CBS’s long-running reality hit Big Brother has always been a warts-and-all kind of TV show. But starting this month, you’ll be able to see contestants’ blemishes, their well-sculpted bodies, and Julie Chen’s body glitter more clearly than ever: Vulture has learned that Big Brother, the only regularly scheduled primetime program still shown in standard definition, will finally convert to HDTV when it debuts its 16th season on June 25. While 99.9 percent of primetime shows made the leap to high definition years ago, Big Brother has remained a bit fuzzier, its old-school production style increasingly noticeable as viewers’ eyeballs adjusted to the new standard of HD seen all over the dial. Big Brother didn’t stay SD out of nostalgia or some Luddite-like opposition to newfangled tech, however. “We’ve all wanted to go digital,” executive producer Allison Grodner told us. So why the delay? It’s complicated — literally.
Unlike most scripted and even most studio-based reality shows, Big Brother doesn’t just record its cast with a few stationary cameras, edit it over the course of a few days, and then send it along to viewers. The show locks a group of strangers into a specially constructed house built on the CBS Radford Studio lot near Hollywood, films them around the clock, and then turns it all into three one-hour shows, airing each week in near-real time. In order to capture all that backstabbing and Game of Thrones–worthy maneuvering, the Big Brother house is packed with dozens of cameras — fixed and robotic, inside and outside — which collectively record thousands of hours of footage each week. Doing all of this with traditional SD cameras has always been a massive undertaking; transitioning the process from analog to digital required an equally monumental (and costly) effort. “It’s not just about swapping out cameras,” explains Rich Meehan, who exec-produces Brother alongside Grodner. “Everything had to be changed ... and we couldn’t do anything that would jeopardize production of the series.”
While the biggest change viewers will see will obviously be that images from the Big Brother house (and Chen’s studio set) will now be in crisp high-definition, the new setup will be felt in other ways. “We’ve added 11 new cameras in the house for better coverage,” Meehan says, including some outside and in certain inside rooms and corridors. “We’ve also lowered some of the cameras so viewers are in the action more.” And because HDTV uses a different aspect ratio — 16:9 — the show’s camera operators now have many more angles and shots to play with than they did before. “You can now see from the kitchen area to the bedroom in one shot,” Meehan says. “It changes the whole look of the house.” Grodner says she’s looking forward to testing out what she calls her new “high-performance machine,” and that even the show’s production designers are making tweaks to the set because of HD: “We’re mindful of color and texture more,” she says. “We’re making sure there are layers and dimension to the house.” And folks who subscribe to the 24/7 live feed of the show will also benefit. “It’ll be a noticeable improvement for the internet viewers,” Crivelli says.
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BIG BROTHER, hosted by Julie Chen, will debut early for the second straight summer, beginning Wednesday, June 25 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) with the first of its three weekly broadcasts. The Thursday edition, featuring the live eviction show, premieres June 26 (9:00-10:00 PM) with the first eviction the following week (July 3). The Sunday broadcast premieres June 29 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT).
Unlike most scripted and even most studio-based reality shows, Big Brother doesn’t just record its cast with a few stationary cameras, edit it over the course of a few days, and then send it along to viewers. The show locks a group of strangers into a specially constructed house built on the CBS Radford Studio lot near Hollywood, films them around the clock, and then turns it all into three one-hour shows, airing each week in near-real time. In order to capture all that backstabbing and Game of Thrones–worthy maneuvering, the Big Brother house is packed with dozens of cameras — fixed and robotic, inside and outside — which collectively record thousands of hours of footage each week. Doing all of this with traditional SD cameras has always been a massive undertaking; transitioning the process from analog to digital required an equally monumental (and costly) effort. “It’s not just about swapping out cameras,” explains Rich Meehan, who exec-produces Brother alongside Grodner. “Everything had to be changed ... and we couldn’t do anything that would jeopardize production of the series.”
While the biggest change viewers will see will obviously be that images from the Big Brother house (and Chen’s studio set) will now be in crisp high-definition, the new setup will be felt in other ways. “We’ve added 11 new cameras in the house for better coverage,” Meehan says, including some outside and in certain inside rooms and corridors. “We’ve also lowered some of the cameras so viewers are in the action more.” And because HDTV uses a different aspect ratio — 16:9 — the show’s camera operators now have many more angles and shots to play with than they did before. “You can now see from the kitchen area to the bedroom in one shot,” Meehan says. “It changes the whole look of the house.” Grodner says she’s looking forward to testing out what she calls her new “high-performance machine,” and that even the show’s production designers are making tweaks to the set because of HD: “We’re mindful of color and texture more,” she says. “We’re making sure there are layers and dimension to the house.” And folks who subscribe to the 24/7 live feed of the show will also benefit. “It’ll be a noticeable improvement for the internet viewers,” Crivelli says.
more at:
vulture.com
BIG BROTHER, hosted by Julie Chen, will debut early for the second straight summer, beginning Wednesday, June 25 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) with the first of its three weekly broadcasts. The Thursday edition, featuring the live eviction show, premieres June 26 (9:00-10:00 PM) with the first eviction the following week (July 3). The Sunday broadcast premieres June 29 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT).
