OTHER: Shooting a piece for the Late Late Show with James Corden

CharlesPapert

CharlesPapert

Director of Photography
I've always enjoyed the high-concept pre-tapes for the various late night shows and finally got an opportunity to shoot one of them this week. We were supposed to shoot a complicated bit that involved characters walking on the ceiling interacting with people on the floor, which would have involved an upside-down set and green screen and a heady amount of mental energy, but that one was scrapped last minute and another one hatched for the next night's show.

The tunaround was pretty mind-blowing for what I'm used to at least:

TUESDAY
1 pm: Notified that job was likely happening, with no specifics. Put together camera package and began crewing for as yet unknown concept
7 pm: Received concept with beat sheet. Re-tailored camera package
WEDNESDAY
10 am: walkthrough with director. Began to work out logistics. Camera prep began at rental house
2 pm: we decide to add a third camera--more crew and gear added
7 pm : prelight stage
THURSDAY
6 am: crew call
8 am: began rehearsals with stand-ins
12 pm: talent arrives, begin shooting
1:30 pm: wrap
5:30 pm: show tapes with finished piece in place

The concept was a doc-style piece on a 90's boy band made up of James Corden, Jordan Peele and Nick Kroll. We were to shoot a contemporary interview, a period interview and three period music video snippets. We were told we would have 90 minutes to shoot with talent--maybe a little more if we were lucky. Fortunately there were costume and hair changes for each piece, which gave us time to move between sets without keeping talent waiting, but I assume no more than 10 minutes per change given our schedule.

While we could do a certain amount of pre-lighting, the size of the stage precluded us from building each setup separate from the next. As we walked through the rehearsal, every instrument on the floor and camera position was spiked with tape. On the camera side, we had a few lens and filter changes and again everything down to focal length was tracked. This sort of thing is fairly consistent with the broadcast way of working but more unusual for me and my camera crew.

The show had previously worked out a workflow with F55's recording on Shoguns to DNXHD so they could do a fast ingest into their AVID's, so we worked with that. The director and I felt that given the turnaround it would be best for us to use a DIT to bake in color as we shot rather than rely on post to do a color pass at the end. The DIT brought log in from the cameras, passed the signal through Teradek COLR boxes controlled via Pomfort Livegrade and then out to the Shoguns on his cart. Once or twice I had him tweak the look of a single camera or overall look between takes and he was able to make the changes instantly. After we shot each segment, the footage was rushed down the hall to editorial where three editors began their process even as we were still shooting.

I had to find a balance between keeping things as simple and fast as possible but also trying to create the five distinct looks. I used Black Diffusion/FX on the contemporary interview to take down the sharpness of the F55 which I then removed for the 90's interview look (along with a poppy broadcast LUT). For the music video against the brick wall I went with Hollywood Black Magic filters, smoke and a strong LUT. There are two quick closeups in the piece shot with a 65mm Super Speed wide open and a ring light (loved that look and wished they had used more of it). I went light on the filtration (lower strength Black Diffusion/FX) and the LUTS for the green screen pieces to keep things clean for compositing.

The shoot went fantastically well. Very few technical hiccups or holdups. It was fun to watch the crew spring into action between setups like a well-oiled machine. We got 'er done in the prescribed 90 minutes. In and out!

The piece was released on Youtube later that evening, and aired on the show last night. Wow.

 
CharlesPapert said:
I've always enjoyed the high-concept pre-tapes for the various late night shows and finally got an opportunity to shoot one of them this week. We were supposed to shoot a complicated bit that involved characters walking on the ceiling interacting with people on the floor, which would have involved an upside-down set and green screen and a heady amount of mental energy, but that one was scrapped last minute and another one hatched for the next night's show.

