Menace in Motion in ABC’s The Night Stalker

Because of the subject matter- a reporter investigates mysterious, nocturnal crimes- it was essential for DP Clark Mathis to make the night come alive in ABC’s new series The Night Stalker.

Referencing two visually distinct features- Danny Boyle’s DV zombie-fest 28 Days Later and Michael Mann’s Collateral - the pilot achieved a look of its own, shot entirely in various forms of high-def, in part with Panavision’s Genesis camera. "It’s a testament to our intestinal fortitude that we had enough money to shoot on film but chose to shoot on video purely for the look of it," says Mathis. The DP, who also served as camera operator, pushed for a more observed quality and naturalistic lighting to enhance the menace and horror of the show. "I wanted it to feel as if it was really happening….It couldn’t be polished or presented. It had to feel immediate."

Mathis and team got permission to use the Genesis camera for a mere 48 hours, just before it was to be shipped to director Bryan Singer’s Superman set in Australia. Because of the two-day time frame, shooting locations for the production were limited (a night sequence at the Beacon newspaper offices and reporter Kolchak’s house exteriors and vistas). "It’s being touted for its ability to emulate the film dynamic range and the color gamut and all the things that video has been struggling to do, but what struck me was its amazing sensitivity to light," says Mathis. "That really allowed us to make the night come alive."

Panavision also loaned the production its T-Camera, which separates the optical block of an F950 HDCAM from the camera body and recorder. This had Mathis almost as excited as the Genesis: "You can put a lens on this optical block and you’re tethered by a coaxial cable, but you essentially have a high-def camera system the size of a home video camera in the palm of your hand." The size allowed for radical location work, including shooting inside Kolchak’s Mustang, where Mathis could sit in the front or back seat and fish the T-Camera around the headrest without any complicated mounts. "We had it with us all the time," he says, citing its strength in tight situations, overhead angles, and moving shots.

The workhorse camera was the F900, which captured about 60 percent of the pilot. Mathis used it in ENG mode more than in EFP, with a standard zoom lens, allowing him to move quickly from set-up to set-up.

Visually, Mathis found the Genesis chip, a true RGB imager with over 12 million pixels, nothing short of amazing. "It not only has that gargantuan leap of resolution but the tonal and dynamic range of film. It acquires a raw image, as opposed to the F900 or the F950, where we programmed a little bit of gamma into it. With the Genesis, they encourage you not to manipulate the image. You record a raw, flatter, slightly off-color image, knowing that later in post you manipulate it."

The show’s natural-light aesthetic, coupled with the operating approach, allowed Mathis to pick up speed on set. They needed it: the main unit averaged between 45 and 50 set-ups a day. "Our souls were left on the battlefield," he says. "We had probably twice as many cuts as any other pilot I’ve shot." Mathis’s background in news- as a shooter judging exposure through a black-and-white-eyepiece- also helped. What’s more, the crew did not use a digital imaging technician. "We didn’t have a traditional village or a set-up where I obsessed over waveform monitors because I was in the eyepiece all the time," says Mathis, who set zebras on the viewfinder to determine if he was losing information at the top end, and would pull his head away from the finder to judge the lighting. "We really embraced that it wasn’t going to be pristine, compressed, contrast-ratio stuff. It was pretty scary the first few days of shooting, but it did lend a distinctive style to it."

While Mathis describes the Genesis shoot as rather uneventful, he did have some issues with the camera, including size (it’s less handheld-friendly than standard HD or film cameras) and power. "Its power needs are voracious," says Mathis. "It’s sold as a standalone because the deck is on board, but there’s still a lot of power that has to run to it. So you feel a little more nailed down than you normally would."

There were a few hiccups, especially when special software for the SRW-1 deck the production used was late in arriving from Japan. "The Genesis can acquire at all the frame rates it’s touted to, but the deck itself needs to record at different rates," explains Mathis. "I would have liked to slow down the frame rate so that I could shoot at lower light levels or, conversely, with less gain, sort of like a time-lapse."

Mathis, who helped negotiate using the Genesis for the rest of the season, chuckles when asked about the road ahead. Sandi Sissel (The Wonder Years) has signed on to shoot and will be using the Genesis almost exclusively. "I’ve had the guilty pleasure of doing pilots for the last four to five years and saying,‘Tag, you’re it’ to some amazing DPs who have had to reproduce weekly what we had more time to do in a pilot," says Mathis. He speculates the series will have to have fewer pages, or a lot of second-unit, as it gets a grip on HD. "We should just brace ourselves for the fact that we’re going to have to start learning this at an exponential rate."