Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1072449
ACT 2: The Global Circus-Small Core/Local Teams (by Christopher L. Brown) The Romanoffs is a series unlike any other, more an exercise in creating eight completely independent stand-alone movies in eight different locations with eight different crews. Each episode had to be addressed on its own merits. The trick therefore is to forget everything about the other episodes and concentrate strictly on the look of the one at hand. Producers Kathy Ciric and Blake McCormick put a plan together that allowed each of us opportunity to scout and prep across multiple episodes concurrently. Matthew was going to direct all the episodes, and Chris Manley would be the singular director of photography. This limited the real-time opportunity for collaboration, as often people were spread out across multiple time zones…Henry and I were hop-scotching each other to find the worlds of the shows...put together a new team in each port...Skype/call/email and pitch concepts and solutions to a director shooting a different script in another time zone…who would soon be landing to scout/shot list/and go to camera on the next story...all in an average of seven weeks. The race was on to make sure things would be in place before the travelling party, weary from long days and nights in a different part of the world, would land and assess how much of what had been prepared was going to hold. Henry took on the first two episodes in the production sequence: both set in Europe. When production started overseas, I headed north of the border to Greater Toronto where portions of the next two that would shoot. A C A. A MAP SHOWING LOCATIONS EITHER SHOT OR SCOUTED BY DUNN AND BROWN. B. & C. ANUSHKA'S APARTMENT FROM "THE VIOLET HOUR." B