Mike: Apples rot on the frozen earth. Bell House, record plays in sad teenage bedroom. This is Mike from the Substream.com and this is the episode of the Film Lab. And it’s November which means that the winter speed its way on the black wings of a crow. There’s only one thing that is black, it’s my soul in the film set and that’s by craft.

One of the things that’s really handy and really evil that you can have in your grip kit, your lighting kit that cost basically no money something called black wrap, portable, flexible sheets of ultimate nothingness. And what it’s actually called is cinefoil. And it’s made by a company called Rosco that makes some gels and a whole bunch of other lighting stuff.

And what it basically is it’s a big roll of aluminum foil, thick aluminum foil just like the stuff you’ve got at home except this stuff has matte black heat resistant paint stuff coding applied to it. This roll will last forever and it was like 40 bucks in retail. I know that seems expensive for some aluminum foil but you know all those incredibly expensive lighting accessories, flags and gobbles and Pandora and stuff for all the lamps that you can’t afford because you spend all your money on rare other prints seven inch Goth music records. You can make that stuff out of black wrap.

Take the stuff and fold it into a flag. This is a flag now. This is basically disposable. It’s heat resistant. It won’t catch on fire because it’s completely—it swallows up all the light like my soul swallows up all the happiness in the world. If you have a light leak like this on the part right here that’s shooting out into a part you’ve set where you don’t want light, just fold it on, problem freaking solved.

You can make a freaking snoot out of black wrap. Look at this, you see, I’ve got this light but I can’t make, I can’t. It just makes a big of pull of light and I don’t have a snoot, 30 bucks black wrap in five minutes. Look at this freaking snoot. It’s a secret that all the movie people don’t want to admit to now about.

This segment is going to have audience participation. Do you have questions?

Male: Hi, what’s a snoot?

Mike: A snoot is a tube that goes on the front of a lamp to make a small circle of light and it’s called a snoot after Professor Snoot Flute from the Archies.

Male: Can you reuse pieces of black wrap that you’ve already used for something else?

Mike: Yeah, you can and you should. The first time anybody uses this stuff, they always might want to say, they kept throwing it out, but it basically last forever. You can sponge it up into a ball like this. And this will look like a garbage but you can always save it and make it into something useful. And then you have an extra three bucks to spend on a doughnut. One more question only.

Male: Why can’t you just take regular tint full in paint of black?

Mike: You can’t do that because the paint will burn when you put it near your lamp. This is special stuff, it’s heat resistant and it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get hot. If I’m going to touch that snoot right now, it would melt the skin out of my fingers. What that does mean is that it won’t catch on fire which is more neat and safe for a lot of stuff that you can just fold up and put on top of the lamp, it’s like 15 to billion degrees right now.

No more question.