build your own lighting?

[Dweller]

has anyone ever built there own lighting for photography? I had a need for a spotlight effect recently and was not able to come up with anything that worked so thought I would ask here if anyone has done anything like this before.

 

[Cuervo79]

A friend of mine bought an outdoor 500 watt lamp and mod it so you could plug it to a normal indoor plug, it worked ok although the heat from it was horrendous.... he tryed to implement a makeshift soft box but it kept fallinga apart, on a B/w roll we took the light worked ok...