CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
Tonight, the new season of "Key & Peele" premieres on Comedy Central, at 10:30/9:30C for a ten-episode run.
For those who may not be familiar with the show, it's a sketch comedy premise with an accent on high production values and a cinematic feel. Our daunting challenge is to achieve this on a basic-cable budget and a schedule of two to three sketches a day; my colleagues in the art, makeup, hair and wardrobe departments hit it out of the park every time, along with our talented and tireless director Peter Atencio. A sampling of last year's sketches can be seen here.
For this season we moved from the F3 to the Alexa, which gave us more exposure headroom and streamlined our workflow--the post department was VERY pleased to receive footage already in ProRes422HQ rather than last year's XDCAM which had to then be transcoded. We also debuted my DIT's super-cart, which featured HDLINK Pro's controlled by Livegrade for on-set LUT building. The LUT's were applied for dailies and editing and we are just now doing the final color correction using the LUT's as reference. Each of the 68 sketches we shot this year have a unique look and it has been very beneficial to have these (or an approximation therof) in place from the moment of shooting.
While my G/E crew was sizable by indie standards (full-time 5+5, with additionals as required), it was still slightly undersize compared to network shows that largely shoot on stage--we shoot 100% on location, sometimes with multiple company moves in a day. Our HMI package had two 6K pars and two M18's plus some Jokers, and we brought in 18K's for a week on the Universal backlot. Tungsten up to 5K with a couple of Ruby 7's and the usual assortment of smaller units, plus lots of PAR cans for daylight hits and accents, Source 4's in both tungsten and JoLeko configurations, Kinos and Parabeams and covered wagons.
Camera-wise, the Alexas were fitted with the 18-80 and 45-250 Alura zooms and the 16-42 and 30-80 Optimo DP's. Very little specialty gear this year, although for one sketch that is supposed to be home video footage from the 80's, I used a period video camera (the type originally used with an over-the-shoulder VHS deck) built into a shoulder configuration with DP4 viewfinder and Nnovia A2D hard drive recorder. That was a lot of fun and the look is amazing--it feels very much like found footage! We got the C300 for one sketch as a third body but never had the chance to shoot anything on it, sadly. We shot the stage wraparounds on five F800's recording to XDCAM disc.
Will be happy to hear your thoughts on the show, good bad or indifferent.
For those who may not be familiar with the show, it's a sketch comedy premise with an accent on high production values and a cinematic feel. Our daunting challenge is to achieve this on a basic-cable budget and a schedule of two to three sketches a day; my colleagues in the art, makeup, hair and wardrobe departments hit it out of the park every time, along with our talented and tireless director Peter Atencio. A sampling of last year's sketches can be seen here.
For this season we moved from the F3 to the Alexa, which gave us more exposure headroom and streamlined our workflow--the post department was VERY pleased to receive footage already in ProRes422HQ rather than last year's XDCAM which had to then be transcoded. We also debuted my DIT's super-cart, which featured HDLINK Pro's controlled by Livegrade for on-set LUT building. The LUT's were applied for dailies and editing and we are just now doing the final color correction using the LUT's as reference. Each of the 68 sketches we shot this year have a unique look and it has been very beneficial to have these (or an approximation therof) in place from the moment of shooting.
While my G/E crew was sizable by indie standards (full-time 5+5, with additionals as required), it was still slightly undersize compared to network shows that largely shoot on stage--we shoot 100% on location, sometimes with multiple company moves in a day. Our HMI package had two 6K pars and two M18's plus some Jokers, and we brought in 18K's for a week on the Universal backlot. Tungsten up to 5K with a couple of Ruby 7's and the usual assortment of smaller units, plus lots of PAR cans for daylight hits and accents, Source 4's in both tungsten and JoLeko configurations, Kinos and Parabeams and covered wagons.
Camera-wise, the Alexas were fitted with the 18-80 and 45-250 Alura zooms and the 16-42 and 30-80 Optimo DP's. Very little specialty gear this year, although for one sketch that is supposed to be home video footage from the 80's, I used a period video camera (the type originally used with an over-the-shoulder VHS deck) built into a shoulder configuration with DP4 viewfinder and Nnovia A2D hard drive recorder. That was a lot of fun and the look is amazing--it feels very much like found footage! We got the C300 for one sketch as a third body but never had the chance to shoot anything on it, sadly. We shot the stage wraparounds on five F800's recording to XDCAM disc.
Will be happy to hear your thoughts on the show, good bad or indifferent.
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