Web sit-com shot with XH-A1 ("24"-parody episode)

hemophilia

hemophilia

Well-known member
Check out (streaming video):

www.buddyjackson.com

Since episode 14 the show has been shot on XH-A1's. In particular, check out the most recent episode "4:55 PM - 5:00 PM", which we took extra time & care shooting in order to go for a "24" look. I was the DP for that episode, and I'm pretty gosh darn happy with how it turned out. Hopefully we'll have a higher quality version up soon as well, so everyone can get a true look at it.

Hope you enjoy it; let me know what you think... thoughts? comments? questions? hate mail?

Cheers,
Kevin
 
It was really well done! The shots were bang on the only thing that didn't feel perfectly acurate was the editing. The boxes in 24 don't touch that often and usually have a lot of wasted black space around them, they felt too "packed in" if you know what I mean.
My favourite actor was the slightly heavier guy who did a great a job at a Tony impression, the attitude, voice and facial expressions were perfect.

"You're never here and even when you are here you're
not here" lol funny line. Typical women stuff.

All in all a good parody. "I have the toner." ..... "So do I."
 
Ha, very funny, one thing you missed though is actually shooting the car in a real moving car.... I hate it on 24 how they shoot car shots it in a studio... Makes it look so 1980's.... : )

How many cameras did you guys have? All A1's?
 
Thanks for the comments you guys!

Packed-in boxes: yeah we don't have much screen real-estate to work with on the web. Might have done things differently if we were producing for HD or even SD.

Lighting setups: We had two Kino Diva 200s that I put daylight bulbs in one, tungsten-balanced in the other. The shots where you see that heavy blue light coming throught-- it's the daylight Kino. Very handy way to do that whilst staying cool and not gelling up higher-wattage tungstens. We also had some little fresnels here and there as accents, and home-depot small fluoro fixtures with kino bulbs to put in nooks and crannies (like faking light from computer monitors). If there's a specific set-up you're curious about, I could tell you more.

Cameras: Two cameras, both A1s. Both set to a presets that we downloaded from the dvinfo forum (as far as I know, it's the same stuff that's in the sticky here). In fact, on the shoot for an upcoming episode, one of the cameras was accidentally set to Disjecta's preset, whilst the other was on the main preset we've been using... oops! I have yet to see how painful that will be to match with CC.

-Kevin
 
Proper DP work getting the 24 look. BTW, which was the camera used up to the 13th episode (included)?


EDIT -- Well, crossing this info [ LINK ], I'd say maybe the FX1, right?


And the SDX-900 was used for the pilot & generic (impressive look -- it couldn't be interlaced...) [ LINK_II ]
 
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I enjoyed it! I noticed the sound was good enough to almost be forgotten about :thumbup: What kind of mic was used? Thanks
 
Emanuel said:
Proper DP work getting the 24 look. BTW, which was the camera used up to the 13th episode (included)?
Click to expand...

Nice detective work there Emanuel. :)

So yeah-- Panasonic 2/3"-chip cam for the pilot, the SDX-900. It was our favorite camera (duh... most expensive by a long-shot). Then there were a couple episodes in there... like in the 3-6 range shot on I-forget-what-camera. It was our least favorite, and thus most forgettable. Then we switched to the Sony FX1's which we used for a good while, until ep 14, when we switched to the Canon (which so far we like much much more than the Sony's). There's also some XL1 shots mixed in there in the earlier episodes (which we used with a super-wide lens).

Using that torrent of different cameras isn't exactly the best for attaining consistent production-quality on the show (not to mention different DP's and crew from episode to episode), but it was educational, and unless something dramatic changes we've most likely settled in to the Canon XL-a1 for a good while.

The sound:

90% of the sound is boomed off an Audio Technica AT835b shotgun. It's a fairly long shotgun, and not the most appropriate mic for this indoor stuff. But our primary Sennheiser shotgun had crapped out, and this was our backup. It was in a blimp with a furry for the outdoor stuff (windy day).

The other 10% of the sound ends up coming off wireless lavs. I'm not sure (they're not mine) but I think they're the Sennheiser Evolution G2 100 series... which is pretty cheap as far as lavs go... and tend to not sound as good as I'd like them to... hence the mere 10% allocation.

Cheers,
The staple victim
 
How is that effect accomplished? getting the video cropped and still keeping the subject thats talking in view. Usually i loose focus and video does not maintain the subject.
 
Hey, I really like this! Really well shot in the 24 style. Did you use any adapters or is that the A1 lens? When you do the fast zoom in is that the A1 on 'fast zoom mode'?

What kind of support is it on? (Some kind of shoulder rig?)

I like the lighting and the colour - so what preset did you use exactly?

Cool...
 
We shot it all with the stock lens on the A1. We also have the Canon wide-angle, which we've used for some other episodes, but I don't think we put it on for anything in thise episode.

We did everything hand-held, no shoulder rigs or additional attachments.

The preset we used is called "opticont"...like I said it's something we grabbed from dvinfo forums.

dcrin3-- not sure what effect you're talking about? Just the cropping down of the boxes for the multiple camera stuff?

-Kevin
 
yes, how they crop them down. crop down to the actual subject. usually cropping down just cuts randomly. any CC?
 
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