Digital Video - November 2008 - (Page 25)

there, but we don’t get in people’s way.” “We make sure we’re friends with the gaffer, and a lot of times he’ll throw up a light for us,” explains Knutson. “Very often, the sound mixer is happy to let us jack into the audio board. But we know that everyone there is very busy, and we never want to get in the way of the production. Usually, actors or crewmembers who see our stuff say, ‘You were here that day?’ ‘You were shooting then?’” Lately, the team’s been using a Panasonic DVX100 camera in 24p mode. They’ve cut down their lighting package from two to one box: An ARRI tungsten kit with two 300s, two 650s and two soft boxes, though they like a somewhat “unlit” and raw look that can give the behindthe-scenes material a slightly less polished, studio-generated feel. “When things appear overlit,” Knutson declares, “that look irritates me as a viewer. We try to let the existing light do a lot of the work, and then we might hit people with a rim light or make the light on an actress a little softer — that kind of stuff.” The two also edit most of their material themselves at their Hollywood offices, where they have a couple of G5s running Final Cut Pro 6.0.4 and a 4TB RAID for storage. When DV visited the Chop Shop HQ, the pair was at work on a series of behind-the-scenes “Webisodes” to complement NBC’s Webbased science-fiction series Gemini Division. These mini-documentaries have run in their small, compressed versions for the Web, but their delivery spec is HD to allow for the pieces to run on broadcast or cable TV or to be included in a Blu-ray release. They work with the material in FCP’s 720p HD codec. While they say they would use Pro Tools for some more elaborate projects, they are both happy with Soundtrack for most of their bread-and-butter EPK work. Likewise, Apple’s Color has given them very pleasing results, though there’s still some color-grading assignments they would trust only to a dedicated colorist at a high-end facility. “I want the blacks black!” Knutson says. “A good colorist is a technical artist, and there are times we really don’t want to try to do that work ourselves.” Having completed behind-the-scenes work and documentary Webisodes for Smith’s latest ribald comedy, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the Chop Shop duo hope to continue building their EPK business as they progress on their own projects, including the Milius documentary and possibly a Web-based series of their own — though it’s still too early for them to share what the premise might be. It’s early days for Webisodes, and a lot of small companies like Chop Shop are thinking along similar lines. One thing they will say about a Web series they might produce is that the 3-5 minute duration of each Gemini Division installment is just right — and not merely for technical reasons to do with streaming and downloading. “The average person watching programming on the Internet will only stay with something so long,” Figueroa observes, admitting that this short-attention-span stereotype includes himself. “If I’m watching something on the Internet and it goes on for much more than three minutes, I say, ‘You’ve got to entertain me much faster than that!’” DV http://audio-technica.com http://audio-technica.com

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

Digital Video - November 2008 Contents AG-HMC150 Camcorder I-Cuff Eyepiece Protector Instant Expert Avid Media Composer 3.0 DT-B9L 1DU Monitor Flolight LCD500 Dark Red Close-Up: Chop Shop Socky Prime Mover Tools & Technology: DV Expo Toolkit Click to Play DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - November 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.