The versatile DP Ethan Phillips has had wide-ranging experience with the VariCam. Recently, Phillips, an ICG Digital Imaging Techician (DIT), served in that capacity on the critically-acclaimed Fox series Arrested Development, the first network, primetime series to use the VariCam® HD Cinema Camera for an entire season. Last year, working with director/writer/producer Zalman King (9 ½ Weeks, Wild Orchid), he was the DP on Barely Brooke, a behind-the-scenes documentary for E! Entertainment Television about the making of Brooke Burke’s swimsuit calendar. Phillips also used the VariCam to shoot commercial spots for ad agency Crispin Porter Bogusky (Los Angeles, CA) for client Dolce & Gabbana Eyewear/Selima Optique, as well as a spot for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). This veteran has spent some 20 years in the motion picture industry, mainly as a gaffer and DP.

Question: How did your interest in HD acquisition evolve? Phillips: My experience started with the VariCam because of the up-to-60fps capture and the fact that rental vendors had the camera at attractive prices. I visited with one of Panasonic’s camera specialists in Burbank, and was convinced the camera would work for me. I have shot with other HD cameras, and I like the VariCam for its ease of operation and excellent picture quality. I prefer the VariCam for its ability to perform in the widest range of conditions and exposure challenges. Other cameras may have higher resolution or are 4:4:4 but the VariCam, in my opinion, performs best under demanding, fast-paced acquisition. The VariCam has also proved itself in a studio, and I think looks as good as its competitors. Question: Tell us about your work on Arrested Development. Phillips: Two VariCams were on the set, as well as an AG-DVX100 for shooting flashbacks and other “blip” shots with a distinguishing look. The series’ producer Victor Hsu has said that co-executive producer Ron Howard wanted this to be a single-camera show more like the way sitcoms used to be, from his years on Happy Days. Howard liked the notion of giving the cast a day to rehearse and rewrite, and then shooting really fast, in a single day, improvising as they went along, changing things, getting as much of that on tape as possible. Instead of spending time on detailed lighting, jelling windows, deliberations over focus, etc., we decided to go for a lightning-fast pace on the shoot, all handheld. It’s not documentary-style per se, but it maintains the spirit and style of that approach. As the DIT, I supported Director of Photography James Hawkinson. Essentially, my role was camera matching and advancing the DP’s ideas to the colorist and post staff. I was using the paint box on every scene and was manipulating the menus on every shot for at least twelve hours a day, for two months, with the same cameras on a hand-held show. I was surprised at how well they held up--I never lost any settings. The ease of menu operation was instrumental in getting fast settings for the directors and DP. Question: You’ve shoot several commercials with VariCam. Can you elaborate. Phillips: The Dolce & Gabbana 30-second spots aired in primetime (MTV and VH1) in Los Angeles and New York last year. The commercials were directed by Michael Carp of Lunarfish Film & Visual Effects (Los Angeles, CA). We did both indoor and outdoor shooting. In the first spot, a man returns to his hotel room and encounters a beautiful Italian maid -- until he removes his sunglasses. In the second, a woman in a red Mustang is pulled over by a handsome, accommodating police officer -- until the glasses come off. The color was superior to anything I’d ever seen from an electronic camera -- absolutely amazing. You get high color saturation and color contrast, e.g., bright blue and red in a frame. I lit for that. In general, I prefer to control light in every part of the frame. With the VariCam, I tended to light a little flatter, less dramatically. The transfer guys like it flatter, so that they can crush the blacks and deal with the different colors. That’s the main difference I found in shooting HD -- I needed to be conscious of every aspect of the frame. Writing and reading (SD Memory) set-up cards is very easy with the VariCam, and it’s simple to change frame rates and master settings, and to get information in the viewfinder. It seems as if the Panasonic engineers were trying to make menu items easier to digest. I just finished a spot for WWE, currently running, called No Way Out. We shot on the Universal back lot at night--a music video with some of the wrestlers. The producers and clients were very happy with the results. Question: What about the location work in Belize for Barely Brooke? Phillips: That was my first time out with the VariCam. I’d worked with HD in the past, and suggested to Zalman that we test the Panasonic camera--I was eager to use it. The image quality excited us. Zalman likes to let the camera roll, especially on a candid shoot, and we concluded that we’d be able to shoot a lot of footage with the VariCam, which was certainly borne out. My initial assessment of the camera was that it was more user-friendly and rugged than other HD cameras. The latter was a particular concern as I knew I’d be in a remote location, shooting in high heat and humidity, and standing in salt water often. I was pretty impressed. Even with blazing sun, 100% humidity and all that salt water spray, the camera didn’t hiccough once. It’s very hearty. I got my first set-up from Birns & Sawyer, whose staff was terrifically helpful. I customized some set-ups to create generalized profiles, day interiors, night interiors and so on. I also tweaked the ECU paint box, adjusting iris, pedestal, gamma and master control. I worked with that in my hand in front of a color HD monitor and got really good results. Question: Talk about the VariCam’s dynamic range and color rendition. Phillips: With a VariCam and paint box, you can explore a multitude of looks. I can blow out your widows or bring them in. I can make a very warm or very cool look--or anywhere in between. I can crush your blacks so they look like oil, or I can make you see sixteen shades of grey in them. I can hold the sky or not. I can saturate or unsaturate. I can be your colorist on the fly, scene by scene. Question: How about VariCam’s variable frame functionality? Phillips: Initially, this was the camera’s big selling point. Off-speed shot with the VariCam is much better than typical video slow motion effects. The camera is often used for this capability.Question: What about shooting HD is different from film. Phillips: I have said this often about film vs. HD—I don’t think it’s useful to make comparisons. They are different formats, and so nothing is really the same. The photo-chemical process is completely different from video acquisition, and if you try to persuade some of the big film DPs that HD is like film, you are not going to succeed. More and more projects are going to be shot using these cameras, but they have to be suited for video and every department will have different things to do to make it look good vs. film. There are some pretty major players using HD to shoot big features this year, and they will succeed only if they gear everything for the electronic format. Latitude and color, production design and lighting are going to be important and quite different from shooting film. Using a Digital Imaging Tech who knows lighting is a great plus in getting good images.Question: What would you say to colleagues about the VariCam?Phillips: The Varicam is very hardy and versatile. Learn the camera down to the matrix level yourself, and you will be surprised what HD can do. Or hire yourself a really good DIT. Ethan Phillips’ complete filmography is on-line at www.imdb.com/name/nm0680393