|
|
| Shooting PBS "Texas Ranch House" |
|
|
By Katie Makal, May 31, 2006
Texas Ranch House, the latest of the House genre of shows from PBS, places a 21st century family back in post-Civil War 1867. Shot on location at the 02 Ranch in West Texas and jointly produced by PBS and Wall to Wall, this eight-part miniseries follows the overriding philosophy of what Cinematographer James Jansen calls "observational documentary," which aspires to capture the action but have as little influence on the unfolding story as possible.
"When I met with series producer Luis Baretto, we agreed that we wanted the style to arise out of the subject matter and period," explains Jansen. "Our inspiration came from the Westerns about this era, and we decided to mimic their classic style. We avoided zooming and opted for a widescreen 16:9 DigiBeta format. We were striving for a 'filmic' look and felt this was the best way to capture the beauty of the majestic mountains and wide open plains that surrounded us in this part of Texas.
"When we interviewed the show's participants in their 21st century lives, we framed slightly wider than usual and incorporated their present-day situation in the shot so it would contrast with their 19th century lives in later interviews. We saw that the ranch family and the cowboys held two different points of view about ranch life-and like the classics, where the Indians always came from one direction and the cowboys the other, we had our ranch family and our cowboys face opposite sides of the frame."
Jansen chose Plus 8 Digital as the equipment supplier. "I have a longstanding relationship with them, and I knew they could give me the particular look I wanted from the cameras," he explains.
"All the participants wore hats to shade them from the intense heat and sun, leaving their faces in shadow while the light blazed on the hat brims and background. We developed a camera setup card to deal with this harsh light and extreme contrast of the Texas desert while keeping the highlights under control. We created another card that helped in the low-light situations of early morning and late night.
"We chose to use the small, self-contained Litepanels Mini as our only lighting source," he adds. "The philosophy of the project was to stay true to the time period. That meant no 'lights.' No generator, as well, not only because of the time period but because of the sound. The Litepanels Mini LED lights could run on batteries all day long. When we needed a charge, all we would have to do was plug them into the ATV's cigarette lighter.
"The other thing that I like about the Litepanels Mini is that it moves easily from daylight to nighttime without white balancing. We could use the Mini on the camera or handhold it and move with a person as an extra kick. When we were shooting fire, I could easily change their gel packs from warm fire to ambient daylight."
Even though this project was shot single-camera style, this was the first time the PBS show used two camera teams-because of the vast area that needed to be covered and the extended daylight hours. "We had more than 14 hours of daylight: the ambience came up around 6 a.m. and fell after 9:30 p.m."
Each team carried a wide 4.5x57mm and a long 22x zoom. "We used both lenses, the wide for handheld camera work, much of which took place in small interiors, and the long for tripod work in the wide open plain. As much as we could, we tried to step back and allow the participants their space, while still seeing what they were doing. The use of long lenses also gave us that wonderful sense of compression to portray the vast distances involved, with shimmering heat waves rising from the desert floor."
After testing filter combinations, Jansen decided on a Schneider True-Pol and a 1/4 Tiffen Ultra-Con
. "This filter combination gave me the rich blue skies and saturated colors I wanted, kept the f-stop and depth of field shallower and helped control the contrast," he explains.
"I did time-lapse photography almost daily," he adds. "The challenge was to read light and weather conditions and pick frames that would give us dynamic images over the course of hours. We were able to rent a 40x zoom and a Nikon adapter for a short while. Both helped give the flexibility we needed for some of our iconic shots based on the great American Westerns."
Texas Ranch House not only put the show's participants through the rigors of life on the frontier, it also challenged the camera and sound crew. "Temperatures routinely got to 105 degrees, and we were constantly battling dust in the camera room, in the ATVs we used for camera/sound gear and in the equipment itself. We kept the cameras cool and clean by taping the transport door as if it were a film mag, while a white towel loosely draped around the camera allowed airflow yet reflected the sun away."
"Tape changes happened with the speed and coordination of a NASCAR pit crew. We had no shelter, and we needed to limit the time we exposed the tape and heads to wind-blown dust. Tapes did not come out of the case until they were absolutely ready to go into the camera; shot tapes barely saw the light of day before they were in their case in an insulated container.
"Our cowboys set out almost daily on horseback over the 70,000-acre ranch to catch and mark longhorns. These cattle hunts proved particularly tricky to shoot. Because our presence influenced the behavior of the cattle and horses, we set up our camera on a far hillside and used the doubler to follow the action of the cowboys as they rounded up the herd.
"Blair Halver, our audio supervisor, used Lectrosonics UCR 411 radio mics from Imagecraft because of the tremendous range of their hybrid digital technology. We had no competing RF, so we could listen in on the cowboys' conversation from a great distance and anticipate where best to next place the camera as we followed their journey.
"One particular cattle hunt took us to an area off the map and far from any of the trails we used for navigation. The cowboys were on horseback and made camp for the night in a ravine where we couldn't take our ATV, so we had to hike in, carrying our gear. When we finally reached their camp, it was late, and the director wanted to interview the participants about their first campout. Litepanels Minis were the only way to go. I gelled them to match the color temperature and rode the dimmer as the ambience fell so the scene didn't look lit. When night fell, everyone gathered close to the campfire and I was able to match firelight with the Minis with a simple change of gel, using them as if sourced from the fire."
"Candles or oil lamps were the only lights the participants used on the ranch," he continues. "These were perfect motivational sources that allowed me to introduce a warmly gelled Litepanels Mini so we could see what was happening without too much camera gain. I would have someone handhold one from an angle near the oil lamp and I would mount another Litepanels Mini with diffusion on the camera so I could control the fill level and keep it looking natural."
For James Jansen and the Texas Ranch House team, the difficulties were worth it. "We got to shoot some unique footage as we put 21st century technology and crew up to the harsh realities of the 19th century frontier. In the end, we captured a vivid picture of life as it was in that challenging but formative time of our nation's history."
.
|
|
|
|
|
|