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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Pilot shoot in Chicago

Again, thanks for the feedback David. I'm happy that REDColor/REDGamma are working for you as intended.

Graeme
 
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Looks like a good show David. I think I will enjoy the female head of police and lead male cop characters. Thank you for sharing, and for talking about it.

Was that butter smooth push-zoom re-framed and/or stabilized in post? Perfect framing coming out.

The shot between the white columns under the bridge/over-pass is beautiful.
 
Love it- hope they will stay on location in Chicago for the run of the show. The faux Miami in Dexter (actually L.A.) is always the one let-down...

Noah
 
Now called "The Chicago Code".

At least this review says that the pilot was "beautifully filmed"...
http://www.starpulse.com/news/Brittany_Frederick/2011/01/31/the_chicago_code_101_pilot_advance_rev

Airs next week on FOX, try to see it on an HD channel. Pilot shot on the M-X Red One with a bit of Genesis, Sony EX3, and a tiny bit of Canon footage (maybe only one shot) plus some pick-ups shot on the Alexa by the series DP Rohn Schmidt (the production switched to the Alexa once the series began shooting, don't ask me why.) Bulk of the pilot on the M-X Red One though.
 
Just saw the clips, they look great.

Just out of curiosity, how did you light the scene in the dark-walled office where the three characters have a conversation? It looks like natural light but I can't imagine you got that kind of exposure on their faces with natural light in that room--or the pleasing colors and shape with practicals against daylight. Was there a daylight-balanced pancake on the ceiling, lined with duvetyne (just guess since that's what I would do) or an HMI bounced off white boards or something? And then how much was changed for the CUs? Everything looks good, really natural, too. The compositions in particular really stand above the vast majority of television.

Fwiw, I looked into the 7d for a feature that was cancelled and your conclusions are spot on: it's useless to grade, somewhere around 720p in practice, moire is an issue, skew is a bigger one, and the highlight handling is remarkably really excellent. It's very grainy past 800ISO, not much better than the original Red (never used the MX). It's tiny and easy to use, which is nice.

Since getting my own t2i (largely for stills) I've started shooting video with the built-in neutral setting and having better results than with ultra-flat. You can gauge exposure better on the monitor and the detail is mostly still there dynamic range-wise, it's just not stretched out way beyond what the codec can handle. My director friend still refers to shooting on the dSLRs as "like shooting reversal" but I've found this has helped a bit in low-contrast scenes.
 
It's funny you mentioned the dark-walled office because that's some of the most frustrating footage for me. We had a realistic style for most of the show that incorporated a lot of available light on location, which was great... until you lost all the available light. This room, on a third floor of an old building, was an example -- we planned to shoot all the day scenes in the daytime since it was so hard to work outside the window with lights and grip equipment, but we ended up at location later than we wanted and we quickly lost the daylight after only a few shots, which is why those shots of Delroy Lindo looking out the window has such a dim view. I had a big HMI on a small crane on the other side of the courtyard outside the window, but no way to soften it with large diffusion frames close to the window, nor could I easily move it to come through one side or the other.

Combine all that with shooting on two cameras with zooms where the operators were encouraged to zoom in and grab coverage from wide shots where the lighting was rather crude still due to the limitations outside the window. I couldn't often stop everything to make the close-up lighting better, it's more or less the wide-shot lighting.

It also had a period wood ceiling that I couldn't touch, so rigging lights inside was a real problem. What I ended up doing was stretching a white bedsheet between some hanging fixtures and then bouncing an HMI Source-4 into that.

For the night scenes, I found two air conditioning ducts near the top of the main wall where I had the grates removed and somehow got a clamp on one edge and was able to mount a 2K Zip tungstens as cross key lights. For another scene, I armed a Chinese Lantern over the desk. But that room was very unfriendly for lighting, especially day scenes. I wouldn't be surprised if they rebuilt it as a set for the series.

Trouble is that when you lose the nice available daylight, it actually takes a lot of careful work to recreate it believably.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Trouble is that when you lose the nice available daylight, it actually takes a lot of careful work to recreate it believably.
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That's the truth. I talked with Phil Abraham (Sopranos) about this very topic and he described putting together an extremely complex rig, cranes and diffusion for every window, for footage he felt looked worse than natural light but that maintained continuity across long days. I had to do night for morning interior for a youtube video with no crew...tons of lights for a questionable result.

Even in that scene the footage looks quite good but I had to ask because I saw that location and thought "okay, I would not have been able to light a location like that naturalistically." Those are some clever techniques. I will remember bedsheets with hmis in particular. At my level we can never rig much up beyond maybe ceiling scissors or a clamp on a pipe so I will keep china lanterns in mind, too.
 
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David Mullen ASC said:
...The 24-290mm is so heavy (24 lbs) that I felt at times the back-focus was slipping...
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No kidding. I have a friend who routinely works with Riddley Scott, and Riddley loves the 24-290, I mean, he LOVES that lens, and the poor guy left me a message one day asking for "advice". I was sort of shocked, this is a guy whose advice I usually seek instead of the opposite, so I figure I must be moving up the food chain. Only to find out when I called him back that he needed me to share a few workout and fitness tips (I am a trainer and sports medicine specialist) to both strengthen himself to deal with lugging around an Arri 435 with the 24-290 for hours on end, and then to bring much needed relief to those muscles and body parts. And this was during "Kingdom of Heaven" which shot on very hot locations to boot. My friend was saying, however, that a lot of Riddley's "eye" comes from allowing himself the freedom of reframing a shot in a lot of different ways by playing with he infinite combinations of focal lengths and apertures available in a long zoom like the 24-290, until he found the right feel for that particular shot. It was worth the heavy lifting according to him.
 
