Production Meets Post

Lines Blur on The O.C.

The opulent back yard of a Newport Beach mansion, a key locationfeatured on The O.C.

The ambience of the new Fox drama The O.C. is intimately tiedto the show's locations. Therefore, when shooting the pilot (on Kodak5274 35mm stock for daytime sequences and 5279 Vision stock for nightscenes) around Southern California, producers spared little expense andeffort to capture the look and feel of Orange County's lush, colorful,upscale world. Filming 27 green-lit episodes for a single season thatway, however, was hardly practical.

“It wasn't very affordable or practical to shoot the entireseries on location in 35mm,” says Ben Kunde, the show's associateproducer. “In these cases, it's always about money as studios aretrying to cut costs to make shows profitable. So we had to come up withanother method for shooting the series, which would match the look andfeel of the pilot.”

That method carefully blends production and postproduction, withdigital dailies and digital mastering playing prominent roles.Producers decided to shoot the series on 16mm (Kodak 7274) stock,primarily on a huge set built at the Raleigh Studios soundstage inManhattan Beach, Calif., mixing in pickup shots and stock shots ofNewport Beach and other Southern California beach locales. From there,they rely on a digital mastering formula devised by Modern VideoFilm,Burbank, to make exteriors shot on the soundstage, vegetation, water,and a gigantic painted backdrop of the Pacific Ocean look like the sameOrange County captured on film.

Kunde says the cost of building the set and commissioning theglimmering ocean vista backdrop (painted at Warner Brothers undersupervision from production designer Thomas Fichter and DP JamieBarber) was substantial, but not as costly as trying to routinely shooton location around Orange County.

“I've never worked on a show that relies this much on asingular location that is designed to specifically replicate a reallocation,” says Kunde. “The reason we get away with it,besides obviously having very talented people, is the plan we came upwith: building this tremendous set, conducting a [Grass Valley SpiritDataCine] transfer at Modern VideoFilm — the Spirit has reallyhelped us overcome the fact that we are using 16mm — and a few CGenhancements here and there.

Since the pilot, all scenes at the mansion, interior or exterior,have been shot on a Manhattan Beach soundstage and then altered inpost.

“But mainly, through the use of color and color theory, we areselling the mood of our show that we created for the pilot, which isthis notion that life in Orange County is good, the weather is good,and so forth. It wasn't cheap to do it this way, but going out onlocation all the time would be very expensive, especially when exposedto the elements, changing light, and all that stuff. Few things are asexpensive as frequently taking a large crew on location.”

Barber says he concentrates on “selling the whole thing withcolor and light” through close collaborations with Modern dailiescolorist Jeff Benham and senior colorist Rick Dalby.

“When we first built the set, we had Rick come down and walkit with me,” says Barber. “We discussed the colors, thelighting plan, all that stuff, and he contributed to the overall planto saturate colors, warm the light, and add some grain. Since then, wehave created a process that allows him to make sure our color planremains consistent all the way through.”

First, though, Benham transfers the 16mm film on Modern's Spirit andthen provides an initial color pass to Barber and producers on DVD— a system that Barber feels “is worth every penny becausethe ability to have random access in viewing and selecting the imagesspeeds up the entire process.” The producer, DP, and colorist allpoint out that the Spirit transfer plays a crucial role in their effortto match the 35mm look of the pilot. “It gives you a muchcleaner, noise-free, sharply focused look,” Dalby says.“For reasons of optics, transfer, less noise, the way it handlesgrain, the Spirit delivers a much better transfer when we are dealingwith 16mm.”

The DVD dailies, which serve as the foundation of the offline editfor each episode, also directly aid Dalby's mission of maintaining thelook and consistency of the show. “[Benham's] work cuts down onthe time it takes me to color-correct an episode because it's soconsistent,” he says.

A composite shot showing an O.C. background filmed on-set(right half of the picture) and then digitally color-corrected (lefthalf) to match the look of the real Newport Beach location.

After the episode is offlined, Dalby gets to work using astandard-def, da Vinci 8:8:8 DUI color correction system. He alsoperforms a noise-reduction pass using a Bosch MNR-11 system in order tomore closely achieve the look and texture of 35mm film.

“There are an awful lot of specific adjustments in settingsthat we use when working with 16mm — a lot of frequency things,noise reduction, sharpening, enhancement, and trying to set aperturecoring and size to replicate the film grain of 35mm,” says Dalby.“I take a lot of extra time to do this on the Bosch machine,actually.”

The colorist also routinely has to tweak the color and texture ofthe synthetic grass and other vegetation used on set. “Perhapsthe most difficult part of shooting this thing on a stage is the fakegrass,” says Barber. He also adds glimmers to painted water inthe Pacific Ocean backdrop and in the house's backyard pool andJacuzzi.

“The swimming pool and water are real. The ocean, sky, grass,and plants are all fake,” says Dalby. “That's where I usesecondary color correction to change the luminance hue and saturationvalues to approximate the look of the real samples we had from thepilot's real locations. We mute the greens from the grass and otherplants, adjusting the hues slightly, depending on whether we areshooting outside the house or inside, looking out. With secondary colorcorrection, we can isolate the blues and greens without affecting therest of the shot, and we can tone them up and down to look morerealistic.”

Modern finishes each episode to DigiBeta as an anamorphic standarddef master for broadcast on Fox.