Pilot shoot in Chicago

[Michael Olsen]

I definitely enjoyed the show - the existence of a major story arc is refreshing for the genre. I'll be watching.

EDIT: I should add, not that my voice really carries weight - that I really enjoyed the camera work. Something to aspire to. :cheers2:

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Out of courtesy more than anything else I suppose, I was asked if I was interested in doing the series, but I didn't want to live in Chicago for six months. Same question came up after "The Good Wife" pilot, and again, I didn't want to live in NYC for six months. Not because I don't like the cities, I love them, but because my home is in Los Angeles. I seem to do pilots for series that don't shoot in Los Angeles for some reason. Anyway, the producers of both shows got excellent DP's... I was amazed that they got Fred Murphy, ASC to shoot "The Good Wife" series, he's one of my favorite DP's. And Rohn Schmidt, who shoots "Chicago Code", shot "The Shield" for the same producer. I was brought in mainly because the director wanted me, since we both did "The Good Wife" pilot together the spring before.

There was some sort of post reasons why they wanted to switch to the Alexa from the Red One, but I'm not sure what those can be other than we shot a ton of data on the pilot, 60 hrs. of material for a 1-hour show, so that must have been a chore to deal with. I remember our first day of shooting had three cameras rolling and the data loader spent two hours in the truck finishing back-ups after everyone else had gone home. I remember that phone call. But I don't know what they record the Alexa onto now on the show, I don't think it was to Apple ProRes on SxS cards, it may have been to SR decks or Codex recorders, etc. Not sure.

I'm doing a pilot right now in Vancouver on the Alexa, in ProRes 4444, to the SxS cards, and it seems to be going quite well, and they are fast to download. I'm looking forward to using a Red One with the SSD cards.