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House of Cards - Season 3


VASI

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While I'm not the biggest fan of a lot of Fincher's films, I do applaud his knowledge and implementation of the tech we now have. I've bored many folks talking about the green screen method of shooting car shots and the digital projection method as well since the days of "24" when Rodney Charters was shooting this way. All easy to do, with better sound results for us and quicker shooting times for the overall production. It seems to finally be getting some traction even in commercials. I've done 2 commercials so far this year shooting it green screen style. So much faster and easier on all involved. Now if we could only get the booms into the frame like they do on "HOC" sound mixing would be so much more fun. Booming too.

CrewC

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Unfortunately, Lorenzo has not yet become a member of JW, but Ill make sure to relay all the kind words.

I will say that the painting of boom poles isn't the only amazing thing that happens on the set of HOC. Having spent a lot of time on HOC since season 1, one of the greatest developments in season 3 has everything to do with the G&E Department. No matter the shot or lighting setup, if the boom operators have a shadow that they can't work around, all that is needed is to ask any grip for some love, and it will be given to you no questions. Most of the time, it's simply flagging off some spill, but they'll take care of it. It's happened very rarely so far in my career, but when it does, it's an amazing thing to be a part of. Our key grip, Tony Marra (INCREDIBLE MAN), came up to us in the beginning of the season and introduced himself and said, "If you have a shadow problem needing fixed, please let us know. A boom shadow isn't a sound problem, its a G&E problem, and it will be taken care of."

Really incredible. It's been a pleasure working on this show for 3 years, especially with my great friend and mentor, Lorenzo. I'm even trying to get some of these collaborative decisions to make its way over to VEEP to help me out! I know Waco Bill would appreciate it as much as I would!

Cheers,

Steve

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I heartily second what Steve has to say about Tony Marra. I've known Tony since we were both young men and have had the great pleasure of working on at least three films with him. 

 

The green screen driving shots in House of Cards are the best damn looking shots I've ever seen -- that trick with the LED panels is stunning in how good it looks. They also manage to get the reflections of the outside world to appear in the glass, which is a killer trick. Amazing work.

 

Marc, the LED panels are video panels used as lighting fixtures, playing back plate footage made on a camera car driving the right place at the right time of day. The dimmer board operator cues up and plays back the footage as needed. I have a bad photo of the room somewhere, I'll look for it and add it to this post it if I can clean it up a little. (The image Chris posted below is far superior to the one I have) As I said, the panels are loud but easily fixed. Like cloning out the poles, mics and boom operators with frame crashing I got the impression from production it's just another batch processing deal done with minimal human input. Shooting with as many as four 6K cameras on days with a second unit, the show creates a ton of data daily and they've got moving, managing and manipulating it down.

Best regards,

Jim

Edited by Jim Gilchrist
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Great thread-thanks to all who have contributed. I hope this is a technique that can gain some traction, especially for driving shots.

 

Any info that can be passed along will certainly be helpful in working with DP's and the producers-keep it coming!

 

+1 on Tony Marra. Always happy to help, and an all around nice guy.

 

--Scott

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 One thing that they are also doing that I like is that there are no TC slates on the show, the scene starts when the AD asks all to roll and the director says action, it happens very quick at times so it takes a bit of time to get use to the rhythm of the set at first. They almost always roll 2 cameras on their sets and TC is linked via sync boxes. The Red's Clip numbers on the cameras are the scene and take numbers so it is very important that the mixer always double check that their files numbers and names match the cameras. The AC's are very good at this practice and a quick look at your monitors tells you what is up next as the information is displayed at the bottom of the frame. It is also the first network show that have worked on that did not also require paper copies of the sound reports at the end of each day, I just put a CVS copy in the the folder at each data break and all is good. 