The tunaround was pretty mind-blowing for what I'm used to at least:

TUESDAY
1 pm: Notified that job was likely happening, with no specifics. Put together camera package and began crewing for as yet unknown concept
7 pm: Received concept with beat sheet. Re-tailored camera package
WEDNESDAY
10 am: walkthrough with director. Began to work out logistics. Camera prep began at rental house
2 pm: we decide to add a third camera--more crew and gear added
7 pm : prelight stage
THURSDAY
6 am: crew call
8 am: began rehearsals with stand-ins
12 pm: talent arrives, begin shooting
1:30 pm: wrap
5:30 pm: show tapes with finished piece in place

The concept was a doc-style piece on a 90's boy band made up of James Corden, Jordan Peele and Nick Kroll. We were to shoot a contemporary interview, a period interview and three period music video snippets. We were told we would have 90 minutes to shoot with talent--maybe a little more if we were lucky. Fortunately there were costume and hair changes for each piece, which gave us time to move between sets without keeping talent waiting, but I assume no more than 10 minutes per change given our schedule.

While we could do a certain amount of pre-lighting, the size of the stage precluded us from building each setup separate from the next. As we walked through the rehearsal, every instrument on the floor and camera position was spiked with tape. On the camera side, we had a few lens and filter changes and again everything down to focal length was tracked. This sort of thing is fairly consistent with the broadcast way of working but more unusual for me and my camera crew.

The show had previously worked out a workflow with F55's recording on Shoguns to DNXHD so they could do a fast ingest into their AVID's, so we worked with that. The director and I felt that given the turnaround it would be best for us to use a DIT to bake in color as we shot rather than rely on post to do a color pass at the end. The DIT brought log in from the cameras, passed the signal through Teradek COLR boxes controlled via Pomfort Livegrade and then out to the Shoguns on his cart. Once or twice I had him tweak the look of a single camera or overall look between takes and he was able to make the changes instantly. After we shot each segment, the footage was rushed down the hall to editorial where three editors began their process even as we were still shooting.

I had to find a balance between keeping things as simple and fast as possible but also trying to create the five distinct looks. I used Black Diffusion/FX on the contemporary interview to take down the sharpness of the F55 which I then removed for the 90's interview look (along with a poppy broadcast LUT). For the music video against the brick wall I went with Hollywood Black Magic filters, smoke and a strong LUT. There are two quick closeups in the piece shot with a 65mm Super Speed wide open and a ring light (loved that look and wished they had used more of it). I went light on the filtration (lower strength Black Diffusion/FX) and the LUTS for the green screen pieces to keep things clean for compositing.

The shoot went fantastically well. Very few technical hiccups or holdups. It was fun to watch the crew spring into action between setups like a well-oiled machine. We got 'er done in the prescribed 90 minutes. In and out!

The piece was released on Youtube later that evening, and aired on the show last night. Wow.

Click to expand...

Nice.

Very well done too
 
Surprised they didn't want to just bake in a lut in camera and directly ingest with an Avid Interplay for immediate edit. How badly would coax have gotten in your way?
 
I'm not usually one to question such things, but in the still frame, what is the green hue I am seeing on the fill-side of Jame's face, in his hair, and in the beard of the guy on the right? I ask because I want to learn. I'm viewing on a laptop, so maybe it's just that.
 
Greg_E said:
Surprised they didn't want to just bake in a lut in camera and directly ingest with an Avid Interplay for immediate edit. How badly would coax have gotten in your way?
Click to expand...

They had a very specific recipe for codecs and frame rates that they had previously tested so I had to adhere with that. Apparently the flavor of DNX that the Alexa records is exactly the right sauce for rapid ingest into Avid, hence our using the outboard recorders. I'm not familiar with Avid Interplay but I know they were able to use the rapid mode for ingest so it was as close to immediate as they needed it to be.

It was much more efficient for us to insert the luts downstream of the cameras into the recorder than load into three cameras individually, especially considering different luts for the different segments, and I could fine tune and match the cameras via the luts as needed. For this workflow we needed to be tethered since the recording was happening away from camera. The cables were a little messy since we are all used to wireless these days but a necessary evil.
 
