How to Create a Scrim on a Budget

Video Transcript

"Hey I'm Shaun O'Rourke with Eleven Bravo Productions and we're here at the lighting and grip department at EUE Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina. I'm here with Darwin Brandis. We're going to talk about how to make a scrim on a budget but also the principles of a scrim and how it works. Darwin. Alright Shaun well a scrim is mainly just a piece of screen, metal screen with a nice metal edge so you can drop it in and out of the front of the lamp right in front of the lens and the point of the scrim is so that you can drop the level of a light without using a dimmer which changes the color temperature of the lamp. So whenever you use a dimmer to bring the lamp down it is going to get more orange and you are going to lose that color temperature so what you do is you get this handy dandy little single scrim and you pop it right down in front of the lens right behind the barn doors. There is four types of scrims, this is a single so the wire mesh is just a little bit wider. There is more space for light to go through. The double which is usually a red rim as opposed to the green rim symbol has smaller spaces between each hole so less light can get through. You can put as many of these as you can fit in front of a lamp and then you can also use half singles or half doubles. You know you can put them on the right side you want to have right side half single or right side half double. Alright so on, these things come in different sizes. Well they usually come in like I said there is a specific size for each size lamp but they all come with singles, doubles, half singles or half doubles. So if you have to make a scrim on a budget these are some of the tools that you'll need. You'll need scissors, you'll need some electrical tape, a marker so that you can trace your outline. You'll need to know the dimensions and the size of the light fixture that you are going to be working with and then you are going to need some screen mesh here. Now you can go to your local hardware store and you can buy different grades of this. You want to stay away from the nylon because the nylon will burn so what we're going to do here is build a scrim. First you'll get your outline. Once you have your circle cut out you are going to get your electrical tape, you are going to make little cuts since you are going around in a circle and apply it to the edge forming your brace and you'll do this all the way around. Ta-da, so now that you have created a frame for this you can hold it up against your light to make sure that you've got it perfectly on there and you can clip these with pins and remember the purpose of a scrim is to cut light so you want to put as many on here as you want to diffuse the light and also if you needed a half all you would have to do is cut it in half like so. Just that simple. Ta-da. So I just showed you how to make a scrim on a budget. I am Shaun O'Rourke. I hope you enjoyed this video."