 

Chris I get the concept of how to this but what's the advantage of doing it? So continuity has to be plugged into the TC as well or they just take it off the monitors? For example it whould say A063 (meaning card #63 is up) C001 (meaning clip #001) What if you have a TC issue with the Dragon (not like that's not happened before). At least you have the TC and the slate jammed from the master clock, the recorder that you could sink the slate display to. I use the ACL 204 jammed from my Deva then I jam the slate to match. The 204 then transmits on the 2.4Ghz network keeping it all hopefuly in sink. It seems like a lot of extra meta data inputting to keep the sound reports up to date and useful. What if the director says (who is working off a script or sides) let me hear scene 24 take 3 pick up back. You have to go through all the camera data to find it?  I'm sure once you catch on to it may be more self explanatory.

 

 We also have given up on the camera car shots for the series that I work on but with rear screen not the video panels. It took a lot of tweaking getting the street shots from the play back to match perspective of the incar shots. It looked like "Land of The Giants" at first but they worked it out.

 

Man the times they are a changing.

 

Bill

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If I can, I'll answer a couple of questions Bill has raised.

 

There's little to no performance playback on the show. There's generally only complete video assist capabilities only when one of the cast is directing an episode. If there's a question, they just go again. It's really faster in this fast way of working. 

 

Regarding timecode, I can't answer for first unit where the show owns all the camera gear. On second unit, where the camera packages are rented, a 2nd camera assistant brings an Ambient ACL-204 to the sound department for a jam at the start of the day and after meals. The camera department is responsible for getting it to the cameras from there. The script supervisor relays the clip naming info to the camera assistants and will pass it along to the mixer if required, but it's pretty evident when there's a change (somebody usually says "Moving on") and the info is right there on the monitors on my cart so it's easy to check. No slates. Ever. The workflow is solid, they've done 39 episodes so far. They've created a workflow that works for them and that saves money and time and they are not shy about spending those savings where it shows, on the screen.

Best regards,

Jim

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Bill I can explain a little bit more about the slates and time code. I originate the time code. Camera jams their ambient boxes from me and jam the camera (the new epic software and builds are great, very little drift, we would get notes from the dailies editor about what was out of sync and it was rare). The script supervisor Robb Fogglia would use his script software on his MacBook and he would use my denecke time code box and jam his software. The metadata comes from me, scene, take number. Because camera would accidentally bump clips every so often the clip number was an unreliable number for take numbers. Script and I would always make sure we were in the same page with scene and take numbers. If there was a correction for cameras metadata they would enter it into their system with iPads through wifi connected with the cameras.

I hope that helps answer some of it.

I would also like to say I am honored to read your comments. It has been an absolute pleasure and joy to mix House of Cards. Simon I love your insight and your story from Les Mis. I am fortunate that I can work in a show where production is very sound friendly and the post staff WANT to use all the location audio. They fight for it. And it shows. You can never replace the emotion of location audio.

Lorenzo Millan

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Lorenzo: Thanks for posting. I am certainly going to pass this along to the post team on "Chicago PD". However, our sound issues have more to do with shooting style and poor location choices than they do with workflow,

Great work you're doing, and it's encouraging to see that good sound can be had on a series if the producers really want it to happen.

-Scott

"I don't care what they're talking about, all I want is a nice fat recording".

Harry Caul "The Conversation"

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I would be perfectly happy to never do another car towing shot --- even when everything works perfectly it still sucks. The green screen car work I have done works so much better, for everyone, and you can really get a whole lot more shooting done --- none of this driving back to number one, securing the streets with a lock up, etc., and you KNOW it's going to sound a whole lot better!

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Lorenzo:

 

 First off let me say congrats on some amazing work and thank you for joining this thread. Chris thank you for posting that video. At the 11:30 mark there is an excellent example of the booming work being done and how it is handled. Lorenzo to be able to listen to Kevins voice all day the way it's ment to be heard must be very satisfying. Some of the scenes in the YouTube video show walk and talks that sound extremely clean for radio mics. Are we seeing the treated scenes? Meaning VFX? And how often are you on radio mics if at all?

