Company Town : New Camera Cuts Costs for Sitcoms, but Some Aren’t Laughing

“I Love Lucy.” “The Honeymooners.” “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Five-time Emmy award-winning cinematographer George Spiro Dibie had always thought situation comedies, combining live theater with the art of filmmaking, were one of Hollywood’s great entertainment gifts to the world.

But lately Dibie isn’t so sure.

A new cost-cutting device called the pedestal camera--a film camera mounted on a video camera pedestal instead of on a dolly--may help revolutionize the way sitcoms are shot. But it could also eliminate hundreds of jobs and threaten sitcoms’ production quality, Dibie says.

“There used to be some regard for artistry and production values on these programs,” says Dibie, president of the International Photographers Guild, which includes the industry’s directors of photography and camera crew members. “Instead, it’s becoming like a factory that cranks out widgets, cheaply and quickly, on an assembly line.”

Traditionally, three technicians have been required to run a film camera: an operator to frame the shot, an assistant to focus and a grip to move the camera into position as the action unfolds. But with the new pedestal camera, all three tasks are performed by a single operator in videotape production style--a development Dibie and some others see as diminishing picture quality.

“Back when video cameras first came in, some of the film operators crossing over to use them said the reduced mobility of the pedestals made it harder to follow the movement of actors working live,” says Jim Buck, business agent for the Motion Picture Studio Grips Union Local 80. “They felt the quality suffered as a result.”

However, the creative decision makers now using the pedestal camera system disagree.

*

“Myself, Barnet Kellman and other members of our creative team have all been nominated for Emmys and won Emmys,” says Frank Pace, producer of “Something Wilder,” the first Warner Bros. series to try out the “ped” camera. “With the way the television business is going, you can no longer separate creative from economic concerns, but there is no way we would compromise the quality of our program.”

Although only three prime-time series have switched to the ped camera, budget-conscious eyes are watching and waiting.

“With both Warner Bros. and Shukovsky English Entertainment now using the system, we’ve been getting a lot of calls,” says David A. Dodson, director of marketing television for Panavision, the company that developed the ped camera. Foreseeing the future, in fact, Dodson says Panavision was initially reluctant to get involved out of loyalty to the camera crews.

“But we figured if the producers wanted it, someone would build it anyway.” Panavision went to the photographers guild, which reluctantly supported the camera only because it didn’t want jobs to move outside the union, Dodson says.

“They may have talked to the camera guild, but nobody asked us,” says the grips union’s Buck. Up to 20% of the union’s 1,300 members would be affected by an industrywide move to the ped camera.

But producers using the new system say it protects jobs.

“The half-hour comedy is not only competing with other comedies for its network time slot, but with more profitable formats such as newsmagazine shows, reality shows, game shows and documentaries,” says Joel Shukovsky, chief executive of Shukovsky English Entertainment, whose company uses ped cameras on two series.

“A free-lance cameraman in the back of a police car with a hand-held video camera and a soundman is a two-person crew,” Shukovsky said, referring to the personnel used frequently on reality-based shows. “But on a sound stage you’ll see a hundred people for that same half hour of programming, so you have to examine expenditures in all areas.”

At the heart of this financial crunch is network TV’s “deficit financing” system, whereby the license fee it pays does not fully cover the production costs of a program.

Because the viewing market is now segmented by cable’s many alternatives, network TV’s diminished advertising revenues have helped keep licensing fees flat, while production costs have risen steadily in recent years. So the production entity’s goal is to diminish the deficit.

A film sitcom in its first season costs between $650,000 and $800,000 per episode to produce. A switch to the ped camera can net a savings of roughly up to $200,000 for a 22-episode broadcast year.

Another cost-cutting alternative to the ped system is to use videotape instead of film for a savings of roughly $50,000 per episode. But with high-definition television around the corner, many consider film to be the best medium to adapt to multiple formats. So its advocates see the ped as their economic ticket to the future.

The camera guild’s Dibie calls such arguments a “cop-out.”

“The classic half-hour comedies had one executive producer, one producer and a couple of writers, but now we need five executive producers, nine producers and 15 writers to produce the same 23 minutes of television,” he says. “If we’re going to cut expenses, let’s do it fairly--across the board--so people don’t lose their homes or their health and pension benefits.”

The contemporary ped camera system originated on a low-budget syndicated series at Universal, “Harry and the Hendersons.” In 1990, John Ward, that show’s producer, first brought the idea to Panavision, where a special plate was designed to bolt the Panaflex camera to a traditional video stand. But there was just one problem: With existing technology, the critical focus required for shooting film was nearly impossible to achieve with the single-operator system.

In videotape production, an electronic image of what is being recorded appears on a small monitor that the camera operator uses to focus. But a film camera viewfinder--composed of glass elements--is not electronic. For a single technician to focus the 35mm film camera with a video pedestal’s hand controls, an accurate image of the picture must be available for reference.

The solution was to insert a small video camera--or “video tap”--into the viewing mechanism of a film camera to produce an image. But until this year, no existing video tap could produce a resolution high enough to guarantee critical focus. Los Angeles-based Cinema Products Corp. solved the problem with a fiber-optic video tap system.

So, based on its experience with “Something Wilder,” is Warner Bros. ready to convert its nine network sitcoms to the new ped camera system?

“While it works on ‘Something Wilder,’ we’re not ready to make it our standard production methodology,” says Andrew A. Ackerman, senior vice president of production for Warner Bros. Television.

But he predicts that the economics of the ped camera system may help to keep production work in Hollywood.

*

Inside Hollywood

* For more Company Town coverage and insightful analysis of the entertainment industry, sign on to the TimesLink on-line service and “jump” to keyword “Inside Hollywood.”

Details on Times electronic services, A4