DV magazine — March 2013
The Art of the Mini-Movie: ‘Kroll Show’ Sketches Are Each Shot as Short Features

Known for his role as Ruxin in the FX comedy series The League, along with stand-up specials and roles on Community, Childrens Hospital, Parks and Recreation and Portlandia, Nick Kroll returned to Comedy Central in January as the creator/writer/star of the newly minted Kroll Show. A fresh take on sketch comedy, Kroll Show is executive produced and written by Kroll, John Levenstein (Arrested Development) and Portlandia’s Jonathan Krisel, who also directs the series. In an increasingly common distribution model, episodes from Kroll Show are available the day after broadcast on iTunes, Xbox and other digital platforms, even as Kroll mocks his online viewers as “completely useless.” Kroll’s characters also take on digital lives, as shown by the Pinterest account maintained by the Liz & Liz “PubLIZity” team (played by Kroll and Saturday Night Live alum Jenny Slate).

Series DP Christian Sprenger, known for his parodies of Levis ads as well as his work on Adult Swim series Eagleheart, matches an enormous appreciation for sketch comedy with the skills needed to reverse-engineer looks for shows that span reality, feature, commercial, music video and television series formats.

“From a DP’s perspective, the amazing thing about this show is the 30-40 separate looks we had to develop,” Sprenger says. “We built this insane spreadsheet with the look reference for each sketch, breaking down lighting, color profiles, lenses, all of it. As you can imagine, that led to an unbelievable amount of equipment.” (Read full story…)