Equipment needed for this type of portrait?

[Photog82]

NFLD, what type of background did you use? Paper or some sort of cloth material? My father has one of those construction lights, I'm going to experiment with that first by either using my 5 in 1 reflector disc, one of them is a defuser. The shadowing is what I really want, I don't want it to go from light to no light. Hopefully this will work as I'm not planing on buying expensive lighting for this as I don't think I'll have much use of it.

Although I have been looking at sub $200 CFL lightboxes, but thought probably wouldn't be for awhile since I need to buy this background stand as well. Would a constant light in a softbox work too or would a softbox with a flash inside it be required?