By Jon Silberg, June 22, 2007
What would happen if a family placed in the witness protection program were
moved to an idyllic suburban community—only to discover that everyone else
there was in the same program? This one-line concept captivated the people at
Channel 4 in England
and ultimately at Showtime in the United States and led to the creation of the
eight-episode series Meadowlands, currently airing
on Showtime.
Danny and Evelyn Brogan (David Morrissey and Lucy Cohu) move to their lovely
new home in their new neighborhood of essentially identical houses, and everything
appears quite comfortable and inviting—at first. “It’s a cozy
environment and they’re told they can have everything they want,” says
Co-Executive Producer Caroline Levy, “but they soon realize things are
not what they seem. There are dark secrets about why everyone is there.”
“When I read the first script, I could tell it would be a really interesting
project,” says Cinematographer John Daly, BSC. The story and tone intrigued
him, as did the fact that he would be working with Director Duane Clark, a veteran
of many American one-hour dramas, including multiple episodes of every series
in the CSI franchise.
“He’s American but he lives in England. I think maybe he helped to
give it something of an American look that you don’t see as much in British
series. He often liked to cover things in very tight and sometimes very wide
shots, which I think you see more in American television than on British shows.”
The HD format was a given from the start, partly for economic reasons, but
Daly says he feels it was the right choice for Meadowlands regardless. “I
wanted a rich look, and HD is good for that,” he says. “HD has got
a smoothness that really looks more like 35mm than 16mm does because [the smaller
gauge] has so much grain.”
Levy notes that while the back stories take some time to develop, it was important
for all involved to nail the tone immediately so that viewers would have some
idea of what they were in for. “I got the key creatives—including
[Production Designer] Brian Sykes—in a room for a day and we talked about
movies, artists and painters. We watched films and looked through photography
books. By the end of the day, we came up with three key reference points: the
films American Beauty and Far From Heaven, and the work of
the American photographer Gregory Crewdson. These references kept coming back
through the 17 weeks of production.
“About three weeks before we started shooting, we assembled all the
writers, directors and department heads and spent a 12-hour day just discussing
the world of Meadowlands. Brian brought his boards and everybody could
share their opinions about the look, fabrics, colors, costumes—everything.
It was very important to make sure that everyone’s work was complementing
everyone else’s. By the time we went into production, we had shortcuts
and a language worked out.”
Daly used Sony’s new F900R, a smaller, lighter iteration of the HDW-F900 camera. “I was very pleased with the look of the F900R,” the cinematographer
reports. “On the two other shows I did in HD, I’d used the Sony HDW-750 [HDCAM camcorder], and the images on this new camera were noticeably better,
less noisy.” For selected flashback sequences, Daly went with a Panasonic
VariCam at 12fps and with a narrow shutter angle, then transferred the material
to HDCAM format at 12fps in post “to give the images a different feel.
Those shots looked sharp and jittery.”
Daly would rely on an exposure meter to light initially, fine-tuning the setups
to his HD monitor and keeping an eye on the waveform monitor, essentially to
make sure he was protecting his highlights. “I used one of the HyperGammas
on the camera to give me a wider range of exposure latitude,” he explains. “It
gave me more control over the highlights by compressing them a little, which
allows you to pull them back in post if you need to. But it also meant the camera
wasn’t all that fast. I would rate it at EI 200, which, for night shooting,
is slower than the 500 ASA film I would generally use. The setting probably [holds
onto the whites] at the expense of the blacks, but that’s okay. In video,
you struggle more with highlights. I can control the shadows by adding more light,
whereas controlling the highlights, especially outside, can be much more difficult.”
The HyperGamma function let Daly feel comfortable shooting highlights that
were two and a half stops overexposed. Daly feels that HD’s highly touted
ability to handle considerable underexposure is a bit overblown. He admits that
his HyperGamma setup compromised his shadow latitude, but even without that setup,
he says, “When you underexpose HD, it just seems to go flat. In a test
environment, you can underexpose a grayscale by five stops and say, ‘Wow!
I can see detail there!’ But when you’re working with an actual image,
I don’t think it looks that great, so I try not to work that way.”
His monitor gave him the entire range of detail the imager was picking up,
which resulted in a slightly flat-looking image with detail in the over- and
underexposure areas that would likely not make it onto the actual HDCAM tape,
and would very likely be deliberately diminished when contrast was added in the
final tape-to-tape. “I didn’t use any lookup table with the monitor,” he
says. “I’d just turn the brightness down a little bit to approximate
what the picture would really look like.”
Daly, who worked without a digital imaging technician, would generally sit
by the monitor during a take and use cmotion units—one in each hand—to
control the iris. A-Camera Operator Gareth Hughes would run the camera and a
1st AC would pull focus based on marks. Daly would use the monitor to ensure
focus was sharp. “With these kinds of cameras,” he says, “the
monitor is the only place you can really see focus. The focus puller and the
operator can’t tell, especially when you’re at a critical stop like
a T/2 or 2.5 and you’re on a long lens.”
Daly carried a full complement of Zeiss
DigiPrimes and Fujinon
Cine Style lenses; he finds he chose the zooms more often. “When I’m working
with film, I use prime lenses all the time. There’s not a big difference
in the two—but I do find the DigiPrimes are a bit sharper—but when
you’re working in HD, back focus is a big issue. You really have to check
the back focus every time you change. It was good to have both, though. I’d
use the DigiPrimes for a lot of day exteriors if it was a bit flare-y.”
The archetypal housing development where all the characters live is actually
a real development in Kent, England. Interiors were built at a nearby warehouse,
where a single interior house set could be dressed to stand for the inside of
any of the identical houses in the development. Levy says she was delighted when
the location was secured. “We didn’t have to do anything to it,” she
says. “We didn’t plant anything or add or subtract from what was
there. It’s perfect. It could be in America or Sweden or England—and
as you watch episode eight, you’ll realize why that is so important. The
place is fully occupied and the residents were wonderful about our shooting there.”
Whether such a development is in and of itself heavenly or hellish “is
really a matter of taste,” Levy observes. “It’s hell for the
characters because they can’t leave. Some people love communities like
that, and some don’t. I know how I feel about it,” she offers, “but
some people on the crew wanted to buy homes there.”
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