Shalem is a veteran TV director who recently wrapped HD production of and is now editing the first few episodes of Love Spring International, a new Lifetime Television Network/Lions Gate series (with a cast led by Eric McCormack from NBC's Will & Grace). It's about an unconventional dating agency, and begins airing June 5.
He worked with director of photography Laura Merians, using four Canon XL H1 HDV camcorders. She shot in 1080i/24f mode, handheld, as well as on a jib or a Condor crane for overhead establishing shots.
An avid fan of HDV, Shalem found that the Hollywood television community is not familiar with the 25 Mbps format and was thus hesitant, at first, to use it for the series.
Some production executives at Lifetime were a bit cautious of the HDV format. Why?
They had never worked with it before and I think they felt uncomfortable. Laura [Merians] had a lot of convincing to do. But after they saw the footage, they were very impressed. We underwent a lot of testing to get the exact look we wanted, but I am very pleased with the result. The Canon XL H1 really provides a film-like look that's a lot softer and warmer than the other HDV cameras on the market.
To satisfy Lifetime's archiving needs, we cloned all of the footage to HDCAM cassettes. We then imported into an Avid Media Composer for editing, which is where we are now in the process. We'll deliver HDCAM to the network because it will not accept HDV as a final master.
We initially were going to use the Sony HVR-Z1U HDV camera, but we changed our minds after seeing that the