Marco Fargnoli uses OConnor 1030D on the set of The Mindy Project
OConnor Makes Life and Love in the Big City Look Easy for Fargnoli on The Mindy Project
Burbank, California, July 29, 2013 — By today’s standards young Mindy Laheri (played by show creator Mindy Kaling) has a great career. She may be a successful OBGyn, but realizes that the intensity of her years of medical education put her behind socially. So, she made a pact with herself to catch up on life. Often hilarious, The Mindy Project brings her misadventures in romance and her comical observations on life and love in the big city to television. Cinematographer Marco Fargnoli relies on OConnor 2575’s for support on the Fox Network program.
“We shoot with two Alexa cameras on the OConnor heads, using a Panavision 19-90 and 11-1 zoom lens,” he says. “Alexa is simply the best all-around camera on the market. Adding the Panavision zooms, especially the 11-1, helps us achieve the tone and feel of the classic 80’s-90’s era romantic comedies that we pay homage to in the show.
“The Mindy Project is at its heart a feature romantic-comedy squeezed into a half-hour single-camera show,” he explains. “The biggest challenge each week is how to shoot an ambitious 22-minute feature style film on a five-day schedule. The writers love to throw lots of large set pieces into the mix (dance clubs, big parties, prison riots, underground rap battles, triathlons). Another challenge is style. The current trend in comedy has been a kind of hand-held casual, but we’ve got a dolly-based classical beauty look to pull off – with the added challenge of cross-covering most set-ups to successfully capture the often improvised comedy dialogue.”
Fargnoli, a big fan of OConnor equipment, says that the 2575’s have been invaluable to the production. “Our show relies on fast and efficient camera set-ups,” he says. “Lots of planks and dance floor, cameras on zooms and Microforces on rock & roll handles. The ergonomics and beautiful fluidity of the 2575 allows us to quickly get all our coverage, re-sizing on the fly, adapting to the adlibs, and still look like a rock-solid classic movie.
“A fun blocking ‘motif’ of the show appears frequently in scenes that finds Mindy laying ‘tragically’ posed on the floor after an emotional experience,” he explains. “This translates into quite a few scenes looking straight down on her. The strength and dependability of the OConnor’s counterbalance and thoughtful placement of controls means our operators can easily dial in the sweet spot.
“Without a second thought, we can tilt full over to look straight down with our hefty 11-1 zooms and be ready almost immediately,” he adds. “We’ve mounted it at 90 degrees for overhead shots, and even upside down for a quick solve when we needed an ultra-low-angle setup. Every time, I’ve relied on its solid engineering to get the shot and I’ve never been disappointed.”
Fargnoli says he’s been using OConnor for his entire shooting career from no-budget indies to short films, cable comedies, and now network shows. He came through the ranks of assisting and operating, and has worked with OConnor for over 20 years in the most extreme conditions from freezing cold to dust storms and blasting sun to water spray. That’s why OConnor was his first choice for this series.
“They are dependable and durable. The 2575 would handle anything we could ask of it, and we’ve never once had an issue,” he says. “The design and manufacturing standards of the OConnor gear has made them the industry leader for a reason. Camera bodies get returned, lenses get swapped out, lights replaced. But our 2575’s keep marching on. The ergonomics are well conceived and thought out – and that translates to speed on the set. And, their performance is always smooth and graceful, even with bulky/heavy camera and lens configurations.”
For further information on OConnor products, visit www.ocon.com, email [email protected], become a fan on Facebook, follow the company on Twitter; or contact OConnor, 2701 N. Ontario St, Burbank, CA 91504, Phone: 818-847-8666, Fax: 818-847-1205. (Confirming, we now should use Shelton Connecticut address)
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About OConnor
OConnor has been the choice of professional cinematographers since the invention of the fluid head 60 years ago by founder Chad O’Connor. OConnor’s award-winning fluid heads are known for their smooth feel, fluid movement and intuitive control. Designed for film-style shooting, each facilitates seamless transition when changing payloads and offers stepless, ultra-smooth pan & tilt fluid drag for maximum control. In addition to fluid heads and tripods, OConnor offers a growing line of camera and lens accessories engineered to fill the needs of today’s fast-paced camera work. The line includes the CFF-1 and new O-Focus DM follow focus systems for cine and still photo lenses, the award-winning O-Box WM mattebox, innovative O-Grip handgrip system and the Universal Baseplate. OConnor products are respected and trusted by individual users and rental houses worldwide for their reliability, longevity and toughness.
Along with other leading brands in the broadcast industry, OConnor is part of the Vitec Videocom, a Vitec Group company. For more information on OConnor, visit www.ocon.com
About Vitec Videocom
Vitec Videocom brings together some of the most respected, most innovative and most sought-after brands in the industry. It acts as an endorsing brand for these market-leading broadcast, film and pro video products, encouraging multi-brand system sales and simplifying the way that customers worldwide do business.
Vitec Videocom is an operating division within the Vitec Group, an international business serving customers in the broadcast, photographic and military aerospace and government markets. Vitec is based on strong, well known, premium brands on which its customers rely on worldwide.
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