Does anyone know which DV Camera the British Sitcom "Spaced" is filmed with?

[Luke Toyer]

I know that it is filmed on DV (At least this is what the www.imdb.com would lead us to believe!). I also know they use a 1-camera setup (Straight from the Director's mouth).

Anyone who HAS seen this show will know that it is packed full of movie references and has a very cinematic (if surreal) look for a Sitcom.

I was wondering what type of camera they used, as they have managed to pull off a LOT of unique camerawork rigging and lighting setups and focus-pulls that look GREAT (if not always film-like) with whatever camera they were using!!!

If anyone knows, please tell!!! I can't find anything else on the subject (which I find surprising!)

Cheers,

Luke

[Rob Lohman]

I did a Google search and couldn't find anything. Anyone know?

[Luke Toyer]

Since posting this question, I have actually contacted the production team themselves. They were kind enough to provide me with this detailed and informative reply:

"Spaced is filmed on a format called Digi-Beta. This is exactly what it says on the tin, Digital Betamax. It's a standard format for most single camera and multi camera (studio based) TV. The film affect comes later in what's called the 'online edit'. With Spaced, the offline edited footage is processed through an online editing system called Smoke 2 (we were the first show to use this). Smoke takes care of all the effects (Tim's tidy room, the fireworks at the beginning of S2E1 etc) as well as captions, colour grading and film effects. The digi-beta is compressed to give it a filmic quality and thus characterize the show's aesthetic. It's very odd to watch the show before it is compressed. It looks weird and cheap. "

I think that pretty much clears it all up!!

Cheers,

Luke

[Zac Stein]

Isn't smoke available for Mac and Pc?

Zac

[Jeff Donald]

I don't remember about the older versions, (I don't think Smoke ever ran on Mac or PC) but the recently announced Smoke 6 runs on SGI IRIX only, if in HD, and SD will run on IRIX and Linux. Discreet's site is here.

[Rob Lohman]

Saw some amazing demos from Discreet at last years IBC. Great
stuff with smoke, inferno and other applications.

The funny thing he mentions is that it looked cheap (especially
that) *before* they compressed (probably an S type levels
curve) and color corrected it. Gives me high hopes for DV!

So in the end it wasn't shot on DV at all... Digibeta has a larger
colo(u)r space than DV.

Thanks for the followup and investigation, Luke!