June 10, 2004
When B. Sean Fairburn was asked to lend his expertise to the production of a special, high definition episode of NBC drama The West Wing, he imparted an entirely different look from the classic production values of the show, normally shot on film by Director of Photography Thomas A. Del Ruth, ASC. The episode, "Access," involved a documentary crew that followed press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) during a typical day at the White House. Using two HDCAMs shooting at 59.94i instead of 23.98p, Del Ruth wanted the episode to evoke the look of "bad video."
Explains Fairburn, "We did not want the show to look anything like the beautiful film that Tom regularly shoots. Even though bad video was the look we were after, we still wanted good, intentionally bad video. There was no technical problem with it-the choices made were made deliberately."
To push the look further, Fairburn also tweaked certain controls on the cameras, provided by Plus 8 Digital. "We increased the detail as far as it would go, so the sharp edges would have an extra crispness that looks much more like video than film. We played with the color and created a bit more of a desaturated palette," he notes.
In terms of lighting, shooting in the looser, more flexible documentary style motivated a realistic look. "The lighting was much more natural," he explains. "Tom would light a whole area at a time and then the cameras were free to roam around and shoot where they needed to. Tom would go back and forth to the monitor and make something a little more evenly lit or softly lit, rather than go for a harder, contrasty look he normally does with film. In addition, he underlit certain areas since HD can see into those areas a little better than film. It ended up allowing us to shoot quite a bit faster and with a lot less work involved."
For the opening scene, Fairburn and Del Ruth were able to control the visuals as they were being shot with two Sony RMB-150 Paintbox camera controllers. Fairburn says, "Tom wanted it to feel like this was the first time the cameras had been turned on and that the color temperature was incorrect. He wanted to roll on the white balance as part of a very behind-the-scenes look at what was going on, to really establish that this is not the smooth, polished 'reality' of the normal show. As one camera picks up and pulls off the tripod, I took the color temperature and whacked it way out to the cold. As C.J. walks around the desk, I slammed it down to the warm end and the color chart pops up. It's as though I did an automatic white balance. I snapped the color back to proper and we rode the rest of the show that way."
Fairburn, who acted as a digital imaging technician on the episode but is an active DP himself, was pleased to have the opportunity to work with such an accomplished cameraman as Del Ruth.
"The production team didn't want just a tech who could come on set and tweak the camera-they wanted someone who could speak Tom's language. They needed someone who knew about lighting and color temperature. Tom is an incredibly talented man who has worked under greats such as Conrad Hall and Jordan Cronenweth. He told me a lot of stories and asked a lot of astute questions regarding the medium of HD."
Fairburn's next project as director of photography is the feature Pride, a period baseball film shot in New Mexico.
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