator, and discerning collaborator, who brings more than three decades of experience to his art. He is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers, the International Cinematographers Guild/Local 600, and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Hurlbut frequently joins forces with great directors: McG’s Netflix Rim of the World and The Babysitter, plus Warner Bros. We Are Marshall and Terminator: Salvation; Scott Waugh’s Need for Speed and Act of Valor; and Gabriele Muccino’s There Is No Place Like Home and Fathers and Daughters. His additional film credits include Semi-Pro; The Greatest Game Ever Played; Into the Blue; Mr 3000; Drumline; 11:14, which earned Hurlbut a DVDX nomination; and The Skulls. Notably, his television credits include the first season of AMC’s Into the Badlands.

Blog-CTA-Banner-Light-Replicating-Advanced

Filmmakers Academy Premium Lighting Courses

  • On Set Power Distribution
  • How To Soften Light
  • Advanced Replicating Light Sources
July 11, 2012/by Shane Hurlbut, ASC
Tags: lighting design
Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Share on Vk
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://www.filmmakersacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ecea218ba45d587369b77ece55729e33.gif 281 500 Shane Hurlbut, ASC https://www.filmmakersacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Filmmakers-Academy-Filmmaking-Courses.svg Shane Hurlbut, ASC2012-07-11 10:25:542022-08-20 21:22:45Building Medusa: The Perfect DIY Fire Light
You might also like
Technicolor logoTechnicolor’s New Picture Style: CineStyle
Shane Hurlbut ASC teaches lighting techniquesThe Power of Shaping Hard Light
Lighting DIT Home Depot Light Part 2Lighting Call of Duty Spot with Home Depot Lights: Part 2
Blues Brothers "I Have seen the light!"Shane Hurlbut’s Go To Lighting Package
HurlBlog interview with Frieder HochheimFrieder Hochheim – The Innovation of Kino Flo Lighting
Lighting Theory with Cinematographer Shane HurlbutLighting with Canon’s 1DC DSLR 4K Capture Project “The Ticket”
31 replies
  1. visualMED
    visualMED says:
    July 11, 2012 at 12:03 PM

    that was f****king owesome man . this is what is called creativity .I start building my own kit of lighting its hard to get what you want but the result great … I try to save money to buy other gears prime lenses slider…….ext.
    shane I can²t tell you how this blog help my a lot thanks for your hard work..

    regards

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 11, 2012 at 1:36 PM

      visualMED. Thanks for the kind words and support. Kudos to my cinematography interns for building the light and shooting the tests.

  2. Baron
    Baron says:
    July 11, 2012 at 4:17 PM

    Wow Shane, this is one extensive DIY post that’s so different form the rest of your posts. My shoots are much smaller scale for corporate films but it’s great for me to know how you do it for movies.

    Thanks for the very detailed post. Terrific interns you got there!

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 26, 2012 at 9:29 PM

      Baron, thanks so much. Yes I feel the interns rocked this baby out.

      • sabri
        sabri says:
        October 27, 2012 at 10:11 AM

        developed by Zeiss

  3. N.K.Osborne
    N.K.Osborne says:
    July 11, 2012 at 5:43 PM

    This is amazing. I have to find someone who is handy with tools and knows how to build stuff. I’m not so good at it.

    Awesome trick. In love with this blog.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 26, 2012 at 9:26 PM

      N.K.Osborne, ha ha, yes sometimes you have to pull out the carpenter skills. Thanks for all your kind words and support.

  4. kubrick fan
    kubrick fan says:
    July 11, 2012 at 9:06 PM

    The lens Kubrick used for the candlelight scenes was actually a F 0.7 developed by Nasa – only ten in the world.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lyndon

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 11, 2012 at 10:55 PM

      kubrick fan, thank you so much for the clarification. I have changed it to reflect. Much appreciated.

  5. NightWalker
    NightWalker says:
    July 12, 2012 at 9:37 AM

    Great article and awesome idea! I have one correction though, John Carpenter actually was one of the first to develope the steadycam for Halloween in 1978. The Shining is still an awesome film experience though (Slow burns live on!).

