Canal Plus HD

Not very recently I directed shoot for a Canal Plus promo selling their new HD channel, the first one here in Spain I believe. The promo had to be shot and aired in HD and I was quite excited since it was only my 3rd HD-shoot and the first one shot, posted and aired in HD. The producer located a F23 dirt-cheap from an ex-DoP (that went blind and since then works renting gears, dramatic story). I was hesitant to use a for me unknown and overly sophisticated camera but apparently the price was too good to even discuss other options. Fortunately our DoP (Rafael Roche) is kind of a guru here in Spain in HD-tech and the crew was very experienced with a lot of productions, among the some features in HD. Unfortunately the was same kind of circuit-board missing so we couldn't use the over-cranking function.

The thing turned out fairly well, despite the time constraints and difficulties to coordinate the "stars"/anchors of the channel. The locations turned out to be whatever available space there was to find among the interiors of the tv-station at any given moment. Since there was no time or budget for decoration and and very little time for lightning my intention was to do as much as possible using dolly/crane and tele-lens. One thing I've learned from this: Moving camera, telephoto framing, and a standard HD zoom lens is a lethal time-waster. It was really really hard to focus and a lot of time was spend on endless rehearsals. Eventually I had to compromise and open up quite a few times although the resulting "video-everything's sharp" look was somehow depressing, specially considering the gear we used.

Rafael Roche DP and Eduardo Mangada camera.

The only day with rain that month just happened to be our only day qith exteriors


Anchor Cristina Teva goofing around with the camera, normally not an act very well looked upon but who where we to say no, the camera looked really good on her ; )