Inside No 9 filming techniques

I'm a big fan of the show Inside No 9, but I'm not really here to discuss that just now!

In this episode of the show, on the other night, the story was told in the style of a 'director's commentary' - with the character discussing things such as continuity errors, multi-camera filming and the like.



What particularly interested me was the style of filming. I noted with intrigue that it was showed as 4:3, with dodgy sets and titles. Also - I watched a low-resolution version, so I had to check afterwards - it was apparently filmed on original PAL cameras of the time and in the multi-camera style.

I got this information from WIki - does anyone have any more details?

I thought it was worth a mention, so I would encourage you to take a look! Great series in any case.

Interesting to see something modern filmed in that style, even if it is a pastiche of 70s tv drama in a single episode of an anthology series.

Said it before but I'd love to see more of this sort of show in 50i format, albeit with more modern production techniques, not just as a homage to the past. An anthology show's certainly the perfect thing for trying different techniques on different episodes too.

Have a look at producer Adam Tandy's Twitter feed, he has responded to lots of questions regarding the technical side: https://twitter.com/adamtandy/with_replies

It was a great episode and spot on with its filming techniques, though I think they turned up the colour a bit! They were Ikegami 323's supplied by Golden Age TV, who are the masters of this sort of period production.

http://www.golden-agetv.co.uk/news.php



There's also a discussion about it on the "Memories of BBC Television Centre" facebook group

Interesting that the attention to detail there even went to recording the output onto 1 inch tape (though if it was meant to be 70s it should really have been quad!). No stone unturned for authenticity.

In fact it seems greater attention to detail than Look Around You, which still looked very clean and I imagine had still been recorded digitally on modern cameras.

That's the one area where I always felt the otherwise brilliant Look Around You missed a trick - by not using cameras from the time.

I often wondered what a 70s/80s parody would look like if they'd used cameras of that era, and this episode of Inside No 9 absolutely nailed it! I particularly loved the scarring effect on the lens (I'm sure that's not the technical term, and that someone can explain it better) caused by bright wall lights on the set when the camera panned. It's exactly what happened on Fawlty Towers and similar shows with low budget production values from that era.

Don't they call them "comet tails"? An effect of bright lights on tubed cameras. Went away when CCDs replaced tubed cameras.

I actually spotted it recently watching an episode of Incredible Games from 1994 (though more subtle than stuff from the 70s and 80s). I think that show was made at Elstree and I seem to remember reading they still used tubed cameras into the mid-90s.

I think it was the same effect that you saw on any candles that appeared on screen such as this:
http://www.tvforum.co.uk/mediatech/double-exposure-effect-candles-lights-41947/

I did see the Inside No 9 special and while I was convinced it was deliberately set up to look like something out of the 1970s, I hadn't realised they had gone to all the effort of actually using old-school cameras and techniques to do it rather than adding the effect into post-production.

There was an article on Broadcast that explained the process. Hopefully this link works:

Ooh, camera two was acquired from Granada I see.

Yes, comet tailing, and flare were just unavoidable effects you'd get with bright lights on tube cameras. Camera
flash lamps were the worst, the image of those could remain for minutes afterwards, and any sustained exposure
to a bright lamp or similar could and would damage the tube, and it would require replacement. You could
attempt to remove less serve burn ins, by leaving the camera zoomed in and defocused on a bright uniform light box for several hours (normally 24), but that would often reduce slightly the overall sensitivity of the tube(s)

CCDs coming along in the mid to late 80s changed all that, though early versions suffered from a bright vertical line on highlights

http://aty.sdsu.edu/pictures/artifacts/12801SSGF.jpg

Reading Broadcast article, it was taped at ATV Elstree. That's quite delicious - not quite as fitting at TVC, but excellent none the elss.