    • Cory
      Cory says:
      July 14, 2012 at 10:04 PM

      not that it really matters but it was Bound for Glory (Wexler). Second time today I’ve heard someone get this wrong.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bound_for_Glory_(film)

  6. John P. Hess
    John P. Hess says:
    July 12, 2012 at 4:12 PM

    Shane – that is single handedly the neatest idea I’ve seen in lighting in a long time.

    Wonderful!

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 25, 2012 at 8:14 PM

      John P. Hess, thank you so much for your kind words. I think the interns kicked some ass on the build

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      August 22, 2012 at 12:15 PM

      John P. Hess, thank you so much for your kind words

  7. D Phillips
    D Phillips says:
    July 14, 2012 at 4:58 PM

    Hey Shane,
    Awesome post as usual. I absolutely love this site and all the work you do to spread the love…
    @ NightWalker, I have to respectfully disagree, Garrett Brown first used the steadycam (I believe) on Rocky, 1976.

    Again, Shane, thanks…

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 25, 2012 at 8:11 PM

      D Phillips, thank you so much for your kind words and support

  8. Donut
    Donut says:
    July 15, 2012 at 9:01 PM

    that is a very cool project… call me lazy… but any television set, lcd panel, or video projector and a “Fake fire” christmas log burning video would be easier to set up…. and just as effective.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 25, 2012 at 8:11 PM

      Donut, you can go with that, I will go with my Medusa. To each his own

  9. Jendra Jarnagin
    Jendra Jarnagin says:
    July 18, 2012 at 3:55 PM

    Cool! I didn’t know about that bulb dip!

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 18, 2012 at 5:44 PM

      Jendra Jarnagin. Thanks for the comment and support.

  10. Jon Kranhouse
    Jon Kranhouse says:
    July 18, 2012 at 4:35 PM

    Hi Shane,

    You have a great website, and kudos for keeping alive the 100+ year-old tradition of color-dipping bulbs in such a clever way!

    Per “Barry Lyndon’s” director of photography, John Alcott, “Argh!!! THAT rubbish! Stanley wanted the NASA lens, and it got lots of ink thanks to Ed DiGiulio, president of Cinema Products. But in almost every shot we hid grain-of-wheat bulbs behind every wick, so we could close down a few stops to capture a slight yellow hue in the candle flame. Otherwise, the candle flames would become so many white-hot splotches on screen.” John said they used “thousands” of grain-of-wheat bulbs, run through Variacs and dimmers. Custom-made triple-wick candles helped to increase the stop, as candle wax burns at the same temperature, regardless of one or three wicks.

    The above conversation happened in Washington DC, where John had wrapped “No Way Out” the day before. He was leaving for a well-earned vacation the next morning, and I had just arrived to shoot the film’s opening and closing credits with a Gyrosphere helicopter mount the next day. I was disappointed for missing an opportunity to observe the maestro on set…so I suggested he take a break from packing and have lunch. Ostensibly, lunch was for me to learn how to preserve the look he wanted (no 85 and a dense negative to print in the 40’s). Of course, John knew that mostly I wanted to pepper him with “inside-baseball” questions and he graciously obliged. But John got surprisingly prickly when asked about the “Barry Lyndon” candle scenes — that as a DoP worth my salt I should know better than to believe everything I read! A few weeks later John suffered a fatal heart attack while on vacation, which shocked and saddened all who had the privilege of working for him.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 25, 2012 at 7:59 PM

      Jon Kranhouse, thank you so much for that history lesson. I love John Alcott’s work, what an amazing visionary.

  11. Sean Finnegan
    Sean Finnegan says:
    July 18, 2012 at 5:19 PM

    Hey Shane, I was wondering if you could give me a little insight into how your lighting approach changes when you’re shooting commercial work vs. creative work. I’m a young cinematographer currently working for a new media production company and in new media often times production quality and creative lighting take a back seat to turn around time and keeping the budget low.

