On the day of the shoot for the Syndicate vignette, and how all the pieces came together to create this final origin story.

The shoot for Syndicate was a long and busy Saturday, tucked in the basement lounge of the Rendezvous bar in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. Crew call was our standard 9:00am arrival, with Jana setting up her makeup station while Eric, Justin, and Jason loaded in the light gear. The shooting area was divided into two halves, with the script moving from one to the other and then back again. Our first setup would be the “middle act” in the far room, so all our gear was staged in the near room and we set to work making the space our own. Fortunately there wasn’t too much we needed to alter to create the scene we wanted—we put out a table, pushed some chairs to the side, and took some signs off the wall; but overall, the look we were going for was already there.

To avoid a huge rush of costume and makeup demands at the same time, the cast call was staggered and as our talent arrived and got ready, we began shooting some of the closeups and two-person shots. By 11:30am the whole group was there, and we did our wide shots and group conversation. Wide shots can be tricky in a place like that, not because of the distance of the walls (we have wide lenses to take care of that), but because with low ceilings all of the lighting gear and electric becomes visible. It’s possible to crop the photos to remove the lights, or digitally remove the stands and gear, but as I’ve lamented many times in the past, just having the light visible on camera really screws up the HDR tonemapping process. But we shoot on location, and that’s just part of the price we pay.

Assembling the cast for Syndicate was a real pleasure, because we knew that this would be one of our last opportunities to bring in actors we wanted to work with (or work with again). Reviving Drake and the goons from “Sisters” and Serling from “Devon” was a good start, along with some new leaders and goons who will be appearing in Episode Six. So many of our vignettes and stories focus on messengers, for this piece I chose to include a messenger for framing but not focus the story from her perspective. And all of our origin story ideas about the 151st (the elite military squad) involve lots of firepower, explosions, and hordes of infected, so dropping one of them in a covert operation was a good way to give a little roundness to their group without breaking the bank.

The cast arrived in a slightly staggered order, just to keep the changing rooms and makeup chair from having too long of a queue. As more actors became available we started shooting what we could, based entirely in the farther room where the “middle” of the scene takes place. We did wide shots, and closeups, and awkward straight-up and straight-down shots, trying to highlight our numerous characters as thoroughly as possible. Just a touch behind schedule, we wrapped up that room and broke for lunch.

After food and relaxation, Eric and the team shifted the entire lighting operation to the main room, while Maggie and Elaine shifted the entire production/catering/greenroom operation to where we had just shot. Once setup in our other space, we first shot the beginning of the scene, then sent actors to makeup as they wrapped. By the time the beginning of the scene was done, our bloody cast was back and we were able to shoot the end of the scene, picking up where we left off from the other room.

With the full cast and crew working, “Syndicate” was our largest vignette shoot except for Arena, and the largest by number of named characters (“Sisters” had more named characters overall, but fewer on any one of its three shoot days). To compensate for the logistical complexity of so many people in such a small space, the story was trimmed to exclude (overhead-)expensive scratchers, and the gunfire/action was minimized. Emphasis was left on the characters and their interactions verbally, since the actual action of gunbattles and scratcher fights is something we’ve spent much of the year on already. Episode Six is full of that stuff.

The balance of action and dialogue, as well as of cast size and crew organization, kept us working at a good pace and we were packed and out right at the beginning of our wrap window, despite some delays earlier in the day. The cast was released, off to perform in a wide range of shows of their own that night, while I began work on the photos.

Eric did a great job with the lighting, and I paid attention to the lessons I learned (and detailed last week) about getting the most out of HDR in complexly-lit scenes, and what we ended up with is the beautiful and vibrant imagery it’s been my pleasure showing you for these last few weeks. I hope you’ve been enjoying them as well.

Starting next week, until the premiere of Episode Six in late March, our regular weekly updates will be in the form of “photo classics” from the entire span of our production history. This is a course of action chosen to ensure only the highest-quality product, both for our upcoming vignette collection and for the grand Episode Six, which I’ll explain further in the blog next week. I hope you enjoy.