As most might know the finale of “House” season six was shot on the Canon 5DMarkII. Philip Bloom (DP, Director and DSLR Expert) interviewed Greg Yaitanes, director of the episode, about working on a show this popular with the 5D.

You really should follow both of them on Twitter: Philip Bloom, Greg Yaitanes.

You can find the interview here: In depth interview with Greg Yaitanes, Executive Producer and Director of “House” Season Finale shot on Canon 5DmkII.

Since it’s an hour long i thought i’d sum up the – in my opinion – most interesting parts of the interview. I don’t claim that this summary contains every detail of the interview, but i think i captured the essence.

Update: Philip posted a complete transcript of the interview here: Greg Yaitanes “House” Interview transcription

I especially like to hear the hands on experience from a director’s point of view, so here we go:

Why did they use the 5D on House?

House originally is shot on an ARRI system. Greg and his team constantly discuss on what would the best way to shoot the show on a weekly basis is.

The decision to shoot on the 5D was that it was the exact tool they needed to accomplish the story. It wasn’t like “let’s gain momentum in a technical area by shooting the finale on a buzzed format”.

There are some technical challenges, but they where outweighed by the way it helped them to tell this particular story. The show deserves the best at all times, you don’t use a format just to struggle with it.

Every system has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, so every filmmaker and storyteller should use the proper tool to tell the particular story – for this episode it was the 5D.

The Benefits of the 5D

The 5D provides a great look and because of it’s large sensor and incredible depth of field.

The Size

It is immensely useful for confined spaces. On the episode they shot with three cameras very often in dense sets, and the camera provided a flexibility like when shooting in film school, almost an “El Mariachi” style shooting.

Greg wasn’t going for a shaky hand-camera style, so most of the time the 5Ds where on monopods to organically exist in the space. A couple of times it was on the dolly, but mostly on the monopod.

About 60% of the sets where tight settings, the size of the camera was a big benefit.

The Work with Actors

On the first day on set it looked like a bunch of paparazzi’s looking at the actors.

A shooting environment with 5Ds was great for the actors because of the flexibility and freedom the camera provides. It’s not anymore like “either you or the camera”, but both.

It is great to keep the actors “in the moment” and not to have huge breaks to change the camera position.

The Work on Set

For the finale the team used three different 5Ds:

The A camera with an external monitor, off of that monitor the focus puller spread the image to different other monitors. The B camera had the same setup but the monitor was next to the operator. The C camera was operated by a single D.O.P. (Ninja Chris) and he shot different pick ups within the scene.

It was very important to Greg to have an artist behind the lens, not a technician.

Usually the D.O.P. looks through the viewfinder of the camera, shutting the whole environment out. After a day Toni (the D.O.P.) got used to looking at the LCD panel and actually embraced it – he was around the whole environment and was part of the story and whats happening.

The Post Production

A big benefit is that even when you use three cameras with slightly different settings it’s no problem to correct and match them in post production and color grading. It’s also great to just save the cards on a hard drive and immediately start editing.

All the stages of the finale where within 100 yards of the production, so they didn’t have to send anything away.

The Transition from Film to the 5D

The hardest transition was for the focus pullers, they went through a complete season and everything changed in the finale. But nobody was rolling their eyes. They all participated in the change, got involved and loved the ease of work.

During episode 19 (which was also directed by Greg) they let the 5D shoot besides the film camera to see how it would behalf. They’ve been very happy with the tests and the set looked really great on the 5D. They intercut the film footage to see how the both integrate with each other – and it did well.

In the beginning it wasn’t clear that they would shoot the entire episode on the 5D, but during pre-production they wanted to shoot this scene with the 5D, and that one, and this one too. And since they knew that the hospital looks great with the camera the idea evolved to shoot the entire episode with the 5D.

The Network

So have there been any problems or doubts by the network that you could’t broadcast 5D material?

The network approved the workflow since they already knew the outcome from the 5D tests on the former episodes – so no complain from their side. It passed every standard of the show and the previous camera tests showed that it would definitely work out.

Drawbacks of the 5D

There are like 30 things in mind that are great, and a few things that can drive you crazy:

HD Monitoring

It’s not possible to pull a HD feed off the camera while you’re rolling. It would be great to look at the image in HD, also the focus puller would have loved to pull the focus off of HD monitors. Greg and the D.O.P. chose the 5D over the 1D (which would support HD output) because of the larger sensor and therefore the shallower depth of field.

Pulling the Focus

The space between 0 and infinity is just a couple of inches. It’s hard to coordinate when actors AND the camera are moving, it’s very tricky to pull the focus there, it’s almost easier if the D.O.P. pulls the focus by himself.

An actor NEVER wants the feeling that he just gave a great performance but the camera missed it because of focus problems.

The episode was shot with wide open apertures – how did the focus pullers not get a nervous break down?
They are incredible good focus pullers and they understood and where anticipating the camera and actor movement.

Also there have not been any big sweepings and crane movements.

Bottom Line

You don’t want to create a film aesthetic but you want to create your own style.

It doesn’t come down to camera specs, when you tell a story that the audience has an emotional reaction to – that trumps everything.