It’s great to be returning to Offspring.  The 1st season seems to have done really well and has found a dedicated a loyal audience.

We ended up using a lot of material that was shot using the 5D’s in the last few episodes.

Looking back on the first series, it really sticks out to me now when we’ve used the 5D’s. We initially planned to only use them when we were shooting car interiors or other tricky and small locations but by the end, we’d end up using them as a third camera and intercutting them with the two RED’s.

And to me it showed looking back.

They are great to use those and get me shots I could never get with a RED.

So this time round I was keen to get the same sort of small camera shooting capability but without the technical baggage that the 5D brings. We had to do a lot of work to get the 5D material to pass the tech checks and it can potentially cause issues with the overseas sales of the show.

We’ve now gone with the Panasonic AF100 camera in it’s place. Although slightly bigger, they are designed to *be* a video camera, rather than a stills camera that shoots video. They have greatly reduced skew from the rolling shutter and with a grade, are a much better match for the RED’s.

The slightly larger size gave me a little cause for concern, so I ended up with a hacked Panasonic GH1 in case of need ing any really small camera work. So far we’ve only used it in a bag for a quick under-the-water shot in a bathtub.

I’m now 2 weeks into the show and the AF100’s whilst having a few little quirks seem pretty capable. We got some great car to car traveling stuff with them and I have ended up suing them as insert cameras in a few key scenes. We took an edit of one scene all the way through to a grade and the match was actually pretty damn good….certainly much better than the 5D’s.

We’ve also gone for some more distinctive lighting in the main hospital set, principally for when we go to *night mode* and in the birthing suite. I’ll be sure to post some shots as soon as I’m able.