Dawson's Creek shot on video in later seasons?

roxics

roxics

Veteran
My girlfriend has been watching Dawson's Creek on Netflix and I've caught a little bit as she has. The early seasons are 16mm as stated on IMDB, but today she was watching an episode from I think season 4 and it looked like video to me. Still 4:3 aspect. I can't find anything online about the show switching to video cameras or what type if they did. Does anyone know anything about this?
 
That would be around 2000/2001. Very early to do something like that for anyone but George Lucas, but it's possible (even though this was a major production that I'm not sure would experiment at the time, but OTOH cutting costs is always an option).

If the show really started on 16mm film, what you could be seeing is the massive resolution jump to 35mm, but IDK.
 
It’s probably when Dawson turned 40 in real life while still playing a high schooler and they need to layer in the beauty filters .
 
Nah, it's the dreaded smoothing effect that makes everything look like video.
 
Could it be a different transfer? I've been rewatching star trek voyager and it's all interlaced and I'm like FML
 
What in the image is suggesting to you that it was shot on something other than 16mm? I took a look at a season 5 episode and it looked just like what I would have expected.

I would say with as much certainty as I can without having specific knowledge that the show would not have switched to a digital format at that time. In the early 2000's there wasn't a lot of love for the early 24p cameras as there were still significant latitude issues (remember this predates log acquisition) and while there was testing being done, the shows that started on film stayed on film. It wasn't until the mid to later 2000's that Genesis and RED started to swing the tide.

I had a bit of a love/hate thing with 16mm episodic in that era when I was working primarily as an operator. The viewing optics weren't quite as good as 35mm so one had to work a little harder, but the lighter weight was a plus when shooting handheld or Steadicam (although the 10 minute vs 4 minute loads sometimes mitigated that!). I was just thinking the other day about the Panavision Elaine, which was the only modern studio 16mm camera (the Arri SR's and the Aatons were designed primarily for doc style shooting). The Elaine was like a downsized version of the 35mm Panaflex design which made it kind of cute, but it ended up weighing about the same. I remember doing a long walk and talk on a beach for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and feeling the burn in a "35mm" kind of way. I don't have any pix of it but I do have this clip from dailies on a series called "Action" from '99. Looking at that setup now it is hard to believe it's 16mm inside there! I don't think Panavision kept any of those cameras around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM1D-6m8kho
 
I though "Action" was a great show. That and "John Laroquette" are two best programs on Don Reo's resume.

As far as the switch to HD digital goes - I remember getting an external HD tuner to watch Patriots - Panthers. That was in February, 2004 and most shows were in SD 4:3 then. IIRC, the "Gilmore Girls" went HD at the beginning of the 2005-06 TV season or a year and a half later. The 2006 WC was in HD only on ABC OTA. ESPN and Univision were still in SD.
 
DLD said:
I though "Action" was a great show. That and "John Laroquette" are two best programs on Don Reo's resume.

As far as the switch to HD digital goes - I remember getting an external HD tuner to watch Patriots - Panthers. That was in February, 2004 and most shows were in SD 4:3 then. IIRC, the "Gilmore Girls" went HD at the beginning of the 2005-06 TV season or a year and a half later. The 2006 WC was in HD only on ABC OTA. ESPN and Univision were still in SD.
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ESPN launched their HD channel in 2003. I remember, because that's when we started shooting Sports Century on the F900's. I also remember going to Bristol for the mandatory meeting/seminar/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, that those of us that shot on the series had to attend, before we could work on the new HD shows(HD was treated as a very big deal, back then) and looking at some of the interviews and b-roll that had already been shot for some of the episodes and thinking just how beautiful the images were. They spent boat loads of money on that show. At the time, it was one of their crown jewels, especially in the early days of HD. And the damn shame of it all, those episodes aired in 16:9 HD ONCE. Then each subsequent airing of an episode ran in 4:3 SD. Broke my heart...
 
CharlesPapert said:
I was just thinking the other day about the Panavision Elaine, which was the only modern studio 16mm camera (the Arri SR's and the Aatons were designed primarily for doc style shooting). The Elaine was like a downsized version of the 35mm Panaflex design which made it kind of cute, but it ended up weighing about the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM1D-6m8kho
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Slight thread de-rail....

If I recall Panavision bought a 50% share of Aaton when they got sued by Arri for infringing the swinger viewfinder patent.

Panavision wanted to develop a new super 16mm camera to replace the Elaine and the XTR Prod was that camera. Originally it was going to be a Panavision only rental camera and a lot of the early marketing images of that camera had Panavision style side rods, not rails from below.

Aaton also introduced an 800' magazine for extra long shooting times.

