Digital Video magazine — February 2012
Local Produce: DSLR Production for IFC’s ‘Portlandia’

IFC’s hit original comedy series Portlandia brings viewers a romanticized and dreamy rendering of Portland, Ore., while gently satirizing the earnest Pacific Northwest community. Fred Armisen, who is on Saturday Night Live, and Carrie Brownstein, guitarist and vocalist in the band Wild Flag, are the creators and stars of Portlandia, a strange and beautiful sketch comedy show shot entirely on location in Portland, where Brownstein makes her home.

In its first season, the series brought Portland to popular culture with catch phrases such as “Portland is where young people go to retire,” “Put a bird on it” and “the dream of the ’90s is alive in Portland.”  To support the second season, which premiered January 6, Portlandia has embarked on a six-city tour to bring the series to life for fans across the country. The tour, which began December 27 and runs through the end of January, features Armisen and Brownstein as they perform live music, present clips from the show’s second season, and share personal anecdotes about the creation of the series and the inspiration behind some of its most beloved and notable characters.

Portlandia co-creator, co-writer and director Jonathan Krisel (SNL; Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!) knew that the show needed an indie look to match the quirky earnestness of the character sketches. “I had used the Canon 5D before, so I knew its limitations, but I also knew how beautiful it could look,” said Krisel, who says he was influenced by the work of Gus Van Sant and his beautiful portrayals of Portland.

“The first time I used the Canon 5D was for a parody of the SNL opening credits,” Krisel said. “I had been reading about low-light tests in Prague on the internet, and said, ‘Guys, we have to try this.’ I shot it myself and couldn’t believe the result. Then I ended up working at SNL and they re-shot the show open using the 7D. We had parodied it with the 5D and then they ended up using it. That camera is amazing.”

Krisel acknowledges the limitations of using a DSLR, but insists that the quality makes up for it. “The camera can get a little shaky sometimes, so you have to use optical stabilization with slower lenses,” he explained. “We opted to use the 5D instead of the 7D because we knew we’d get a lot of shallow depth of field that way, and not because the F-stop was super low but because the chip was bigger. So we’d use stabilized lenses, which I liked because the chip would give you the lower depth of field as opposed to opening it up to a two.” (Read full story…)