Will I be able to pull this off with moonlights/snoot/grid/barndoors or do I really need hot lights??
Yeah, it will work. I shot some glamour stuff this weekend using mostly two studio flash units, fitted with various combos of either a 7-inch grid reflector, or an 11.5 inch grid reflector, and either 10-, 20-, or 35-degree honeycomb grids, and about half of the time I used one, two, or even three Speedotron mylar snap-on diffusers. The shooting area was pretty cramped, without a lot of room for big modifiers. I actually liked the way the 7-inch reflector with the 10-degree grid worked. The 11.5 inch reflector is a 50-degree beam spread on its own, and I used that with the 20-degree grid most of the night, most of the time with two of the mylar diffusers.
The mylar diffusers do not soften the light up all that much when used one at a time, but they DO "take the raw light edge off". Adding a second diffuser, or a third, does soften the light somewhat; but the real issue is that a 7- or 11.5 inch, or even a 16- or 20-inch parabolic reflector is STILL a "small" light source in relation to a human being. so it does throw a pretty crisp shadow, which makes this kind of lighting gear fairly easy to position and aim. You can very easily SEE your nose-shadow placement, and the under-chin shadow, and see your subject's eye catchlights.
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