House Finale From the Inside

Any photographer learning video production would have been very interested in the Cine Gear Expo 2010 at  Paramount Studios in Hollywood.   One of the highlights was cinematographer Gale Tattersall,  DP  of the TV show House, part of Canon’s EOS presentation on using the Canon 5D  for the final episode.  I had a chance to chat with Gale for awhile privately before and after the presentation as well, so I was able to get a bit more information on his digital workflow.

Anyone who wants to see top work with a 5D Mark ll should watch the House finale episode.  To keep everything I’m going to write about this  in the right perspective,  we must keep in mind that Gale is the DP for what I hear is the most watched TV show in the world.  He has a team of experienced professionals working with him and the resources of a major network behind him.  These are not unlimited resources, but they will do.  Plus, he was concerned that he and his team only had three weeks of testing to refine the workflow before he started actually using the camera to shoot the episode.

Right off there was some concern about projecting the clips on a full size movie screen at the Expo.  Banding is a problem when you start off with a highly compressed format like the H264 coming out of the 5D Mark ll.  Everyone in the theater was impressed including Gale and moderator Tim Smith of Canon with how well the picture held up.  Remember, they made sure they started with the picture style set at neutral, the exposure was right on (I’ll write about this more later) and the color balance was right where they wanted it.  Plus, (and here is a big tip) a little film grain was added to smooth everything out.

More on this and what else I saw …