With the help of Plus 8 Video, director of photography James Bagdonas, ASC performs an HDTV transplant for Chicago Hope.
by by Michael Hirsh
The script for an intriguing fall 1998 episode of the CBS medical drama Chicago Hope, titled "The Other Cheek," called for most of the show to be shot documentary-style, as though a 20/20 or Dateline program was covering the controversial death of a beloved TV star in the fictional hospital's ER. Slated to direct the episode, Chicago Hope executive producer Bill D'Elia recalls saying to himself, "Well, I guess we're supposed to shoot this show on tape." His aesthetic decision and later choice to utilize high-definition video for the production of the episode marked an interesting departure for the series, which is traditionally shot on 35mm film — currently with Kodak's EXR 5298 and 5293. (Incidentally, the episode's title is not a Biblical reference, but a wry pun in honor of the episode's ailing protagonist, an actor who dies after one of his butt implants ruptures.)
Three months later, on Wednesday, November 19, just moments before "The Other Cheek" would air, D'Elia stood on the stage in Studio 36 at CBS Television City in Los Angeles. Addressing 200 invited guests who were about to watch the East Coast feed of the show on a giant Sony high-definition projection screen, he remarked with candor, "I have a feeling more people are seeing it here [in HD] than anyplace in the country."
D'Elia had begun to sense that he was involved in something special a month earlier, as he wrapped the week-long HD shoot for the episode. "Everyone I ran into in the business kept asking, 'What's the difference [between shooting HD and film]?' 'What do you notice about it?' All I noticed was that it was flawless. The episode in question was relatively easy as far as productions go, and it was a lot of fun. Quite often, as a director, you don't have much fun."
Though D'Elia hadn't initially recognized the importance of Chicago Hope being the first network TV dramatic series to utilize the HD format during production, the show's director of photography, James Bagdonas, ASC, realized early on that the series was embarking on a history-making adventure. "No one had done a dramatic piece like this in HD before," maintains the cameraman, who has garnered both Emmy and ASC Award nominations for his efforts on the weekly drama (see AC Oct. 1998). "I looked at the situation as a great opportunity to play with high-def, because I knew it would be a win-win situation for everyone." Bagdonas is currently shooting his third season of the series, following a run on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
Chicago Hope's HD experience began when Sony asked Burbank-based Plus 8 Video to bring a Sony HDW-700 HD camcorder to the show's soundstage, located on the 20th Century Fox lot in Century City, so a test could be conducted. Plus 8 VP Chris Nightingale and cinematographer Andy Sobkovich arrived shortly after the Chicago Hope crew had finished a dolly shot down a hospital corridor. After the duo quickly briefed the show's regular crew on the use of the Sony camera, the corridor shot was repeated, this time with the HDW-700 propped on the operator's shoulder, ENG-style.
The next morning, Chicago Hope executive producers Jim Hart and D'Elia, producer Rob Corn, and supervising producer John Heath met with representatives from Sony and Plus 8 Video at Laser Pacific's editing facility in Burbank. The 35mm version of the corridor shot was screened in NTSC, followed by the HD version, and then the HD version down-converted to NTSC. Next, the group went into Laser Pacific's HD color-correction suite to check out the possibilities and limitations of the process. Satisfied that the HD format would meet their needs, the series executives gave the final go-ahead to shoot the "The Other Cheek" in high-definition television.
Shortly before the episode went into production, another meeting was held on the Fox lot to work out the details of the shoot. It was decided that Plus 8 would configure the package so that in addition to feeding the Sony HDM-14E5U 14" HD monitor on the set, they'd also take an NTSC 525-line down-converted signal out of the HDC-750's camera-control unit and send it to a standard monitor mounted on a cart above the HD screen. The 16:9 image on the NTSC monitor was letterboxed, with graticules overlaid on the screen so D'Elia and Bagdonas could ascertain the 1.33:1 broadcast-safe area. (Later, Bagdonas had the sides, top and bottom of the both the NTSC monitor and camera viewfinder taped off so only the 1.33:1 image was visible.)
As the first setup began, Bagdonas was still feeling out the nuances between his film-production experience and the requirements of shooting on HD video. "Film has a broader palette than video, with a wider spectrum of color and contrast," Bagdonas points out, "so you're not as limited in creating a look as you are with video. With 20 years of film lighting experience, it's an odd transition to be asked for more light in shadows or to crush down the highlights because the video camera loses the detail."
Plus 8 Video engineer David A. Canning also felt a bit odd about the shoot at first. On first day of stage work on "The Other Cheek," he and fellow technician Andrew Sabol felt a bit like distant relatives who had been invited to a wedding even though no one really wanted them there. They were alien creatures: video guys on a film set. But the entire crew realized that for the eight-day shoot to be successful, the two camps would have to be able to communicate with each other. They would simply have to learn each other's language.
| [ continued on page 2 ] | © 1999 ASC |