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Thursday, November 11, 2010

This Article Features Photo Zoom

With a limited budget, one of Bagdonas’ biggest challenges was to create sets on stage that looked authentic.

You might find something that hits home in ABC TV’s hit show, Modern Family, because the series, created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, is really about today’s modern family. This reality has brought the series at least 20 Emmy® nominations and six wins since its inception in 2009.

According to cinematographer James Bagdonas, ASC, Modern Family is popular because, even though the family is dysfunctional, in the end, they still love each other.

“One of the things that makes this series so popular is that this family admits they are dysfunctional, but in the end, even though they know each other’s shortcomings, they still love each other,” says cinematographer James Bagdonas, ASC (Boston Legal). “Going into the planning of this series, we knew we had a very limited budget. We were determined to keep short hours and to go through the setups quickly. While the pilot was shot on practical locations, we realized that wasn’t going to work with the restrictions we put on ourselves. So one of the first things we faced was creating sets on stage that we could make appear to be real.”

Actually, that turned out to be a lot easier than expected. There were two options to creating the sets: design them as if they were real locations and wild the walls or make the sets bigger and treat them like practical locations. The team chose the latter, allowing for faster movement within each room and the imperfections you get when you’re shooting a real kitchen/living room.

“Remember, this is a ‘documentary’ and if we were following these families in their home environments, we couldn’t always put a light where we wanted and our sources would often be sketchy,” explains Bagdonas. “That’s what we have here. We capture each family as if two cameramen were standing in the room watching these people go through their lives.

“We create each scene as one setup,” says Bagdonas. “We have two cameras almost opposing at 45º angles. Steven and Chris encourage our characters to put their own spin on the story, improvising dialogue and moving where the moment takes them. Characters walk in and out of the shot. The key light may be off a little, but that only lends to the reality we’re trying to portray. In fact, at times, we can hear a person saying something but not see them.”

That style of shooting takes a lot of getting used to. It scared the network at first. It’s certainly quite different for directors who are used to “traditional comedy” with coverage and overs. The crew performs three to four takes at the most and then they’re on to the next setup.

The show’s pilot was shot on the Panavision Genesis camera, and Bagdonas wanted to stay with that camera’s look. “Choosing cameras today is like choosing film stock,” he says. “You choose the look you want by the camera you use. I wanted a filmic look, and that meant a hybrid camera system where we could shoot digital, but use film-style accessories.”

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