    How should we as cinematographers think of lighting when the content we’re producing isn’t strictly narrative? I can provide examples to you of the shows we shoot if that’d help you frame where I’m coming from. Pun intended.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 25, 2012 at 7:58 PM

      Sean Finnegan, you never change. It is up to you as the cinematographer to make it sing no matter what the budget. I have worked with 200 million or 5 thousand. It is shaping your lighting and camera concept to fit the budget.

  12. Scott Mohrman
    Scott Mohrman says:
    June 12, 2013 at 5:43 AM

    I have plans to build this firelight for an upcoming horror film I am shooting. It is a great design Shane. I just wanted to post here that Rosco has discontinued the Colorine. I did find that Studio Depot has some red and amber but were out of stock on the yellow.

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      July 4, 2013 at 5:51 PM

      Scott Mohrman, yes, I am glad you found them. You can use Yellow paint, it will just burn quickly and you will have to re-dip.

  13. Joey W. Kolbe
    Joey W. Kolbe says:
    December 4, 2013 at 7:39 PM

    Amazing ! Shane …I teach Cinematography at Emerson college . We used the candle light effect in my advanced class. ( built and used in class)! The students loved it so much that several more were constructed and are now permanent fixtures in the equipment package.
    Including my own.

    Cheers
    J

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      December 12, 2013 at 3:08 PM

      Joey W. Kolbe, ha ha, that is awesome The Medusa LIVES!!!!

  14. Nit Picker
    Nit Picker says:
    April 12, 2014 at 4:25 PM

    Medusa has a suttle cameo @ 0:34

    • Shane
      Shane says:
      April 20, 2014 at 4:28 PM

      Nit Picker,yeah baby!!!! Thanks so much for the support

  15. Stewart
    Stewart says:
    November 14, 2016 at 8:05 AM

    “Stanley Kubrick was an absolutely brilliant filmmaker. On the film Barry Lyndon, Kubrick wanted to shoot only with candlelight, so he asked NASA to design a 50mm lens that would have an f-stop of a 0.7. There are only 10 in the world.”

    That still reads wrong.
    The lenses were made by Zeiss for NASA, for the Apollo missions.
    Kubrick did not ask NASA to make a lens for him.
    He did however get a hold of at least one and had both the lens and a camera modified to work together.
    “Barry Lyndon” indoors used Candles, but there were very large lamps used outside the windows, so even the shots ‘lit with candle light’ still had some external sources.

    http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/ac/len/page1.htm
    https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9811242514/kubrick-s-f-0-7-lenses-now-available-for-rent-but-start-saving-up

Comments are closed.

Blog Catagories

  • Announcements
  • Cinematography
  • Film Theory
  • Lighting
  • Pre Production
  • Production
  • Post Production
  • Finding the Frame
  • The Look Of
  • Wellness
  • Sponsored
  • Off Topic

Latest Blog Posts

  • Cinematography Essentials Lesson 3 with Justin JonesCinematography Essentials: How to Design an Epic Music Video ShotMarch 20, 2023 - 7:06 PM
  • On Set Food Choices with Lydia HurlbutHealthy Filmmaker: On Set Eating HabitsMarch 20, 2023 - 4:07 PM
  • Oscars Winners 2023Oscars Winners 2023March 14, 2023 - 5:12 PM

Newsletter Signup

SUBSCRIBE

Join our community to take advantage of personal insights, techniques, and skills from Hollywood professionals. They put in the time and effort so you don’t have to!



BROWSE COURSES

Cinematography
Lighting & Grip
Directing
Camera And Lenses
Post Production
Coming Soon
View All Courses

ABOUT

Pricing
Store
Blog
Our Story
Our Mentors
FAQs
Student and US Military
Shane’s Kit
Glossary
Contact Us

DOWNLOAD
SIGN IN
BECOME A MEMBER

Our Partners

 
PreviousNext
Red Digital Cinema logo
Matthews Studio Equipment logo
The Tiffen Company logo
Musicbed logo
Keslow logo PNG Transparent
Blueshape logo
MBS Equipment Company logo
 

Filmmakers Academy, Los Angeles, CA Born in Los Angeles, CA.

Terms Of Use         Cookie Policy         Privacy Policy

2023 © Hurlbut Visuals, All Rights Reserved.

Scroll to top