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editor's note I By RANDI ALTMAN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF raltman@postmagazine.com Dexter embraces on the Nikon f you give our "TV Series" feature a read this month (page 24, you'll notice a trend: shows shooting digitally are also shooting on a variety of smaller cameras for those hard-to-get shots, in addition to their larger, main camera. Showtime's Dexter, which shoots on Arri's Alexa is no different. But when you have to get into some nooks and crannies, the Alexa is just too big. Eric Fletcher, SOC, the show's camera operator on the show was given the opportunity back in April, while working on a John Wells pilot, to check out the new Nikon D800, and he was impressed with the form factor and image quality. "The D800 seemed like a good solution because it's small and has appropriate features, like the ability to output an uncompressed clean HDMI signal, lack- ing the overlays of other cameras, out to an external recorder. I could also record to a Compact Flash card or a SDHC card. So it gave me the options that a DIT has in order to ingest footage at his station." Within hours of the box arriving on the camera truck, Fletcher and crew shot timelapse footage with the D800 that was actually used in the pilot. They were happy with how easy it was to set up, and the image quality right out of the box. Three weeks later while starting prep for Dexter, they did a camera test with the D800, their main camera Alexa as a baseline, and the Canon C300. POST SCRIPT Indie composer Michael Bacon N EW YORK — Composer Michael Bacon is the brother of a famous actor with the By MARC LOFTUS SENIOR EDITOR mloftus@postmagazine.com same last name, yet he's never lived in LA. Instead, Michael Bacon has built his career in New York City, operating several mid-town studios over the past 25 years, and currently working from two floors of his co-op on the Upper West Side. His New York roots recently reconnected him with documentary filmmaker David Grubin, who actually gave Bacon his start nearly three decades ago. This time, it was Grubin getting taking a chance with his first feature as a direc- tor. Downtown Express is a dramatic narrative that takes place within the world of Russian immigrants living in NYC. Sasha, played by Philippe Quint, is a talented violinist and Julliard student who's preparing for a critical recital — all under the watch of his overbearing father. When he meets singer-songwriter Ramona (played by Nellie McKay), he joins her band and falls in love, but is faced with breaking from the path his father has planned for him. 4 Post • October 2012 Bacon says the film celebrates Grubin's love for music and presented numerous challenges for him as a composer. Both Quint and McKay are accomplished musicians in their own right, but that wasn't the case for some of the other actors, so Bacon's role went beyond writing to actually performing on screen — his hands at least — to lend authenticity to the project. "My goal was to make it seem believable," notes the composer, who was on set for about half of the 30-day shoot. "I was responsible for all live recording, all the pre-recordings, and making sure the sound department had all the proper takes to playback live." His work is represented in nearly 50 min- utes of music that's featured in the film, none of which is used as underscore. Instead, it's almost all tied to on-screen performances. Bacon recorded the soundtrack using MOTU's Digital Performer. Tracks are also being assem- bled for a CD release, which he hopes will get the Academy's attention. Check out the Post Website for more in Michael Bacon. www.postmagazine.com "We were testing two different modes, recording to HDMI 4:2:2 and recording to internal SD card on H.264. We then went into the Technicolor color cor- rect room we use on Dexter and started screening the stuff. In the scene, Dexter (Michael C. Hall) is driving, he is in shadow, but the world outside of him is overexposed, so wanted to see how far we could push all three cameras on that test." Fletcher says the Alexa handled it exactly how they thought it would. While they were also impressed with the C300, they expected to be. "It's $15K cam- era with a $20K lens on it; it should look good," he says. "Then the D800 footage came up - a $4K pack- age between lens and body - and our jaws hit the floor. The first footage we watched was the uncom- pressed footage recorded out to Blackmagic recorder. We couldn't believe how well the DSLR was handling. Then we put up compressed footage that was recorded internally to the card in-camera. The differ- ence between recording to the in-camera card and to the external recorder wasn't great enough to warrant us going to external recorder." So now we have viable camera package that I can hold in pam of hand and put in Michael's face while he's driving and bring it around to have a look over his shoulder – it's liberating because we didn't have to worry about highlights going away or the blacks blocking up." EDITORIAL Senior Editor/Director of Web Content (516) 376-1087 raltman@postmagazine.com MARC LOFTUS RANDI ALTMAN Editor-in-Chief (516) 797-0884 mloftus@postmagazine.com CHRISTINE BUNISH Film& Video JENNIFER WALDEN Audio European Correspondent bob.pank@virgin.net BOB PANK DANIEL RESTUCCIO West Coast Bureau dansweb451@aol.com West Coast Blogger/Reporter BARRY GOCH IAIN BLAIR Film mviggiano@postmagazine.com MICHAEL VIGGIANO Art Director ADVERTISING NATASHA SWORDS VP, Marketing (818) 291-1112 nswords@copcomm.com (818) 291-1153 cell: (818) 472-1491 mkohn@postmagazine.com MARI KOHN Director of Sales Eastern & Intl Sales Manager (631) 274-9530 cell (516)410-8638 grhodes@copcomm.com GARY RHODES SUBSCRIPTIONS (818) 291-1158 620 West Elk Ave, Glendale, CA 91204 csr@postmagazine.com (800) 280 6446 CUSTOMER SERVICE mtabizon@copprints.com MIKE TABIZON Account Manager (818) 291-1180 (781) 255-0625 • (818) 291-1153 REPRINTS Reprints LA SALES OFFICE: 620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, California 91204 (800) 280-6446 WILLIAM R. 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