Our Story | Modern Lighting

Modern Lighting Wants to do Things Differently

The founder of Modern Lighting, Josh Alkoff, began his filmmaking career in the New York indie-film scene where he developed a nimble approach to lighting and camera work. He honed his skills as a lighting technician, stage rigger, set wireman, and gen op (electrical field safety rep - FSR) on Hollywood studio features, streaming network television, and as a commercial gaffer for branding agencies.

He observed significant inefficiencies in big-budget productions: among them location constraints which required gear to travel from 40-foot trailers parked in distant lots into smaller cube trucks which were stuck blocks away from the film set.

Upon arrival they still required additional labour to unload and transport equipment, and so it went -- it would usually get handed off a few times before it got to it's final location -- where a single person may finally set it up and contribute value to the picture.

Never losing the true spirit of independent filmmaking, Josh, knew there had to be a way to cut out this gigantic Hollywood footprint without sacrificing the professional tools used on those sets.

Drawing on international experience he had observed in overseas productions where dense urban locations had incognito crews, packed into easily accessible vans. There was no need for production crews to block off large areas or to fill the streets with oversized support vehicles.

This streamlined model for filmmaking along with a passion to integrate and discover new efficiencies from the latest tech innovations inspired Josh to create Modern Lighting.