Digital Video - May 2008 - (Page 13)

CLOSE-UP PHOTO DANNY FELD; INSET BY NICOLE REVELLI Three cameras (left) capture the cast’s improv action. Below, cinematographer Patrick Stewart. COMEDY IN THE EXPRESS LINE PATRICK STEWART BRINGS VISUAL HUMOR TO 10 ITEMS OR LESS. BY DOUGLAS BANKSTON fter the first season of the TBS improv-comedy show 10 Items or Less, the producers brought in director of photography Patrick Stewart to evaluate the look of the program and shoot the second season. “When they asked me to do it, I came in and wanted to change some things, and they listened,” says Stewart, who has shot on countless video formats, racking up credits such as the HBO series Flight of the Conchords, director Mike Figgis’ experiments Hotel and Timecode and director Peter Bogdanovich’s doc Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream. 10 Items or Less takes place within a real grocery store — Jon’s Marketplace in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley area. “I say you’re in a grocery store that’s completely lit already,” notes Stewart. “That should be your base light. Don’t try to overpower that light and light everything yourself, or it’s going to start to look like a set. The most important thing for me for 10 Items is to keep it looking real. Stewart convinced the production to switch from 1⁄2"chipped XDCAMs to Sony HDW-F900s for better detail and depth of field from a slightly larger 2⁄3" chip, and also started incorporating the ceiling in frame. “We don’t have lights hanging over our head,” he explains. “I don’t mind seeing the real fixtures in the ceilings. I lit it with [Kino Flo] Image 80s on the side just to fill in faces. I’m just trying to give them some light from the front and make sure everything else looks real in the back.” He balanced the Image 80s to the store’s overhead fluorescents.” Utilizing three cameras mostly with Fujinon 4.5mm zooms, each half-hour episode was shot in three days. In the production www.dv.com A offices above the grocery store, Stewart and writer-director Nancy Hower would block out scenes with little army men, then go downstairs into the store to check the shots. “I think it would be better if it were a scripted show,” he says, “but this season, I just had to keep making sure that we weren’t missing anything and get the camera operators — all three were good — to react quickly. It’s a lot of handheld work, and those are the hardest-working guys on the set.” The store’s windows were covered in hard, plastic ND gels color-corrected to go slightly blue. “It was easy to put them on and take them off rather than have guys with squeegees where you’d still see ripples — that’s what they did last year and the windows looked horrible,” Stewart says. Though “exciting visuals” may not be the first thing to come to mind in a grocery store, Stewart did point out some nifty camera tricks he devised. “We did this one cool shot where we took a Western dolly and constructed a platform on top so that the center camera operator could be at the top about eight feet off the ground,” he says. “The two other operators could be slung on either side of the dolly, and we could go down the wider isles and do a walk-and-talk shot on two of the characters.” Stewart also explained the “Hower Slide,” named in honor of the director. “We needed the camera low on the ground while following action,” he says. “We got the A-camera operator, David Sammons, on a moving blanket, and since you’ve got all that nice linoleum in a store, got a couple of grips and pulled him along really fast for great low-angled shots — very smooth yet handheld.” DV dv may 2008 13 http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - May 2008

Digital Video - May 2008 Contents DV Update Close-Up AJ-HPX3000 Camcorder Sidecar Raid Zoom H2 Recorder Instant Expert 324 Flat-Panel Display Extreme 35MM Adapter Type-S JIB How Slow Can You Go? Global Gastronome Mixing It UP Long-Distance Runaround Tools & Technology DV 101 Production Diary

Digital Video - May 2008

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