Capturing TLC's Little People, Big World with JVC 720p camcorders is harder than it looks

Shooting TLC’s hit documentary series Little People, Big World-mostly handheld, for more than 12 hours a day-is no small feat. Director of Photography Tom Curran heads up a crew of four, two teams working in 12-hour shifts, who follow the inspiring Roloff family of six everywhere; from their home on a 34-acre farm in Portland, OR, to vacations around the globe, with two JVC GY-HD250 and two GY-HD200 cameras (720p in 24fps mode), Lite Panels LED lights and Fujinon lenses. The show is produced by Gay Rosenthal Productions and edited in Hollywood. Several compact Canon HV20 camcorders (1080i) are also used for POV shots and time-lapse segments.
In and around the family home (which has been outfitted with special lights), the crew shoots both to tape and Focus Enhancements FireStore hard drives. GRP edits the voluminous amount of footage for each episode (sometimes up to 16 to 20 hours of shooting per day) on several Avid Media Composers. For the show’s fourth season, the crew will shoot 40 half-hour shows over the course of 10 or 11 months (averaging five days a week).



Q: Apparently the small size and low weight (12 to 13 pounds with battery) were deciding factors in your choosing the JVC cameras. Explain.
A: The weight was particularly important for us because we’re capturing the lives of a family of little people. We spend a lot of time shooting on our knees and on stools to present their point of view. To have lightweight cameras that we can carry all day and not feel wiped out is critical.

Q: From a technical/practical perspective, what’s the biggest challenge of shooting handheld with an HD camera?
A: The first big consideration is the lens you choose. We have tried to maintain a sense that the camera is another family member. So we’re not standing back off to the side, we’re sitting right next to them in the living room or at the kitchen table, as if the camera were a brother or sister in the family. That is how we get an intimate account of how the family makes it through the day.

That being said, it’s important to have a strong piece of glass and a wide-angle lens. We’re using Fujinon 3.5 x 46 wide-angle lenses because they’re very clean looking with no distortion and balanced very well with the camera body. This makes it easier to get and hold unique angles. We also use two telephoto lenses for outdoors and family sporting events. But we use the wide-angle most often.

Also, our desire to shoot in the 24p mode was a big reason why we chose the JVC cameras. We had made a commitment for the first two seasons of Little People, Big World to shoot in SD at 24 fps because it gives the show a more cinematic feel. We think shooting this way helps give the show a sense of believability. I know we’re very pleased with the look of JVC’s ProHD 24p image capture. I think these HDV cameras look their best in the 24p mode. It provides a resolution and movement that’s familiar and feels a bit more timeless instead of immediate. Remember, this is not a live television show.

Q: During production you record to tape and hard drive simultaneously. What’s the workflow like?
A: We have a quality-control loader on location at all times who scans the tapes and dumps the data off the FireStore drives and into a computer and onto a portable drive. [This process was instituted in season three; previously they used only tape.] These drives are used as backup until all of the tapes are sent to L.A. The problem with recording to tape alone is that we were getting dropouts and other anomalies. We’re not getting that with the hard drives and they serve as an excellent backup for security. We still deliver on videotape, however, so we send TLC an HDCAM SR master [1080i].

Q: Why not shift production to digital data only?
A: Because of our existing post-production workflow and because we archive our footage on tape, it still make sense for us to work in a tape environment.

Q: Does converting footage from HD videotape to SD resolution for editing hurt image quality?
A: It does not affect quality at all because we only edit offline in SD. Once a show is locked, we edit online with the HDV field tapes and the resulting HD program master is what gets aired.

Q: What’s the biggest misconception about HD production?
A: The biggest misconception is that the image quality of HD is so much better than SD, and that it’s not going to be a difficult transition to move between the two. I’ve shot a lot of shows in HD, but for this show what I realized is that we need to pay close attention to the maintenance of the cameras and lenses because the resolution is so high that any problems such as soft focus and tape hits become magnified. SD is a much more forgiving format. So for this show, for example, we have a strict protocol for how we warm up the cameras each day, how we set back-focus, and how often the tape decks are cleaned. It all makes a real difference on the viewer’s screen at home. Good-looking images do not come easy.