highdef magazine

by Bob Fisher

John Inwood came onboard to shoot the first season of Scrubs after Dick Quinlan, ASC, filmed the pilot episode in 2001. Situation comedies were traditionally produced with four video cameras on sound stages in front of live audiences. Scrubs was produced with a single Super 16 film camera, mainly on sets built in a defunct Los Angeles hospital that was damaged in an 1994 earthquake. About 10 percent of each episode was filmed at practical locations.

The Touchstone Television series aired on NBC Television in standard definition format. Inwood used his own Aaton XTR prod camera and Canon zoom lenses. He composed images in 4:3 format, while protecting for 16:9 aspect ratio so episodes could be aired in HD format when the market evolved.

The series revolves around seven main characters in an urban hospital. Zack Braff portrays a naïve intern-turned-doctor who is surrounded by an ensemble cast of regular characters and weekly role players. Threads of comedy, drama and fantasy are weaved into the fabric of each episode.

Inwood established a cinema-like visual grammar on the television comedy series by using light, darkness, contrast and colors to punctuate the sense of place and time while amplifying emotional tones of stories. “There is comedy in drama and drama in comedy,” he says.

Inwood has subsequently shot approximately 150 episodes of Scrubs and he has directed seven others. He earned an Emmy nomination for My Princess, the last episode of the 2008 season and NBC network finale, which was also directed by Braff. About half of that episode unfolds at the hospital in contemporary times. The other half happens in a fantasy world with different characters in medieval times. Inwood took a non-traditional painterly approach to creating nuanced looks for the different worlds. His basic tools were the same Aaton camera and Canon zoom lenses that he has used from the beginning. He varied his choice of media, while creating more contrasty lighting and manipulating images in postproduction. “I usually light for a natural look, but I felt that this episode called for extremely contrasty lighting,” he says. “I shot the fantasy elements with color reversal film (KODAK EKTACHROME 100D 7285) using a warm filter on the camera lens and a stocking behind it to soften the look a bit. We punch up the colors in telecine.”

Contemporary scenes, as well as the majority of the series, were filmed on KODAK VISION2 250D 7205, 50D 7201, and 200T 7217 color negative films. Inwood and telecine colorist Larry Fields at Level 3 in Burbank, California, collaborated to desaturate colors in telecine. “It’s a nuanced difference that we wanted the audience to sense more on a subconscious level than having it jump off the screen,” Inwood says.

Inwood has worked with Fields from the beginning. They have developed a shorthand for communicating. Inwood chalks notes on gray scale charts filmed before each scene and longer written messages describing his intentions in addition to verbal communications. He also watches timed programs and provides input for Fields whenever possible.

Inwood is currently shooting the ninth season of Scrubs. It is airing in HD format on the ABC Television network. Fields is timing the episodes on a Spirit DataCine. “When we started producing this series some people were claiming that the picture quality that you render on film in Super 16 format wasn’t sufficient to air in HD format,” Inwood recalls. “Larry Fields and I tested the show in HD and found it not only held up, but it looked terrific. Many believed it had been shot on 35 mm. I believe that older episodes will continue to air long into the future on HD television.”