Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/3788
18 Post • October 2009 www.postmagazine.com closely tied to its concept, being involved with Warren Boyd in an intervention that af- fected his own family.Today, Silverman oper- ates his own commercial production com- pany, Jay Silverman Productions (www.JaySil- verman. com) in Hollywood, which, in par t, influenced the show's decision to shoot with the Red One digital cinema camera. Silverman owns a Red One and saw a number of benefits in shooting with Red on Season 2, following a first season using the Panavision Genesis. "I was using [Red] to do TV commercials a year and a half ago, and when we were shooting Season 1, I brought it in and showed the guys and did a side-by- side [comparison] with the Genesis, and all of us were very impressed," he notes. Silverman says the team was quite pleased with the Genesis and with the quality they achieved in Season 1, but with the show's second season came an in- creased challenge to cut costs while keep- ing quality high. The Red One, he says, seemed to be the answer. "I am executive producer, and like any producer I am concerned with the bottom line," says Silverman. "When I introduced them to this camera, they were all in awe. One of the things that was huge was the 'umbilical cord' issue with the Genesis.There wasn't anybody who didn't agree that [the Red] was a hundred times easier to use.You can pull the camera off the tripod. The tether is a humongous disadvantage to a filmmaker who works impromptu. What filmmaker doesn't want to just grab a shot real quick?" Because The Cleaner is a cable show, Sil- verman says the team had "no choice but to figure out ways to be economical. We didn't want to shoot Super 16, so I think shooting Genesis was a decision that was made when shooting the pilot. It was a look that we all thought would be great." The Cleaner was shot with two cameras, and just the difference in rental cost be- tween the Genesis and the Red was considerable. Cameras were rented from Keslow Camera (www. keslowcamera.- com) in Culver City, CA, and the show was shot on the CBS/Radford lot. Silverman says a typical episode in- volved five days of shooting on the lot and two on location. Denny Hall was di- rector of photography for the show and says The Cleaner was the first time he worked with the Red One. "Myself, the pro- ducers, and the post staff were all extremely pleased with the results. I screened some tests shot with the Red camera at Keslow Camera in Los Angeles shor tly before we started principal photography, and my inter- est was immediately piqued. It appeared top be a compact, user-friendly system, and with our seven-day schedule, that is what we needed to give the most possible time to our directors and actors." The Cleaner's sets included the main char- acter's surf shop and home, a 300-foot fa- cade that could be used for day or night shots, the large rehab center and a mini mall, which Silverman says actually doubled as production office space. "If you know anything about episodic television, the most illustrious aspect of pro- duction would be to make every show look different," says Silverman. "You can really tell when shows are done on the cheap, be- cause they never leave the stage.You see the same sets over and over again." The show was cut in the production space on the lot by three editors working on Avid systems. Modern Videofilm (www.mvfinc.com) in Burbank helped with the workflow and prepared elements for the Avid edit.The studio also provided color correction. Final delivery was a 1080i show with a stereo mix. And be it the Red or the Genesis, Silver- man says the flexibility that these cameras offer is unlike anything he's seen in the 20 years he's spent shooting 35mm. "Whether we are talking about The Cleaner or my own business — you shoot a show and you forgot to do an inser t?" he suggests. "I just go downstairs and do it, and it looks exactly like the stuff we shot on the day of.That's just unheard of." D O L L H O U S E DP Lisa Wiegand, who spends eight days shooting each episode of Fox's sci-fi series Dollhouse, took time out on a recent week- end discuss the show, which is mid-way through production on its second season. Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku as a member of an illegal, underground group of individu- als who've had their personalities wiped clean. These "Actives" are then imprinted with new personas and are hired by wealthy, powerful and connected clients to become whoever they deem necessary. Much of the show takes place in the Doll- house, where the Actives are programmed and reside during downtime. The show also follows them on location, during their en- gagements. Five days are spent on the lot and three days are used for location shoots. Wiegand, who served as second unit DP on 24, has been working on Dollhouse since the last episode of the first season — an episode that never actually aired here in the States but appears in the DVD collec- tion. The first season was shot on film, and that last episode — "Epitaph 1" — was shot using Sony PMW-EX3 XDC AM EX HD camcorders. The second season has since switched over to Panasonic AJ- L-R: The Cleaner's Warren Boyd, Benjamin Bratt and Jay Silverman. HD TV Series Dollhouse DP Lisa Wiegand: The show shoots on Panasonic AJ-HPX3700s, recording to P2 cards.