The UPS Truck in House
Nov 30th, 2009 by Alex
Instead of risking life and limb by venturing outside on Black Friday, I opted to re-watch the first season of House. A fantastic invention, television series on DVD.
There are multiple aerial shots of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital — which is actually Princeton’s student center — throughout the season, normally used during openings and transitions. Though taken from various angles, heights, distances, and time of day, it’s clear that they were all taken from a helicopter. Helicopter time isn’t cheap and low-flying permits can be tedious to obtain, so it’s likely all of the shots were taken over a few passes around the building. From a filming perspective, it makes sense that all of these shots, no make how they’re edited, have a UPS truck parked out in front of the building.
That UPS truck.
I understand that film is expensive and that lighting is an extremely variable thing; the wrong glare can ruin a shot, as can a shadow, and you hear all the time of people not wanting to shoot once the sun starts to fade. I can completely understand taking daylight shots and then turning them into nighttime using CG. Just darken the whole scene and add lights from various hospital windows and you’re done. It’s probably absurdly expensive and timely, but it works. What I don’t understand is, if you’re spending all that money to modify lighting conditions in motion video, why not remove the UPS truck from some of the shots?
I don’t get it.
