Key & Peele - Behind the Scenes with DP Charles Papert

Ok, once everyone in the office took turns standing under our jib with arms stretched out in to the sky yelling "NOOOOOO" we came up with the follow 5 year plan for you:

Year 1: Get ASC nomination.
Year 3: Win Oscar for best cinematography
Year 5: DP a film starring Daniel Day Lewis (optional: win Oscar for best cinematography for said film).

Kidding aside it is sad to see Key and Peele end, not only for the educational benefits of you taking the time to share your knowledge with us but it was such a great show.

I hope to see other projects you are on next years and hope you will as kind to all of us as you have been to share your expertise.

Well, we have 8 more episodes to go.
 
Thank you Emre!

Well, I haven't been resting on my laurels...since K&P wrapped in January I've shot two more series and just starting a third.

Premiering Aug. 4th is the second season of Playing House on USA.

On Oct. 19th, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on the CW.

And then coming in January on TVLand: Teachers.
 
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Well sounds like you've been busy which is good. I really hope to see more BTS from your shoots as I have learned so much from this thread, its sad to hear the show is ending but it had to happen eventually.
 
Was the M6 stock footage or did you shoot that as well? I know you shot all the inserts with a Russian arm but was curious if they gave you the budget to get the M6 stuff as well?
 
M6 footage was stock. We shot the teacher sitting in one against green screen for those few shots. That sketch had several promotional tie-ins, Carl's Jr. being the other. That was the only Key & Peele sketch that was so heavily branded, not quite sure how or why that wokrked.
 

We shot this in a corner of Griffith Park and I'm happy to say that it required very little lighting, our schedule didn't allow for it. I used a 12x12 ultra for fill in a few places but it had to be fairly far away, at the sun line from the trees. Mostly I moved the actors around to find pockets of shade or sun that looked the best for a given shot. Effects had three smokers running and maintaining the right density was probably the toughest part. There are a few shots where the sun shafts are just glorious!

For the battle scene at the beginning we had a 90 degree shutter which turns off once we get to the comedy. The sun flare seen at :58 is real!


My challenge on this one was to maintain light levels throughout; we shot from around 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. This was an interesting shaped courtyard that was roughly in the shape of a U, but one side was angled so the open end was relatively small. I had requested that we shoot in the afternoon because on the scout I determined that there would be no direct sun on the buildings, which would have either blown out in the background or as it rode higher on the walls, created a light source that would have eventually gone away as we were shooting. So we started with a nice soft canopy of overhead light plus a punchy ambience coming from the open side. The master opening shot set up the relationship of the table to the environment, so I had to keep relatively close to this, but I did cheat the table around quite a bit as we shot the tighter pieces to improve the various backgrounds.

Because Keegan was facing directly into the opening between the buildings he got a good amount of front light, and I needed to keep things somewhat balanced once we turned around onto Jordan, so I introduced a large bounce coming from upstage camera left on Keegan's coverage (over his right shoulder), and then when we turned around I flipped it over his left shoulder to keep it from flattening out on the other guys.

What was particular interesting was that I had just started using a new setup incorporating a Blackmagic ATEM Television Studio software switcher, and started taking frame grabs from the master and initial closeups. As the light started to fade, I'd recall the reference still (stored in the switcher's media pool) and dial in my iris precisely to match, while calling the scrims to bring down the bounce accordingly. In the past this process required metering, calculating, guessing and a little magic, and now it was as simple as matching via the waveform and monitor. In this way we shot right up to dusk and there was very little difference in the image--just a bit of density change in the background as the contrast increased at lower light levels. This was far easier and more accurate than the classic way of doing things. I now grab reference stills of every setup and it makes matching a snap, not just from a lighting and exposure level but matching sizes of coverage and even actor continuity as well. Certainly for scenes shot days apart it is a huge help!
 
OK, the jar was a rig with a bundle of daylight balanced Litegear Literibbon at the bottom powered by a cable out the bottom, which was removed in post when the CGI of the lightning was added. When he opens the jar and the lightning escaped, we had made up a gag with a big ring of Literibbon on a stick that we puppeted around in the path of the lightning. We did that in a separate pass for each setup without the actors in it so the effect could be manipulated, sped up etc.

