American Cinematographer - March 2008 - (Page 55)

O’Shea, ASC; and Dennis Hall. For season two, producer Steve Beers and producer/director Tony Wharmby asked Gordon Lonsdale to be the sole director of photography for all 21 episodes. At the time, Lonsdale’s episodic-TV experience included Northern Exposure, Space: Above and Beyond and The Magnificent Seven. When he came aboard Bones, Lonsdale’s first order of business was to establish a set of parameters for shooting and lighting the show that was specific but also flexible. “I like to think of the show as a romantic comedy with some thriller elements thrown in,” he says. “Not every show is the same; depending on the tone of the scene at hand, sometimes shadows are black, and sometimes they aren’t.” Lonsdale hired gaffer Erik Messerschmidt, who was recommended by A-camera operator Greg Collier, and together they drafted a lighting manifesto that details how the show should be lit and shot under almost any circumstance. This was deemed necessary because Bones has insert units and second units shooting full days every week, and Lonsdale tends to rotate his camera crews. Also, if Lonsdale has to step away to scout a location, someone else has to step up and shoot first unit. “We didn’t want to have to worry about whether people were doing things the way Gordon wanted them to be done,” says Messerschmidt. “We needed to make sure everyone was clear about what was okay and what wasn’t. This wasn’t just for Gordon, but for the good of the show in general — we have to get it done on time within the parameters the producers set.” Messerschmidt describes the show’s look as “crisp, but also gritty. Gordon embraces the directors’ visions and encourages them to make their episode their own. The look of the show is such that it can be adjusted to the way a director Booth (David Boreanaz) and Brennan (Emily Deschanel) compare notes in a scene from Bones. stages a scene or chooses to do coverage.” One of the ways Lonsdale maintains such flexibility is by using Kodak’s Vision2 5299 HD Color Scan film stock. Touted as a specialty stock for TV productions, 5299 allows the cinematographer to match the look of several different Kodak emulsions, all on the same roll of film. The first season of Bones was shot on 3-perf Vision 500T 5279, but Lonsdale preferred its Vision2 descendant, 5218. “Unfortunately, Fox doesn’t allow the use of 5218 because Kodak charges more for it,” he explains. “So I told my Kodak rep, Candace Chatman, that I needed a highspeed stock that wasn’t 5279. She recommended 5299, which shoots 320 ASA to 2,000 ASA.” Before production would commit to a new film stock, Lonsdale had to conduct a battery of tests. He recalls, “Rating at 1,000 ASA, I shots tests where I overexposed and underexposed the film, 4 full stops in each direction. I transferred it straight without correction, and then I transferred it to see how it would respond to correcting it back to normal after being shot at such extremes. I did the same test, pushing it 1 stop to 2,000 ASA. Bones is the first show where I’ve put my meter at 2,000 ASA, and the footage looks great.” After grading the results, Lonsdale found 5299 similar enough to 5218. “The difficulty with 5299 is that you really have to set your parameters. If you were to do a film print directly from the negative, there would be no contrast in the film at all — it would be very flat.” Being able to take advantage of a variable-speed film stock makes all the difference on the set, which could be outdoors during the day or night, or indoors on one of the numerous Bones sets built within Stage 6 at Fox. A key set is the epicenter of the Jeffersonian, where polished-steel trusses, glowing floor panels and flashing computer readouts mesh with Gothic stone architecture. This set includes the forensics platform, the “bone room,” autopsy rooms, a conference room and various offices. When Lonsdale came aboard the show, he decided to keep a lot of the lighting put in place for the first season. Most alterations were relegated to the architectural lighting — much of which is visibly integrated into the set — for the express purpose of taking the overall light level down to accommodate shooting on 5299. (Look closely, and you might catch a glimpse of the grid of silver rock ’n’ roll Par cans rigged to the truss over the forensics platform.) Lonsdale prefers to shoot the action onstage between a T2 and a T5.6, rating the 5299 at 1,000 ASA. On the forensics platform, the action is lit primarily from overhead by the aforementioned Par cans and, American Cinematographer 55 Bones photos courtesy of Fox Television.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2008

American Cinematographer - March 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Short Takes: Bill Viola’s Ocean Without a Shore Production Slate: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days Production Slate: Chantal: A Night at the Pyramids Magical Mystery Tour Some Kind of Monster Tantalizing Television Making Sitcoms “Sexy” Post Focus: Mega Playground Helps Set Look for Sibling Post Focus: Visual Effects Society Launches White Paper New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index In Memoriam: John McPherson, ASC ASC Membership Roster Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Wayne Kennan

American Cinematographer - March 2008

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