Nick Pasquariello
Well-known member
I'm a sucker for Aaron Sorkin's dialogue. Always have been. Binged through Sports Night on Netflix a few months back, and now that the West Wing is available through streaming, well, I've gone through 3 seasons in 3 weeks.
I watched most of those seasons back when they were on TV, but that was before I took any interest in TV/Film aside from pure entertainment value. So I'm picking up on a lot more now than I had any idea back when the show was airing on TV.
Such as: the lighting, I think, is much more dramatic and bold than other shows. Some of it I find myself disagreeing with; medium-close ups on faces in stark shadow (and it feels like it's trying to mirror the actions and motives of the character, but somehow feels 'off' most of the time). But for the most part, it's been fascinating keeping a critical eye on the lighting and shadows and seeing it be consistant across such a long timeframe, and consistently bold. Even the parts I disagree with, I do so on a subjective level; all of it is intentional, and I wouldn't try to convince anyone that any of it is "bad".
But even more so than any of that, I find myself consistently wondering: what lenses and filters were used on this show? Bright reflections and practicals flare fairly consistently [in terms of the pattern of the flare] throughout the show. They flare out in, usually, a 4-point star, in a repeating rainbow pattern. It's something that I've never noticed in anything else before. (Sample screenshot from the end of season 3 is below, but you can load up any episode and within 5 minutes of watching see the same style of flaring somewhere in the frame. Take a look at the flare off the fender in the lower right of the frame just below the "EXCURSION" logo, as that's the easiest place to spot what I'm talking about.)
I find that it glamorizes the scene. Which is very fitting, and smart: the whole show is trying to dramatize, glamorize, fantasize, and laude the office of the US Presidency as a hard, complicated, complex, and concerned job. It's a really good aesthetic choice for what the show is trying to be.
But I simply lack the breadth and depth of gear knowledge to know how they did it, and I haven't seen anything quite like it in all the footage I've looked through in my professional career, and Google wasn't any help.
I watched most of those seasons back when they were on TV, but that was before I took any interest in TV/Film aside from pure entertainment value. So I'm picking up on a lot more now than I had any idea back when the show was airing on TV.
Such as: the lighting, I think, is much more dramatic and bold than other shows. Some of it I find myself disagreeing with; medium-close ups on faces in stark shadow (and it feels like it's trying to mirror the actions and motives of the character, but somehow feels 'off' most of the time). But for the most part, it's been fascinating keeping a critical eye on the lighting and shadows and seeing it be consistant across such a long timeframe, and consistently bold. Even the parts I disagree with, I do so on a subjective level; all of it is intentional, and I wouldn't try to convince anyone that any of it is "bad".
But even more so than any of that, I find myself consistently wondering: what lenses and filters were used on this show? Bright reflections and practicals flare fairly consistently [in terms of the pattern of the flare] throughout the show. They flare out in, usually, a 4-point star, in a repeating rainbow pattern. It's something that I've never noticed in anything else before. (Sample screenshot from the end of season 3 is below, but you can load up any episode and within 5 minutes of watching see the same style of flaring somewhere in the frame. Take a look at the flare off the fender in the lower right of the frame just below the "EXCURSION" logo, as that's the easiest place to spot what I'm talking about.)
I find that it glamorizes the scene. Which is very fitting, and smart: the whole show is trying to dramatize, glamorize, fantasize, and laude the office of the US Presidency as a hard, complicated, complex, and concerned job. It's a really good aesthetic choice for what the show is trying to be.
But I simply lack the breadth and depth of gear knowledge to know how they did it, and I haven't seen anything quite like it in all the footage I've looked through in my professional career, and Google wasn't any help.