Saw the pilot before reading this thread, GREAT job David! Now That I'm done reading I must go back and watch it again! :-)
 
Yes, I did see the Chicago Code, and David, splendid work. My gaffer and I couldn't stop complimenting on the sharpness of the show and how good it looked. Though, we watched it thinking the whole thing was shot on the Genesis's and during that, I was quite impressed with the camera and wondered how you guys did it. I really like the mix of available and staged lighting. There was a really nice blend of the two together, especially seeing how you had to struggle.

How come you didn't DP the whole show?
 
I watched Chicago Code and enjoyed it very much, especially the camera and lighting work. What were the biggest challenges you had during the shoot?
 
I just saw a few of the new shots filmed with Alexa (according to David) for up coming episodes (in Hulu), and they look super "contrasty", almost no detail on the shadows. Also the color rendition and skin tones is very different from the pilot. It could be a bad transcode from Hulu, but the RED footage from Hulu looks good. I wonder why they decided to switch cameras? Looks like the Genesis would have been a better choice if they HAD to switch.

note: I just noted the series DP was the one doing pickups with the Alexa. Its understandable the switch to Alexa if the DP prefers the camera.
 
I was kicking myself for not being able to catch the premiere, but even more for forgetting to set the DVR!!! Luckily we can catch the pilot on-line. The quality of the stream isn't exactly wonderful, but you can still appreciate your work. Hope the box catches a re-run so I can watch it again properly.

Peter hit a big point, which I humbly feel is your strongest quality. I love the balance your taste seems to seek between emotionally motivated and real, always keeping everything highly plausible. Forgive me if any of my qualifications feel inaccurate, but they are my humble non-DP take on the work I have seen from you. I felt it could have been a touch more emotionally motivated at times, but it has a great real feel to it that raises the impact of the show.

I think I may have noticed a few very short lived shots with missed focus, but I also remember you mentioned they wanted to shoot almost everything on the long end. Coupled the super fast production pace I wouldn't think twice about those.

I looooved the car to car shot introducing detective Wysocki. It was so dirty, it felt like he was riding a horse, contrasting strongly against the preceding city hall scenes.

I am very impressed with the characters and the performances. I hope the show does well, and that you get to shoot it again. Jason Clarke is phenomenal throughout, and Jennifer Beals was equally strong. I was very happy to see Beals knew how to be tough enough for the character. She looked absolutely flipin' gorgeous David. Matt Lauria seems like a perfect fit into that dynamic. It feels like you lit each character differently, as well as each emotion differently. There isn't a set look, it all changes and it all feels motivated, yet it is all tied together into a realistic style. 0.02 Delroy Lindo is doing a great job as well, and (from within my lighting ignorance) I really like how you are lighting him and his office differently, darker, but not over-the-top different.

Great sound too. A few ADR lines felt a bit off but there are great voices in all the cast. Some really good sound design too.

I really liked the break-neck pace of the show, especially of the dialogue which I really like in any kind of public service officials; it is nice to see them portrayed as overly capable and smart.

At 42:40 I noticed severe skew. Was that 5D or 7D used because the hospital hallways were narrow?

I really liked the rushed feeling of the raid, the one that leads into the chase of "a known fugitive" by the two rookie cops.

Sorry if I rambled or made any un-educated points. Just trying to learn.
0.002
 
Jose Alvarez said:
I just saw a few of the new shots filmed with Alexa (according to David) for up coming episodes (in Hulu), and they look super "contrasty", almost no detail on the shadows. Also the color rendition and skin tones is very different from the pilot. It could be a bad transcode from Hulu, but the RED footage from Hulu looks good. I wonder why they decided to switch cameras? Looks like the Genesis would have been a better choice if they HAD to switch.

note: I just noted the series DP was the one doing pickups with the Alexa. Its understandable the switch to Alexa if the DP prefers the camera.
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Loved the pilot, and am anxious for more episodes.

In fairness to the camera and DP, dailies are often delivered to the promo department ungraded- consequently the promo finisher (the advance clips you speak of) may not have the look of the show down. This is a completely different colorist at a completely different facility. FOX has very talented promo finishers, but in some cases, they may not of even had access to the 'final' grade for the current episode when grading the promos for the next. Plus, volume, volume, volume - the promo department at FOX (which has the best graphics department in the biz, imho) does between 400 and 500 spots a week. Chicago Code was obviously an important priority, but they may not of had the time (or direction) to mimic the look of the show.

I'm not bashing the finishing work of either show or promo at all- I'm saying it's not fair to judge the camera, dp, or the colorist, by comparing an episode to the promos that follow. Particularly on MPEG-2 Hulu. (full disclosure- I'm a FOX Promo alumni... or is that Alumnus?)
 
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