Immoral Compass - Emmy Nominated!
Today, Bill Burr was nominated for Outstanding Actor in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series for his performance in the dark comedy series, Immoral Compass! Directed by Tyler Falbo, the show features a diverse cast of characters who explore life's most challenging dilemmas. Burr's character, Rick, serves as the glue that ties the series together, providing comedic commentary while also revealing the theme for each episode.
Working on Immoral Compass was a fantastic experience for me. It was probably the largest and most exciting project I've had the opportunity to work on to date. I had the pleasure of working with my fellow UCF alumni friends, including Tyler Falbo (director), Mike Collins (Gaffer), Olivia Wilson (1st AC), Hayden Greiwe (Steadicam operator), and Dane Gerwig (Grip).
As the cinematographer on Immoral Compass, it was my responsibility tell the story and execute Tyler’s vision through the use of lighting, camera angels, and composition. We had 14 days to shoot 20 short films, which amounted to about 70 pages of scripted material. While not an impossible task on its own, the addition of COVID protocols and a few other unique challenges pushed our schedule and budget to the limit.
The diverse nature of the anthology format meant that each story would require its own unique look. This kept our lighting and grip crews on their toes, since every seven hours we were having to rewrite our visual playbook. It also meant that we had to work with a new set of cast members for each story, which added an additional layer of complexity to the shoot.
The production of Immoral Compass presented us with another unique challenge - the need to shoot for two aspect ratios simultaneously. Originally produced for the platform Quibi (though later sold to Roku), the show had to be delivered in both 16x9 horizontal and 9x16 vertical formats, with a heavy emphasis on the latter. Since Quibi projected that most viewers would watch the show vertically, Tyler and I were determined not to compromise on the vertical deliverable. As a result, we had to find new ways to achieve the two-format delivery without relying on the traditional center crop method.
We researched a variety of cameras and ultimately chose the Sony Venice due to its 6K 3x2 sensor. This allowed us to deliver a 4K center crop for both the horizontal and vertical versions. To achieve this, we used wider lenses than we typically would, which gave us the flexibility to crop both the horizontal and vertical frames. This means that viewers won't lose any screenspace when watching the vertical version, as is typical with the center-cut method. Instead, screenspace is simply reallocated in the vertical direction, providing a unique viewing experience.
The additional headroom in the vertical frame posed an unexpected challenge for us during the shoot. It made it harder for us to conceal boom poles and backlights. To address this issue, we had to come up with creative solutions for rigging and hiding lights on set. For instance, we used a menace arm to position a light right on the edge of the frame in some cases, while in other cases we had to forego backlighting altogether.
You can check out the two versions of the trailer below to see how the different aspect ratios compare:
Immoral Compass - Vertical
Immoral Compass - Horizontal
Overall, working on Immoral Compass was an incredibly rewarding project. It was a pleasure getting to work with such an amazing cast and crew, and we are proud of the final product we were able to deliver. We hope that viewers enjoy the show as much as we enjoyed making it and hopefully we’ll be lucky enough to do it all again for season two!