A technical question about cameras, film, and 30 Rock.

After a trying week of marking papers, teaching, and generally being run ragged, I spent far too much time last weekend watching 30 Rock.  As to the content of the show, all I can say is that I find it remarkable that a program dedicated to the inside baseball of running a network variety show is even intelligible, much less popular.  Then I remember The Muppet Show exists or watch episodes of Saturday Night (not yet Live) from the year I was born, realize how old the trope is and find it remarkable that 30 Rock managed to enliven it.  If pressed, I'd argue that its success has something to do with the meaningful inclusion of the network brass, which is in marked contrast from Lorne Michaels playing himself on SNL, but tonight I'm more interested in why the cast seems to have such huge heads:

In this frame, the camera and lighting conspired to make Tracy Morgan's character, Tracy Jordan, look like something the first 10,000 fans under the age of 13 receive when they come through the gate.  How did this happen?  I don't know for sure, but thanks to an article [.pdf] in the Spring 2009 issue of Exposure magazine, I think I can make an under-educated guess. 

In it, chief cinematographer Matthew Clark says he employs wide-angle cameras to create a shallow depth of field in order to "lend a sense of immediacy to what's going on," which is all well and good, except that wide-angle cameras do the opposite.  He also notes that because the sets are so small, they are warmly and dimly lit, so in order to create any contrast, he has to shoot with a wider iris to allow in more light, and doing so diminishes the depth of field. 

It would seem that balance is struck: wide-angle creates a greater depth of field, the low-lighting and wider iris shallow it out.  The only problem, as evidenced by the frame above, is that the balance is frequently out of whack, and because wide-angle lenses exaggerate the distance between objects, whenever a character leans forward, their heads appear much bigger than the bodies they're attached to.

I think. 

I welcome those of you who know more about cameras, lenses, lighting and film stock to correct me.

Comments

[Gary Farber]

"realize how old the trope is"

The Dick Van Dyke Show.

[SEK]

I like to think of this as one of the rare occasions in which my youth is showing.

[nutellaontoast]

In still photography, it's called the aperture, not the iris. Is that not true of video or am I wrong and some still photographers say iris, too?

[SEK]

I'm not sure. I call it the iris because of the "iris-in, iris-out" film technique. In other words, I know about the architecture of shots, but need to learn more about the devices used to create them.

[Gary Farber]

The Dick Van Dyke Show was one of the few remotely watchable tv programs available on weekday reruns on our pitiful seven channels when I was a kid, and home sick, or able to convince my parents that I was.

Strange artifacts from another era that Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie already seemed, the few other selections available at the time ranged immediately downwards through choices such as Bewitched, and quickly plunging to the depths of F Troop, Gilligan's Island, and McHale's Navy.

Tv really was rather a vast wasteland in those days.

TDVDS, though, would seem to be the first example of a tv series (that's half about) about doing a tv series. I could be forgetting or unaware of a precursor, to be sure.

As usual, I digress.

[Ahistoricality]

I Love Lucy dabbled in that as well.

Now, for the hard one. Does anyone know of an early radio show which is about the making of a radio show? (Prairie Home Companion does that schtick sometimes, and goes back almost as long as I've been alive. But classic radio?)

[M. Bouffant]

Are you sure that film is used for 30 Rock? Never watched much of the show (just can't get into cringe comedy) & it's getting harder (for me, anyway) to differentiate between film & HD digital recording. I'd almost bet money that even if it's film, it's transferred to a digital medium for editing & broadcast.

To answer NutellaOT, when I interned in local broadcast television (at the dawn of time) someone had to control the camera output from the control room. The two things we had to watch were the "iris," & the "pedestal," which was sort like the black level, or brightness, & had to be kept w/in certain levels to conform to FCC broadcasting regs. So in video, at least, it's called the iris.

[SEK]

Are you sure that film is used for 30 Rock?

According to the article, they use Fujifilm Eterna 400T.

[M. Bouffant]

Oh, read the article, did you?

As far as shows about shows go, certainly Jack Benny, at least on television (& I'd imagine on the radio) was almost as much about doing the show (or about dealng w/ or obtaining the services of the guest star) as the show itself.

Not to the level of DVanD (I don't remember many meetings about the script w/ the producer & writers in Benny shows) but it often seemed that half the Benny show was comedy leading up the guest's act.

[nutellaontoast]

I would think that film and digital, it'd be the same as far as what SEK is talking about. The things he's discussing are optics, and shouldn't change significantly between the two.