The courtroom was a standing set at Riverfront Stages where we shot many sketches this year, including Rap Album Confessions from last week's episode. All of the interiors for the montage section were shot on various sets at Riverfront. That montage was spread out over many separate days of shooting, piggybacked onto various longer shoots. I had fun giving those pieces a sort of "stylized broadcast" kind of look, with a similar lighting setup of punchy key from one side and hot back edge from the other every time (which became the "Judge Jessie special" in shorthand to my gaffer).
 
The sheer amount of quality information in this thread is staggering. This should be the single most-viewed thread on the entire site. Thanks to Charles for sharing his experiences on K&P.

This thread is now a sticky. Honestly, we should build a statue to this thread at some point.
 
It's funny to watch that clip now because since Key & Peele, I've shot that same bar (it's on a stage) for another show, Playing House on USA.

I was requested to cross-shoot them, with one camera in each direction to allow for improv between the actors. While I understand the idea behind this, it is always a lighting compromise and a complication for a DP (except when shooting outside on an overcast day, perhaps) as the lighting scheme has to be somewhat blunt force, unless you have a lot of time to work it back and forth until you are satisfied (I never do)...not to mention having to light the background in both directions, which takes some time.

"Playing House" was one of the most demanding jobs I've had because we were under strict time constraints and we shot all on location, plus I was to deliver a clean, glossy romantic comedy look. The show began airing a few weeks ago and I'm still coloring the last few episodes to air this season, and slightly to my surprise, the compromises of speed are fairly minimal. It was a very different experience than Key & Peele (although Keegan is a cast member, which was a nice transition). That show came immediately on the heels of "Teachers", another half hour female driven comedy, this time for TVLand (which will air in January). And now I'm on a 13 episode hour long comedy (yes, female driven again) for the CW called "Crazy Ex Girlfriend". One of the busiest years I've had. "Crazy-Ex" will likely deserve it's own thread when it premieres as we will be doing some fun things visually.
 
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CP can you comment on the hair light in the bar scene

I find this easy with a dedo but that gives minimal space for the talent to move?

Thin mint? I say pen!

S
 
Well, here's the thing--I can't remember 100% how I lit this. But I'm pretty sure it was the following, for the individual coverage: 8 to 12 feet of diffusion along the bar, probably light grid, with some 750 blue heads behind it. Two small Chimeras probably again with blue heads armed out from the bar to continue the wrap on the faces. Backlight would have been partially these same Chimeras, and possibly netted to taste, and I do remember adding some more edge for Keegan's other side to ensure that his darker wig would have separation. That probably would have been an LED flo unit, for the dimming control.

I generally don't go with something as small and hard as a Dedo for hair light because (depending on the type and color of hair) they tend to make point source kicks and are more noticeable. I usually prefer a soft source for hair light and will go fairly high above the head so it plays across the hair rather than at a glancing angle (what I would refer to as a rim light or kicker vs hair light). My favorite unit for that is a 4 ft dimmable LED source. On Key & Peele we had dimmable Fernando Flo's, now we are using Litemats.
 
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On this one I went with a naturalistic look for the bedroom, which was a practical location on the second floor of a house (we shot the Mom pieces in an adjoining bedroom and the kitchen). It was a tight fit to get the cameras in there and didn't leave a lot of room for lighting. I started by covering the existing windows with an ultrabounce floppy and pushing a JoLeko into it to suggest the window source, then bounced an M18 off a piece of bleached muslin on the floor from the window side to give a gentle uplight fill to wrap the faces. We set two more JoLekos with venetian blind gobos to rake into the set. For the opening shot I cheated the directionality a little so the closest one was panned more left for Keegan to walk through on his entrance, and to hit the foreground elements, and the other was set for the seated position for the group of guys. That pretty much covered it, I just adjusted things a little as we came around for various pieces of coverage. It was a big grouping of instruments on the right side of the room, but we were able to shoot around them fine. For the Mom rap, I just bounced a light of the ceiling and took a rare break while the director wielded his trusty old HVX200!
 
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