Digital Video - November 2007 - (Page 31) Co-stars Sarah Silverman and Brian Posehn take five between shots. SHOOTING DIGITAL IS NO JOKE FOR THE SARAH SILVERMAN PROGRAM. hen executives at Comedy Central first discussed the concept that would become The Sarah Silverman Program, they were concerned about the costs involved in giving the proposed series the same polished look as Silverman’s 2005 theatrical concert film Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic. They presumed it had obtained by shooting on film. This pleased director of photography Rhet Bear, who shot that feature and went on to work as the cinematographer on the series primarily because he hadn’t shot Jesus is Magic on film. He’d instead used standard-definition Panasonic SDX 900s in the DVC PRO50 format, with the result subsequently up-rezzed at IVC for film out. If Bear could get such results in SD, he knew he could do that much more using Panasonic VariCam 720p HD cameras for the planned half-hour series. Now entering its second season, The Sarah Silverman Program follows the irreverent and politically incorrect adventures of “Sarah,” a woman blissfully trapped in very arrested development who approaches every situation as a pure, uninhibited and incredibly selfish Id that would make Freud proud. Sister Laura Silverman and comics Brian Posehn, Steve Agee and Jay Johnston round out the cast as Sarah’s slightly more mature enablers. After exploiting the sympathies of AIDS activists, sleeping with God and mocking militant lesbianism in season one, Sarah returns in the show’s new season true to form by cussing out a priest in front of his congregation. Later, Posehn and Agee perform an ill-conceived raid on an abortion clinic in one of the series’ many sly nods to genre films popular with the nerdy Comic-Con set. The bulk of Bear’s experience has been shooting film for commercials and music videos, and he says he likes the VariCam in part because of its ability to shoot off speed— dv november 2007 W BY JON SILBERG www.dv.com STEVE AGEE 31 http://www.dv.com
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