Also, something I was thinking about later... wouldn't a wide angle lens distort things differently in different parts of the picture? I would think towards the center things would appear further apart than normal and towards the edges they'd be closer together, like the opposite of a map of the globe. This could still create the described effect as long as you framed the shot properly. Of course, that is taking "exaggerating the distance" to mean making it larger.

On a globe, you're forcing an object of smaller surface area (a sphere) onto an object with a larger surface area (a rectangle). A wide angle lens takes more information and compresses it onto a smaller area and, given the radiating nature of optics, this is more true on the edges of a shot than in the center. Again, I could be making this all up.

[Lawrence L. White]

I was going to mention the Benny show. From the episodes I've heard lately, I'm not sure they ever get to the show.

Also all the great musicals were about putting on a musical.

[Ahistoricality]

Singin' in the Rain is a movie musical about making a movie musical.

And Cervantes' Don Quixote spends a good portion of the second half of the book complaining about all the knock-off sequels to the first half of the book, and how they misrepresent his adventures.

[Pinko Punko]

30 Rock isn't really cringey at all- they pull all the punches, or most of them- it is an easy watch. I don't enjoy le cringe. 30 Rock is a suds bath.

[vonzell]

The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show was at least in part about doing The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show.

[JustMe]

"lend a sense of immediacy to what's going on,"

I'm sure that this is filmmaker-speak for... something.

[Treb]

Well, the "immediacy" thing was one thing I wanted to comment on. Using the short/wide-angle lens means that the camera has to be a lot closer to the scene. There is less stuff in between subject and camera, or subject. Etymologically, it is more "im-mediate".

Less abstractly, the feel of a short lens is more like being in the scene yourself. In the still posted above, for Kenneth to turn and leave the scene, he will have to move in such a way as to miss the camera itself. If the camera were 35 feet away with a long lens, he could leave by walking across the camera's field of vision or something, basically erasing the idea that the camera is a physical presence in the space where the scene is taking place. Which is to say that I disagree with (and don't really understand) the assertion that wide-angle cameras "do the opposite."

Other points:
1. Wide-angle lenses do not have a shallower DOF than long lenses. It's all but equal.
2. Large apertures/open irises/whatev. create a shallow DOF.
3. Large apertures don't change contrast, so much as they create proper exposure of the film. If the alternative is "underexposed", well, then, yeah, proper exposure increases contrast. (Actually, re-reading the article, this cinematographer has push-processed this film stock to increase contrast on other projects; this means under-exposing it, then over-developing. This would mean using a smaller aperture/iris and over-development to increase contrast. On 30 Rock, he says that he adds contrast in post-production, if needed.)
4. There's a contradiction in your argument. In one paragraph, you say that wide angle lenses create a shallow DOF and that a large iris does the same; in the next paragraph you say that wide-angle lenses create a deeper DOF and the large iris counteracts that. (Neither claim about the length of the lens is true, at least in any significant way; but you contradict yourself.)

And nutella on toast has it backwards. The distortion is greatest at the edges and corners of the frame; minimal in the center. But correct that the distortion varies in different parts of the frame -- or, more precisely, in different parts of the "coverage" of the lens. (Now I'm getting really geeky, so I'll stop.)

Matt

[SEK]

Matt:

1. That contradiction belongs to the cinematographer: I'm paraphrasing him right before the quotation, in part because I didn't think he was correct.

2. Please don't stop. This is exactly the sort of technical information I was looking for!

Everyone else:

More on the show-within-a-show theme later, but one quick question: to your knowledge, do any of those shows also include network executives as main characters?

[Treb]

Okay, actually, now that I've re-read the article again, the cinematographer doesn't actually talk about the focal lengths the uses AT ALL. (By focal length, I mean terms like wide-angle, short lens, long lens, telephoto.)

The specific claim that precedes the quoted material is that he uses a small aperture to create a shallow DOF because the backdrops outside the windows need to be out of focus. A side benefit of this -- in my reading of the article -- is that it gives a "documentary" feel. The shooting resembles, in some ways, available-light documentary films. (High-speed stock, large apertures, and a camera that is physically part of the same space as the subjects.)

Now, the choice of short lenses might be part of the documentary aesthetic, or it might be a product of the same practical concerns that led to its use in documentary filmmaking -- shooting in small spaces. Or both. But nothing in the article touches on the focal length questions.

In any case, you are correct that short lenses might make somebody's head look bigger.

[Ahistoricality]

do any of those shows also include network executives as main characters?

Singin' in the Rain did.

[jordan]

The Wikipedia article on Wide-angle lenses has an image comparing different focal lengths. It's actually pretty shocking how strong the effects are.

(We are still talking about focal length, right?)