"Big Style on A Small Screen"
'Television is emulating the look and feel of feature films with increasing success.'

by Douglas Bankston

[Excerpt]

More executive producers attuned to visual stylizations are taking the reins of TV series and injecting dramatic lighting into the story lines. Producers Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz ("My So-Called Life," "Once and Again") have been championing the cinematic style in television for many years, long before the trend caught on.

"That began when we did 'thirtysomething,'" Zwick explains. "Marshall and I had both been filmmakers and have made films before we went in to television. We really wanted to insist on a film style in terms of very directional lighting - very naturalistic, very sourcey - often softer bounce light rather than hard, high key. I've seen that now become a part of the fabric of a lot of television shows."

Applying that feature film look to a dramatic series in 1987, when many programs were being photographed using the bright sitcom style, created all sorts of resistance for "thirtysomething." "People at the studio level and the network level were very concerned about whether it was too dark or (whether you) could you see the eyes all the time," says Zwick, "all those traditional concerns that you would imagine. We just ignored them." The following year, the series earned an Emmy for Outstanding Series.

Michael O'Shea, the director of photography who just recently finished shooting Martin Lawrence comedy feature "Big Momma's House," worked with producers Zwick and Herskovitz on the series "Relativity" before collaborating again on the pilot episode of the dysfunctional family series "Once and Again."

"Marshall's feeling about it was that he didn't want this pilot to depict beauty all the time," O'Shea details. "He really wanted to take the dramatic license to let the light fall where it falls. The light doesn't dictate the story. The actors and the script dictate the story, but the lighting must be as natural as possible. What I mean by that is, as a cinematographer, you light a backlight to separate a person from a wall, to make a woman's hair glow a little more. That's not what he wanted. He wanted to see the dysfunction in these people's faces. If we would have taken a full, bright lighting approach to it, you wouldn't have felt tension between the light and the dark that's needed to dramatize the dysfunctional family."

[Several non-O&A paragraphs later...]

"I'll take chances, and I've blown things," adds O'Shea. "But the beautiful part of it is when you work with people like Zwick and Herskovitz, they want you to take those chances. I want to be bold. I want to feel nervous - am I pushing this to the edge?"

"We really want to challenge them as much as we challenge ourselves as writers or as directors," says Zwick.

[End O&A/H&Z portions]__Hollywood Reporter (June 5, 2000)