The new NBC hit My Name Is Earl is not your usual TV
comedy. First off, the title character (Jason Lee) is a slow-witted
petty thief who wins the lottery, is hit by a car, and then decides to
atone for every crime he’s ever committed. Then there’s the look of the
show – by turns dark, brooding and downright cinematic. "We went for a
really naturalistic look," says Marc Buckland, executive producer and
director of the pilot and first two shows (he previously directed shows
for The West Wing and Scrubs).
"We didn’t want it to look like your typical comedy with very flat
lighting, so our approach is always to make it more contrasty, a little
grittier and more of a film look."
To achieve this, Buckland and DP Eyal Gordin (who previously shot two
seasons of The Division for Lifetime) cut back on
lighting. "We’re not afraid to let scenes fall into darkness," adds
Buckland. "We don’t feel it needs to be overly bright to be funny."
Shot on 35mm, the show uses three Panaflex Platinum camera packages,
"one being a lightweight body we use for Steadicam work," reports
Gordin. "I’m shooting everything on 500-speed Kodak 5279, and 5274
which is for all the daylight stuff. It’s 200-speed and slower, with a
finer grain, and those stocks are giving us exactly the look we want."
For lenses the DP is using two Panavision Primo zooms- a 4:1 and an
11:1. "I’ve found that the Primo lenses are absolutely superior to any
other lenses, and they’re also great for the ease and speed of the
production," he reports. "When we have a zoom, we don’t have to go back
and forth and switch lenses, so it’s very convenient."
Earl preps for five days, shoots for five days, and
the first cut is completed five days later. "Then we dub and deliver
within five more days, so it’s probably a month turnaround once we get
the script," says Buckland.
Earl is color-corrected at Encore Video and edited
on site at the Van Nuys studio. "We use two editors on rotation, Billy
Marrinson and Lance Lucky, with Avids and a digitizing station," says
Buckland. "They’re 30-minute shows, but we have at least 50 scenes in
each episode, so there’s a huge amount of quick scenes and quick pops
and a very quick turnaround for the editors, so post is very busy.
They’re also very full of music and needle-drops, and we do the whole
final show mix at RH Factor in Hollywood."
Gordin is "very involved" in post. "I oversee all the final timing,
from the first frame to last one, and work very closely with the guys
at Encore," he adds.
At press time, Earl was shooting its eighth episode.
"It’s a different sort of comedy with a very different look," says
Buckland, "and people seem to love it."