By Jon Silberg, April 24, 2007
InFX Networks' The Riches, a family of rural Louisiana con artists finds themselves benefiting from a case of mistaken identity when they move into a wealthy suburb. They pretend to be the new family the neighbors were expecting when, in fact, the real family theyre impersonating has been killed. The brainchild of playwright Dmitri Lypkin, The Riches--starring British comic Eddie Izzard as Wayne and Minnie Driver as his wife, Dahlia--demonstrates some of the commonalities between the world of rootless con artists the family came from and the often equally ruthless world of suburban professionals that they are making their own.
Though the show has its moments of humor and satire, Director of Photography Michael Negrin explains that it is not staged or shot in a "funny" way. "We treat the show as a drama. If something's funny, it's funny, but it certainly doesn't look like a sitcom. I light with high-contrast lighting--very little fill light--and try to give things a naturalistic look. At night, it's meant to look like floor lamps are motivating the light. We generally shoot like a feature, with one camera and a second for additional coverage."
The Riches is shot with the Thomson Viper, not in the camera's 4:4:4 FilmStream data mode but in its 4:2:2 HDStream high-definition mode. Footage is recorded to a Sony SR1 deck, which allows the original images to be laid down in 10-bit, rather than HDCAM's 8-bit, color space. "We had talked about recording to a hard drive system in 4:4:4, but that raised an expense issue we couldn't approach with this budget," says Negrin, "so the SR1 deck became the high-quality recording medium we went with. I think that 4:4:4 can make a big difference if you're going out to film, but for an HD finish, it really didn't offer a significant enough advantage."
On other projects, Negrin shoots a lot of negative--particularly Kodak's 500T 5218--and he says that his approach to working with the Viper starts out with treating it like a film stock. He lights to a meter and rates the camera at EI 500--actually 320 with the coral filter he generally has in front of the lens to bring some warmth to skin tones. He finds the Viper tends to skew a bit blue.
"I don't find I'm compressing my lighting much for the HD factor," the cinematographer says. "I'm lighting pretty much by eye like I would with 5218. I am a little more cautious about overexposed backgrounds than I would be with 18, which is so resilient to overexposure. This camera might clip on a window or a hot spot, and it certainly doesn't have the 14 stops I could get with film, but it does handle highlights better than the Sony F900, which has a real problem with clipping if you can't really control the hot spots."
Negrin says he's much more comfortable at two and a half to three stops of overexposure on the Viper than he would be with the F900. "I just did a shot where people pulled up in a Mercedes in a driveway with a general exposure of t/5.6," he says. "Then we walked them into a garage and did an F-stop pull to a t/2.8, and the background didn't suddenly go nuclear.
"I've worked with the F900 before; it can be great for studio work, but I don't think it's such a great camera for outside work," he adds. "You have to silk things much more. On the shot I described, I would have had to wet down the driveway with water to make it darker, but with the Viper, I didn't have to worry about it. I exposed as I would for film. The whites didn't clip. People's hair light looked good. The Viper's definitely better [than the F900] for outdoor work."
Unlike the Sony high-def cameras, the Viper doesn't really let you alter attributes such as color and gamma in the camera. This characteristic is something Negrin is acutely aware of because the show's budget also does not allow for color-corrected dailies. The SR1 tapes are sent to LaserPacific, where they are downconverted to regular HDCAM format and then output primarily to DVD for dailies without any color correction. Negrin has managed to be present for all the final correction sessions at LaserPacific done by Colorist Pam Moreau. (Ted Brady did the first few episodes.) At LaserPacific, the colorists work with the Digital Vision Valhall system and master to HDCAM.
Negrin enlists the help of his DIT (digital imaging technician), Daniel Applegate, who cranks up the gamma and the color on the preview monitors the crew uses to look at dailies. His adjustments take some of the initial flatness out of the picture and approximate what the final look will be. "He can compress the contrast and crush the blacks a little bit for me," says Negrin.
"And you increase color as you increase brightness, too, so that helps to give it a sense of more saturated color, which I like. It's not baked in, though. We have to [create the look] for real in the final color suite. But all my producers and everyone else involved understands, so they know how to look at the dailies."
Viper, as well as other high-def cameras, has been heralded for its ability to see deep into shadows, but one of the ways digital cameras are able to do this is by effectively leaving the shutter open longer than is possible with a film camera; film cameras require the shutter to be closed at least as long as it takes to move one frame out of the way and position the next one in the gate. Digital cameras rely instead on an electronic shutter (which essentially stops the sensors from gathering light after a certain period) or a combination of an electronic and mechanical shutter, which is how the Viper works. Some of the high-profile Viper footage of cityscapes at night was shot with a very wide-open shutter. Negrin, however, does not like the look that accompanies that effect.
"You get this motion blur which I think instantly reveals that it's video," he says. "I've seen it and it reminds me of the old days, when they took 30-frame interlaced video and scanned it out to film. You'd see the lag--the blur when people move laterally across screen. I've found the most I'll do is go with a 220-degree shutter angle. That way I get a little bit more exposure [than with a standard 180-degree shutter], but I haven't seen any of the image blur or motion artifacts that you see when you work at an even wider shutter angle."
Negrin carries three lenses from as many manufacturers: a Zeiss 6-26mm, a Fujinon 10-100mm and a Panavision Primo 25-112mm. (The Panavision was converted to B-mount, compatible with Viper, after Panavision acquired Plus 8 Video.)
Negrin likes to maintain the same depth of field in his HD work that he uses in 35mm filmmaking. "Normally I'd work at about a t/2.8 on film, so I generally work at a T2 with the Viper to keep the same feel, but that puts a lot of pressure on the assistants," he says.
He is especially aware of this extra work for the assistants because, in another cost-saving measure, the production is not using the 720p color monitors available for the Viper. Instead, the team uses standard-definition black-and-white monitors, which don't always give the best indication of focus. "That's one of the things the DIT can be helpful with," Negrin says. "He's at the HD monitor, and if he's on walkie talkies, he can often coach the assistants with the focus so we don't blow a shot."
Negrin says his lighting package runs the gamut, including 18K HMIs through windows, Chinese lanterns, Kino Flos and small 100W bulbs with dimmers inside small metal frames to mimic practical lamps. "As far as I'm concerned, I can pretty much treat this show like a normal film shoot."
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