"Million Dollar Listing" on Bravo shot w/DVX

what did u guys shoot it on... 60i or 24, cant really tell from the low quality preview clip.
 
The show was shot 24p, mostly handheld, except for talking head interviews, which were on sticks. Most of the verite footage was shot with wide angle adapters; the Century zoom through, and various others. All natural lighting, except for the talking head interviews.

It was a fun but exhausting gig, and we shot tons of footage; the nature of the real estate industry is such that we never know which story of the various ones we were following would actually pay off in an interesting or dramatic way, so we wound up shooting a lot of things that didn't make the show because they didn't pay off and were difficult to craft into a compelling story. That's both the problem with and blessing of documentary shooting; you often wind up overshooting and crafting the story in post, but a lot of times, the story that actually unfolds is more interesting than the one you planned to shoot, and if you're lucky, you get it on tape.
 
Loved the camera work. Hated the show - which was actually a positive, as it allowed me to focus on the production aspects.

If this comes out on DVD, I'll probably pick it up and watch it a few times, trying to pick up and match some of the techniques used. An example would be in one of the sweeps of a bedroom. The shot started with a close-in of an object on the left side of a room, quickly zoomed out, and then without pause, quickly panned the room. Might not be an advanced trick but it was effective. For somebody starting out filming (like myself), it might not be something one would think of on one's own. I'll also have to see how the other rooms were filmed when trying to give an overview of a house. It was certainly not a basic pan of every room being showed.

I'm also going to watch how the dialogue between people was captured. I really liked how conversations were shot and can't quite figure out why they were so effective. Very nicely done.

As for the content of tonight's show, I couldn't really stand anyone on it. Found most of the people very unlikeable. The asian realtor seemed like he might be alright. Everybody else I was rooting against. There was also some really rough plastic surgery.
 
I guess I missed episode 2. Episode 1 had some interesting characters (such as the "just lookers"), but I agree with a previous poster to an extent. The Sellers in this one were a bit off. The one guy that would not use common sense to get his house sold and the woman who was stuck on her price. Oh well for her, guess she really didn't want to sell it very bad. Nice technical work, very pro.
:thumbsup:
 
arnold said:
Which wide angle converter did you use? .8, .7 or .65?
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We used mostly the Century .7 and Panasonic's .8. Despite being about twice the price of the Panasonic, one of the Century adapters we had was in bad shape, noticeably soft on the edges of frame. You can see some of those Century shots in the show. The Panasonic didn't go quite as wide, but it was much lighter, which makes a huge difference when you're shooting handheld all day.
 
12001200 said:
Loved the camera work.
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Thanks!

12001200 said:
If this comes out on DVD, I'll probably pick it up and watch it a few times, trying to pick up and match some of the techniques used. An example would be in one of the sweeps of a bedroom. The shot started with a close-in of an object on the left side of a room, quickly zoomed out, and then without pause, quickly panned the room. Might not be an advanced trick but it was effective. For somebody starting out filming (like myself), it might not be something one would think of on one's own. I'll also have to see how the other rooms were filmed when trying to give an overview of a house. It was certainly not a basic pan of every room being showed.
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All the fast motion in the house coverage was done in post. We'd shoot the houses from a ton of different angles, exteriors, interiors, wides, tight on details, pans, zooms from details to wides, walkthroughs, and the editor jazzed it up with fast cutting, fast motion, and graphics, so you could get a sense of the space without having to sit through five minutes of house b-roll. They usually use the fast motion effect to speed up the middle of a long shot, say a slow zoom out from a detail in a room to a wide shot in a room, or a lengthy house walk-through shot.

12001200 said:
I'm also going to watch how the dialogue between people was captured. I really liked how conversations were shot and can't quite figure out why they were so effective. Very nicely done.
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Big props to the editor and story editors who had to craft the hundreds of hours of footage we shot into a story. On some of the scenes, we'd shoot two cameras to cover important conversations, which made it easier, but often we'd just have one camera, in which case you have to decide at every moment which person you need to be covering during a conversation, plus get plenty of cut-aways (esp. shots of the other person listening).

12001200 said:
As for the content of tonight's show, I couldn't really stand anyone on it. Found most of the people very unlikeable. The asian realtor seemed like he might be alright. Everybody else I was rooting against. There was also some really rough plastic surgery.
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There were some people who were difficult to deal with, for sure, but most of those didn't even make the show (and the difficult ones that did... I'm not saying, but you can guess :) ) The majority of the agents, buyers, and sellers we worked with were very accomodating, and if they come off badly, keep in mind that it was cut that way to play up the drama/melodrama of the scenario.
 
I actually find the stories interesting and I don't like reality shows that much. I'd be interested in knowing what you do for mikes and mixers. Do you boom or lav?

Thanks.
 
Kelly Olsen said:
I actually find the stories interesting and I don't like reality shows that much. I'd be interested in knowing what you do for mikes and mixers. Do you boom or lav?

Thanks.
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On days when we had sound mixers on the crew, they'd usually lav the principal subjects and boom as a backup or to catch anyone that wasn't lav'd, and we'd run the feed into the camera. The mixers brought their own gear, so it varied depending on who was working.

On days when we didn't have sound mixers, we'd run a shotgun on camera (channel two), and lav our main subject on channel one. In this case, both shotgun and lavs were Sennheiser.
 
Really great show tonight Stas. Loved the story about the music producer's place.

Couldn't believe the wife went through with selling. Did she not see the pain she was inflicting? Such a fantastic house - especially before the staging - and they essentially traded that house and the guy's soul for something which seemed much more generic.

The husband was awesome. Funny and inexplicably charismatic. The MDL crew captured some great lines. "I've been married for 26 years now, which means if I killed my wife when we first met, I'd be out on parole now."

The house inspector was also strangely captivating. Editing definitely helped, considering a five hour inspection got summed up in three minutes, but it was cool just following him around and watching him work.

And Janice Dickinson? Wtf?!?
 
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