60-Second Q&A
Patrick Lynn, Coordinating Producer, Fox's American Idol
The recently wrapped fourth season of American Idol, including its popular road auditions and live studio shows, was entirely shot and broadcast in the 720p HD format with Panasonic AJ-HDC27A VariCam cameras. For the road shows, a traveling team of technicians from Fox and rental house Burns & Sawyer tagged along, which was more crew than they normally use.
Q: Why did you decide to go HD, and how has it changed production for American Idol?
A: It was a Fox Network decision to go HD. Although Fox had done some football games previously, American Idol was one of the first primetime shows on Fox to go all HD and 5.1 sound.
In our experience, HD production is not cheap. Thorough planning is key. We had to get different cameras, tape stock, monitors, editing systems, and graphics systems. It was a total overhaul of our technical equipment, which was not a small endeavor. We shot everything from the judges auditioning on the road to the live studio shows with the Panasonic VariCams and they performed exceptionally well.
We edit the same way we did before, on an Avid Media Composer for the offline and an Avid Nitris system for online. All of these processes are similar but different for HD. Things like rendering times for HD graphics are increased dramatically. We also have to watch a 4:3 and 16:9 monitor simultaneously all the time during production to make sure our framing and other production values will translate for both the HD and NTSC audience.
There’s a whole host of new things that you now have to take into consideration in the HD world, but, in the end, when you see that beautiful image on screen, you realize that it is worth it. HD really makes the show stand out like it never has before. Going HD has had a very positive effect on the show. Many people have told us American Idol is the best looking show on in HDTV right now. I have to agree with them.
Categories: Business, Creativity, Shooting, Technology