It was head and shoulders a better camera than the Arri SR3 at the time. Quite and steadier, a magnetic magazine drive instead of cogs and gears (quieter) and the magazines would "remember" how much film was in them when you switched them, a viewfinder frame glow that could work at the same time as the light meter (The Arri glow kills the internal meter), field switchable ground glasses using a tool built into the handle and and the other tools allowed you to change the shutter in a few seconds. Built in phase adjustment (for shooting monitors) and the video split was integrated with internal wiring, and even output VITC so in theory you could edit from the video split and conform back to film negative. Electrostatic viewfinder instead of the traditional heated viewfinder...the innovations went on and on, all co-developed with Panavision.

Of course Panavision also wanted Aatoncode timecode on film as well and started supplying Aatoncode as an option on Panavision 35mm cameras for episodic TV (Star Trek from memory was an enthusiastic user).

Yes before the XTR Prod and X TERA Aaton were known as a doco camera, but Panavision sure weren't planning for the XPROD to be a doco camera.

In the end JPB (Aaton founder) bought out the Panavision share of Aaton and they became their own entity again before the Pana-Aaton was launched and Aaton started selling them as stand alone cameras. It took Arri a LONG time to catch up, arguably the 416 was the closest they came where they notably copied some of the Aaton traits.

Mitch may remember and confirm some of this, he was working with Able, the US agent and I worked at the Australian agent Lemac at the same time....

JB
 
CharlesPapert said:
I remember doing a long walk and talk on a beach for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and feeling the burn in a "35mm" kind of way. I don't have any pix of it but I do have this clip from dailies on a series called "Action" from '99. Looking at that setup now it is hard to believe it's 16mm inside there! I don't think Panavision kept any of those cameras around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM1D-6m8kho
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Kept think you were still rolling and they were going to call "tails tails!!" as you walk away, haha.
 
16mm has sometimes reminded me of video, especially if lit or transferred in a slapdash way. I think it's because the depth of field is like 2/3"
 
combatentropy said:
16mm has sometimes reminded me of video, especially if lit or transferred in a slapdash way. I think it's because the depth of field is like 2/3"
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Yeah, there are times I've thought something was video, but turned out to be 16mm.



Though, I wonder if it wasn't the era and style of film making as well? Or that in combination with a bad transfer.


Here is 35mm all crispy crisp, as they film with what seems to be harder light and let the extreme highlights go completely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX3AXA3icR0
 
combatentropy said:
Yeah, if the light is harsh...

Hey, that trailer has a scene that isn't the movie (in the club, "They want you lean an hungry").
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Anytime people get too nostalgic about film, I show them that trailer. haha

...but it takes a lot before I do.
 
I realised I knew the producer of Dawson’s Creek so I asked him.

“ Hi john! Nice to hear from you and hope you’re well too. We shot super 16 the entire time. We also shot One Tree Hill on super 16 until the very end. “

JB
 
John, interesting story about Aaton, I remember when they had their complicated history with Panavision but never knew the XTR Prod came out of their partnership. I did a couple years of series work on the XTR Prod and it never really felt "right" in studio configuration--there was something slapdash about the extended viewfinder setup that I can no longer recall (maybe they didn't make one for the prod and we had to use the Aaton-35?). And I think the port configurations and layout involved some workarounds and custom parts. It still felt very much like a camera that belonged on the shoulder vs sitting on an Arrihead to me at the, at the time. Abel at that time only had a small office in LA so we had to sometimes wait for up to a week for parts to be shipped in from NY for repairs, which was pretty odd.
 
John Brawley said:
I realised I knew the producer of Dawson’s Creek so I asked him.

“ Hi john! Nice to hear from you and hope you’re well too. We shot super 16 the entire time. We also shot One Tree Hill on super 16 until the very end. “

JB
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Thank you.
I don't know what it was. Something to do with the motion and the overall look, it just looked off to me, like it was video that someone applied a filmlook to. She's now on season 5 and everything looks fine. I even went back to that other episode and it too looks fine now. The only thing I can think of it is that I must have been watching something in the other room that looked drastically more cinematic to me and then when I walked in that room and saw that, it struck me as more video-like. I'm just guessing here.

I'm not sure I've ever confused film for video before, so this is new.
 
roxics said:
I'm not sure I've ever confused film for video before, so this is new.
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Some TV's now will try to "detect" what is being played and adapt themselves, usually with setting I personally find "wrong"

I travel a lot and in a new place the first thing I try to do is reset the TV to factory default and then turn everything off. I mean all of it. Anything that's processing, noise, motion enhancing reducing. Turn everything off. Is there a chance that TV is in auto mode ? or that it's had a setup change ? Some sets make it very quick to cycle between a default, "dynamic" or custom look

JB
 
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