JPNola said:
I'm not usually one to question such things, but in the still frame, what is the green hue I am seeing on the fill-side of Jame's face, in his hair, and in the beard of the guy on the right? I ask because I want to learn. I'm viewing on a laptop, so maybe it's just that.
Click to expand...

Spill from the green screen, I expect. We were closer to the wall than the 12 ft minimum I always attempt to keep and didn't have time to black the floor around them. Likewise I'm sure they didn't have time to use a spill suppressor in the composite. Shrug.
 
Not to get too far off topic, but Interplay is Avid's wonder box of conversions and ingest/export. In theory the editors could have been a few frames behind the actual action. Since it would have been live ingest there would be no time for file copies. Data goes straight into their ISIS or Nexus storage. I'm sure they have plenty of ingest channels available so it's strange that they didn't use this method since you were cabled. Only thing it might not allow is LUT application and this might have been the reason for the external recorders. I also don't remember if Interplay is 4k, might have been another limiting factor.
 
That's an interesting setup, Greg. I hadn't worked with that before. I would imagine they are either unaware or don't feel the need for that degree of tech and have their workflow designed around what they can do with their existing setup, which was realistically a 20 minute delay between shooting and ingest. I don't think the LUT's would have been an issue in the situation you describe as they were being applied upstream of the recorder anyway. And we were shooting 1080. But I will keep that in mind if I find myself in a situation that could utilize it!
 
Thanks for that explanation, Charles. Like I said, I asked not to criticize but so that I could learn. Learning what one can and cannot get away with is beneficial. We all strive for the best situation possible, but knowing what is tolerable under adverse conditions is an asset to any DP.

Flagging off the green screen to the edges of the frame is something I hadn't thought of doing until I saw it done on a commercial where the shot was a motorcycle in front of a green screen. A situation that, as you are no doubt aware, can be a night mare as a result of all the curved chrome surfaces on a motorcycle. It was addressed as best possible by rear-flagging the motorcycle to as to impede the reflections of the green screen in the reflective surfaces of the motorcycle.

Thank you again for sharing details of your work. In particular the trials and tribulations which aren't always shared in glossified articles making it sound as if everything was effortless and the DP didn't have to scramble to save his own butt and the production.
 
I'm certain they have it, just a question of workflow preference. They might be so used to single cam that it's just how they want to continue.

With certain switchers you can even send the cut data from live cut to the editor where you can fine tune the cut for air. Can speed up turnaround on pretaped shows, or just alternate cuts for other timezones or locations.
 
Thanks for this great insight Charles. I am no pro, but when I see you've put up one of these in-depth posts about your work, I always grab myself a coffee and make time in my day to enjoy it.
 
You are welcome, guys. We've talked about doing an AMA type thing for me on here but in the meantime, happy to help where I can.

Greg - I'm working at Late Late Show again next week and will ask editorial if they've used that setup. Thanks again for the info.
 
No problem. Wish our budget had worked out alright, I would be buying most of it next fall. Interplay is also key to the Avid Cloud (Avid everywhere), as well as media asset management, and the ability to directly send to playback (to Airspeed). It's a very complete workflow ecosystem that doesn't really exist with any other single provider. They may really want to sit down with their sales rep., and maybe get Avid engineering involved, they might get a smoother inhouse workflow. But I'm also guessing they are doing it the way they do it because out of house can be the same workflow, and that might speed the editors up because they always know what to expect.

And if for some reason they didn't know any of this, and it turns into a big sale for Avid, I'll split the commission with you:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
I thought of one more thing... If Avid did the same thing on Interplay that they did on Airspeed, most customers won't buy DNxHD codecs. On our Airspeed they wanted an extra 20k for DNxHD, and using it cut channels from four down to two. As it was we paid 10k for h.264 which turned out to be Avid only proxies at 320x240 and a huge waste of money. They make some nice things, but they also do some stupid things to go with them.
 
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