Most popular on Fox… except for American Idol…
I like House.
My favorite episode is the one where the patient with the rare disease comes in with a wide range of symptoms. No one can figure it out. They try one thing, almost kill him. Try something else, almost kill him again. Try a third thing, almost kill him again. Then Wilson makes some offhand comment. Close up of House’s face. Eyebrows raised. Try the last thing. Cure the patient.
Ever see that one?
It’s, like, all of them.
House is good, but predictable.
But now, they’re doing something totally unpredictable.. and fairly earth-shattering (at least here on planet video).
House, one of the most popular shows on TV, (and based on the NY Times columns of Dr. Lisa Sanders), will shoot it’s final episode for season 5 using the Canon 5D DSLR camera.
So says, CNet, which is a pretty good source of information.
The decision to shoot all of the final episode of one of the most popular and successful shows on TV with a small, hand held digital video camera is nothing less than earth-shattering.
Essentially, it takes the J out of VJ.
When we started producing TV in this way, it was because the small, inexpensive cameras had two advantages: they were small and they were inexpensive.
Because they were small they were ideal for journalism. Unobtrusive, easy to carry to places like Afghanistan, they were a kind of video Leica for the digital age.
Because they were inexpensive, they could cut the cost of production for news, a place where profit margins are razor thin.
But House?
Come on, that thing must have a massive budget.
They don’t publish the budget, but House is distributed to more than 66 countries, with 81 million viewers weekly it is the ‘most watched TV show in the world’.
So cutting the cost of camera expenditures is not high on their list.
And House is not alone. CNet Australia is also publishing that parts of the new Harry Potter movie and Iron Man II are also shot with the 5D.
OK. Parts of a movie I can understand. But a whole show for TV. And in fiction? And with a big budget?
A barrier has been crossed here.
What this means is that the door to fiction – really high end fiction, is now also open to anyone.
At least anyone with a Canon 5D, at the moment.
6 Comments
Amir April 14, 2010
Cool 🙂
But do you mean maybe season 6? (5 Ended last year)
pencilgod April 14, 2010
From an editor friend of mine:
There are various issues that impact the 5D from a broadcast quality perspective. It’s interesting. It’s a 1080p camera but will only resolve around 700 lines of detail, and there are, as discussed previously, significant aliasing issues.
However if you’re shooting in the ‘filmic’ style that everyone seems to favour the 5D for – extremely shallow depth of field – then a lot of those issues are mitigated. 700 lines is plenty of detail for out-of-focus areas of the frame, soft detail doesn’t alias.
At that point then the codec starts to actually become an issue again – it’s 8bit 4:2:0 colour sampling which usually doesn’t qualify for “Full HD” on most broadcasters’ tech spec – but at around 40Mb/s H.264 at least there isn’t much issue with compression artifacts.
pencilgod April 14, 2010
Its a gimmick and a stunt and will cost a small fortune in post production and still result in a quality hit… not to mention all the extra set up time on set. In a world where time on set is literally money this is no cheap option.
Still I look forward to see the results.
Zack April 14, 2010
This is exciting but certainly not the first time a dSLR or the equipment around it has been used by professionals. Parts of the Bourne Ultimatum, 24, Saturday Night Live use the technology, just haven’t publicized it.
dSLR filmmaking still has several sacrifices which make it painfully close to being truly beautiful and revolutionary. Rolling shutter (aka the “jello effect” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJozM55HrsM ), archaic video codec (instead of a current industry standard like DVCPRO HD, XDCAM422, ProRes, etc), and really no professional audio input and capture.
RED’s Scarlet cameras have a lot of promise even at the higher price point, but I’m still waiting for Sony to jump into this field or for Canon to truly realize that they have something big in their hands and design proper video functions into the camera. Canon 5D Mark III will hopefully have that.
Panasonic is getting close, they’re going to release a 4/3 inch camcorder (this type of sensor has only been on dSLR-like still cameras before) – http://www.dpreview.com/news/1004/10041203panasonicagaf100.asp
fosca April 14, 2010
i doubt that any bondaries were eliminated. it is all very nice and fine having the ability and use a dslr for video. you must not forget so that the additional technical equipment needed for a wobble free result is many. therefore, ok, canon approached the production company responsible for the dr.house series and bought their way into this one show possibly providing all needed hardware for free. for a vj-job i reckon that a high-end video-camera of the new hd-generation is still the maschine of choice and i know that it does not offer great depth of field control.
Elltra April 14, 2010
Wow… That is terribly interesting; the boundaries have been eliminated…