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The series is color-corrected at Modern VideoFilm, where colorist Shaley Brooks uses a da Vinci 2K Plus. Peterson says Brooks is a full partner in achieving the look of the show. He adds, “I’ve also got the best camera, grip and electric crew there is. [A-camera/Steadicam operator] Rory Knepp is a Steadicam god who is also wonderful on the A camera.” — Jean Oppenheimer
Bones Set in Washington, D.C., and loosely based on the experiences of forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, the Fox series Bones follows Temperance “Bones” Brennan, M.D. (Emily Deschanel), and her forensics team at the fictitious Jeffersonian Institute as they help FBI Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) solve mysteries. As with other procedural crime dramas, every episode of Bones presents a new mystery and further develops a season-long story arc, but it’s the romantic tension between Bones and Booth that makes up a large part of the show’s character. Bones made its debut in 2005, and for its first season, the producers employed multiple cinematographers, notably Cort Fey; Michael D. O’Shea, ASC; and Dennis Hall. For season two, producer Steve Beers and producer/director Tony Wharmby asked Gordon Lonsdale to be the sole director of photography for all 21 episodes. At the time, Lonsdale’s episodic-TV experience included Northern Exposure, Space: Above and Beyond and The Magnificent Seven. When he came aboard Bones, Lonsdale’s first order of business was to establish a set of parameters for shooting and lighting the show that was specific but also flexible. “I like to think of the show as a romantic comedy with some thriller elements thrown in,” he says. “Not every show is the same; depending on the tone of the scene at hand, sometimes shadows are black, and sometimes they aren’t.” Lonsdale hired gaffer Erik Messerschmidt, who was recommended by A-camera operator Greg Collier, and together they drafted a lighting manifesto that details how the show should be lit and shot under almost any circumstance. This was deemed necessary because Bones has insert units and second units shooting full days every week, and Lonsdale tends to rotate his camera crews. Also, if Lonsdale has to step away to scout a location, someone else has to step up and shoot first unit. “We didn’t want to have to worry about whether people were doing things the way Gordon wanted them to be done,” says Messerschmidt. “We needed to make sure everyone was clear about what was okay and what wasn’t. This wasn’t just for Gordon, but for the good of the show in general — we have to get it done on time within the parameters the producers set.” Messerschmidt describes the show’s look as “crisp, but also gritty. Gordon embraces the directors’ visions and encourages them to make their episode their own. The look of the show is such that it can be adjusted to the way a director stages a scene or chooses to do coverage.” One of the ways Lonsdale maintains such flexibility is by using Kodak’s Vision2 5299 HD Color Scan film stock. Touted as a specialty stock for TV productions, 5299 allows the cinematographer to match the look of several different Kodak emulsions, all on the
same roll of film. The first season of Bones was shot on 3-perf Vision 500T 5279, but Lonsdale preferred its Vision2 descendant, 5218. “Unfortunately, Fox doesn’t allow the use of 5218 because Kodak charges more for it,” he explains. “So I told my Kodak rep, Candace Chatman, that I needed a high-speed stock that wasn’t 5279. She recommended 5299, which shoots 320 ASA to 2,000 ASA.” Before production would commit to a new film stock, Lonsdale had to conduct a battery of tests. He recalls, “Rating at 1,000 ASA, I shots tests where I overexposed and underexposed the film, 4 full stops in each direction. I transferred it straight without correction, and then I transferred it to see how it would respond to correcting it back to normal after being shot at such extremes. I did the same test, pushing it 1 stop to 2,000 ASA. Bones is the first show where I’ve put my meter at 2,000 ASA, and the footage looks great.” After grading the results, Lonsdale found 5299 similar enough to 5218. “The difficulty with 5299 is that you really have to set your parameters. If you were to do a film print directly from the negative, there would be no contrast in the film at all — it would be very flat.” Being able to take advantage of a variable-speed film stock makes all the difference on the set, which could be outdoors during the day or night, or indoors on one of the numerous Bones sets built within Stage 6 at Fox. A key set is the epicenter of the Jeffersonian, where polished-steel trusses, glowing floor panels and flashing computer readouts mesh with Gothic stone architecture. This set includes the forensics platform, the “bone room,” autopsy rooms, a conference room and various offices. When Lonsdale came aboard the show, he decided to keep a lot of the lighting put in place for the first season. Most alterations were relegated to the architectural lighting — much of which is visibly integrated into the set — for the express purpose of taking the overall light level down to accommodate shooting on 5299. (Look closely, and you might catch a glimpse of the grid of silver rock ’n’ roll Par cans rigged to the truss over the forensics platform.) Lonsdale prefers to shoot the action onstage between a T2 and a T5.6, rating the 5299 at 1,000 ASA. On the forensics platform, the action is lit primarily from overhead by the aforementioned Par cans and, for fill, bounce off a large day blue stretched above the room’s skylights; this allows for easy “walk-and-talks” and fast turnaround times on the set. The smaller sets make use of a combination of fluorescent lighting, window sources and frugal accents, with the exception of the bone room, which is almost entirely fluorescent-lit. Much of the secondary lighting comprises Kino Flos and Litepanels LED lights for kicklights in the eyes, with the occasional 1'-square Litepanel as a compact key source. “I usually key the principal actors with a 4-by-4 Kino Flo through 129 diffusion for a nice, broad, soft light,” notes Lonsdale. “If we were shooting on 5218, we’d be forced to light to a T2 or T2.8, and that would make the focus puller’s job that much harder,” observes Messerschmidt. “At 1,000 ASA, we can shoot at a T4 or a T 2.8/4 split. It speeds things up and also adds to the look of the show; we can shoot at a slightly deeper stop without having to bring in bigger lights.” On location, shooting with Zeiss Ultra Primes permits Lonsdale certain freedoms that few TV productions with tight budgets and short schedules enjoy. For an interior night scene in a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, Lonsdale found he could get away with using little more than a small table lamp to light a master shot of Booth and his ex (Tamara Taylor). Shooting at 2,000 ASA with the lens at a T2, the crew augmented the actors’ close-ups with Litepanels, while the environment outside the restaurant window required only a couple of Par cans to achieve proper exposure.
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