 

 I think I understand a little better how the onset work flow works. Is this something that was implemented by you or part of the pre production prep as not to interrupt the onset flow. With everything else going on on set clearly the extra meta data work does not slow you down. Again ground breaking.

 

 As Jeff points out done properly the use of green screen for driving shots I feel will replace the Camera Car. The time saved and over all quality far out ways the need of the tow rig. I will try and post some pics of our set up.

 

Bill

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Hey everyone, good to see some fellow HOC teamers in here - I suppose I should stick my head in, since it's been my job on the post side of things to do the boom paint-outs.  haha who knew we had so many of us here on JW?  I worked in-house VFX on HOC s2 & s3, and "Gone Girl" as well.  I love the concept of boom "paint" outs.  As long as it was shot correctly (locked-off and with a brief clean plate (at least 2 seconds worth), boom paint-outs will take all of 2 minutes to finish.  It takes more time to transfer the files than it does to do the work, in most cases.  USUALLY the camera is locked down, but very rarely it will have a move within the shot (more commonly in something like "Gone Girl", where the overall production value is higher and the shots are more complex).  If anyone has any questions about the process, let me know.  It'd be nice to get more productions working this way.

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Hey Chad, great to see you on here. You can explain it a hell of a lot better than I can. I don't think we ever attempted moving camera with boom in the shot on HOC. There are a lot of subleties with it (for expample e-fans on the leaves outside the Oval Office sometimes we can't cross then because of a moving object)

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Yeah, I don't recall any HOC shots where there's a boom in frame WHILE the shot is moving.  I think there were one or two in all of Gone Girl, but typically, I recall only a handful of the following: A camera move completes, camera stops, boom flies in after camera has settled - sometimes in the opposite order.  We do this not only to remove Booms, but sometimes a B Cam, too.  This, of course, wouldn't be as easy with a handheld camera (unless the camera operator sits still and doesn't introduce any parallax (side to side) or front-to-back motion).  Handheld isn't impossible, but it could take several hours of compositing work.

 

Edit: On "Gone Girl" we had a few dolly-in shots where the boom was in shot for the duration of the actual move.  The camera team then had to go back and shoot a clean plate - exact same set up and camera move were recreated, this time without the boom in shot.  In post, we had to match up the two shots and "lock" the two moves together so that we could do a simple paint out.  Easier said than done, but certainly possible and not as difficult as going full CGI and modelling some new 3D element for a clean plate.  I doubt any TV productions would allow the time/money to do this.  lol.  And I'm pretty sure the example I just gave involved removing a B-Cam from the shot as well, which is probably why they chose to attempt it in the first place.  

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Hey Chad, thanks for the info. Nice of you to join in this topic. I've got a question. Is a 6K workflow mandatory for painting stuff out? Or is it any easier? Can you do the same if it's a 4K work flow? Is it unwise to try this with a 2K Alexis workflow? I know we do 2K green screen all the time very effectively but obviously GS is easier by it's nature. Thanks.

CrewC

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Chad, is wire removal (or boom) on moving shots still a frame by frame process or

as tracking software gets better and better has the process changed to a different technique?

 

It's a lot easier opening the discussion with clients if we have a better idea of the process in 2015.

Thanks

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Hey Chad, thanks for the info. Nice of you to join in this topic. I've got a question. Is a 6K workflow mandatory for painting stuff out? Or is it any easier? Can you do the same if it's a 4K work flow? Is it unwise to try this with a 2K Alexis workflow? I

 

Fincher is well-known for shooting a much bigger frame than what actually gets used in the show. So if they shoot 6K but only wind up with a 4K finish, they can use that extra 20% image area to move the picture around, steady out camera moves and stuff like that. Here's what they did for Gone Girl:

 

phfx_goneGirl_twofourohExtraction.jpg

 

Having this extra image area is very handy for post, since this way they never have a problem with headroom or being able to pan a little bit if the operator is a little late or a little early on the camera move.

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