I had the great opportunity to lens the new TLC show, 'Answered Prayers' with Director Erik Weigel. Erik, recently transplanted from NY to LA, brought a fresh new perspective to TLC. Roma Downey hosts this series featuring stories of real people who have gone through incredible and tragic experiences..
Watch the promo here on TLC.com
As you can see, it is a docu-style reality show. Erik and I were given the task to re-create these angelic moments in people's lives, car crashes, drowning, horrific accidents; within a limited budget. We had to recreate, no, re-think how to shoot these stories. And it was a journey.
I suggested we shoot with Canon C300 & old school Zeiss super speeds. I felt this would give us the depth and color space of a modern day camera with the forgiving Zeiss super speeds. Camera A was small and efficient, similar to the 435 setup. We were able to move fast and get great images with very little support. Eric Maclver at Division Camera set us up right so that we could beat the three sides of that production triangle. When warranted, we kept everything moving with a CinePed Slider (best slider out there in my opinion) and a Steadicam. No time for dolly track.
We had a good amount of water work, cars being flipped, children drowning. For this I suggested 4K, which for a show like this is a hard sell for the cinematographer. My pitch was basic, we have a limited amount of time at the pool, limited divers, limited art; we needed to acquire as much as we could as fast as we could. If we get in the water with a RED wearing a Zeiss 18mm, we could get a lot fast. And we did.
And yes, it snowed at IllusionLuka.
Thanks to our team at United Artist Media Group, Wendy Hinton and Tom Shelly, in particular, for supporting our vision. Thanks as well to Charles Schner for executing 2nd Unit with the same vision.