Emmy-nominated Mark Doering-Powell, ASC on grown-ish, challenges of single camera comedies, lighting setup tips, the early days of HD video

When Mark Doering-Powell, ASC was hired as the DP of Freeform's
grown-ish after season one, he knew the show had to expand the
storylines of each character's college experience. He was excited
to take more of an anthology approach to some of the episodes, and
get creative shooting each chapter with multiple looks. A single
camera half-hour comedy such as grown-ish takes about four days to
shoot, creating an extremely tight schedule between prepping and
shooting. Mark thinks it's imperative to be in touch with post and
the dailies colorist at the end of each day, so everyone can stay
on top of the workload. On a rapid schedule it can be challenging
to make the show look cinematic, but finding each character's point
of view helps consolidate the work and keeps each shot economical.
Mark favors using “swingles” on grown-ish, where the camera swings
back and forth between characters on single shots, saving setup
times. With a focus on each college-age character's personal life
and position on social issues as they navigate their early 20's,
the lighting on grown-ish is intended to make the cast look their
best, and sometimes Mark employs classic Hollywood portrait
lighting techniques using crisp, controllable hard light. Mark also
likes to splash hard light onto the set, letting it naturally
bounce off of something that is already in the room. He's learned
to focus on lighting the people and then the space- lighting the
space can aid lighting the people. Mark went to art school in New
York, studying painting and graphic design until he found the film
department and changed his major to film. He then worked as a
Photo-sonics technician, which is a special high speed camera for
shooting slow motion, on several commercials in the 1980's and
90's. But Mark wanted to focus more on filmmaking, so he quit,
moved out to L.A. and started working for Roger Corman's studio in
Venice, including camera assisting on Corman's famously unreleased
1994 version of The Fantastic Four. A documentary about the
production called Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The
Fantastic Four was made in 2015.  Find Mark Doering-Powell:
www.markdoeringpowell.com Instagram: @instamdp You can watch
grown-ish Season 4 on Freeform:
https://www.freeform.com/shows/grown-ish Find out even more about
this episode, with extensive show notes and links:
http://camnoir.com/ep137/ Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras:
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