Staging a Oner with Texas Switches: WYNONNA EARP
Doing it practically, for love and money and demon-hunters
Season premieres are often a balancing act: answering cliffhangers and catching regular viewers up to where the characters are emotionally; setting up the main storyline(s) for the season; introducing new and curious viewers to the world and characters; and, often, throwing in a big setpiece or fight scene or gnarly prosthetic or dramatic verbal argument, pending your genre.
Wynonna Earp Season 4 goes for dynamic, constantly-moving staging with this early scene, regular director Paolo Barzman crafting a showy sequence which carries through a ‘flashback’ and then comes current again, but set up and stitched so it all feels like a oner.
Take a look then we’ll break it down . . . but first! something to keep in mind.
If you watch closely, you may spot two or three places where multiple shots could potentially be ‘stitched’ together. However, according to this ‘Making Of’ featurette, the scene is done practically, entirely in one take, which makes the Texas switches even more imperative!
1. Set It Up, Get Inside
As Wynonna’s truck peals up to the farmhouse, the door is thrown open — smash cutting to the kitchen door opening from the opposite direction.
In fact everything is opposite: outside / inside, door swinging L-R / door swinging R-L, cool blue / warm yellow.
Once this smash cut happens, we’re into the oner.
2. Sweep Us Into the Motion
Now we’re abruptly inside, the camera follows Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) and Sheriff Nedley (Greg Lawson) looking for a first aid kit.
It sets up a couple different two-shots in different configurations as they move around, and after a few moments of usual Wynonna-driven chaos, transitions entirely from the kitchen to the hallway.
Note the rack focus (photos 3 and 4, above) keeps us in the same setup, but moves between Wynonna and Nedley as each speak; in combination with the handheld camera, it keeps the scene feeling a bit frenetic even when both characters and camera are ‘standing still.’
(We know the camera has a limited range of movement because of what is currently happening in the kitchen, which will be revealed in about 50 seconds.)
Now the real fun begins . . .
3. Live Transition and Lighting Switch
There are a lot of moving parts here:
0:00-0:10 Nedley says he’ll check the bathroom, motivating his motion (and a joke from Wynonna), which motivates the camera to follow him, drifting by the word VALDEZ scratched into it, which he asks about.
Three key things have been established: the back door, the kitchen layout and table, the stairwall VALDEZ.
0:11-0:22 Nedley leaves the scene, and Wynonna moves across towards the stairs, again motivating the camera to follow.
0:23-0:34 Wynonna looks down, motivating not only the camera to look down, but a lighting change from yellow back to blue, plus a stark spotlight on what she’s looking at: VALDEZ.
Here’s the more notable, real-time Texas Switch, as Jeremy (Varun Saranga) is now in the Earp house, carving the word VALDEZ into the stairs.
The darkness signifies a time-of-day change, as well as a time jump . . . but it also helps cover up for all the crew and gear hiding in corners, including Melanie Scrofano making her hasty exit on her side of the Texas Switch.
0:35-0:45 Now Jeremy stands and moves into the kitchen, where not only has the lighting changed, new props have been laid out and we see Officer Haught (Katherine Barrell) and Sheriff Nedley (well, a body double of him).
Knowing the shot is a oner makes this entire kitchen set a Texas Switch as well!
Spin Out, Enter Regular cuts
The scene comes back with a camera spin + soft focus + practical light change, and the camera pans over to where Melanie Scrofano has run back to stand in place.
Then the camera moves with Wynonna to the stairwell . . . at which point we get our very first cut since entering the house.
The following conversation between Wynonna and Nedly is a typical shot-reverse-shot coverage, and we are into Season 4 with a bang!
as we’ve already broken down, Wynonna Earp is a show which knows about establishing and transitioning scenes!
Takeaways
So, considering the stress of the actors landing in place and getting their timing right along with the complicated dance of the camera and lighting, why might you do this ‘for real’ !?
1. For looks.
Though CGI can do a lot, it is not magic! For Wynonna Earp, it’s not even [necessarily] a case of whether or not the end product will look slightly surreal — this is a show which deals in demons and often leans into the 90s special effect aesthetic. However, even if you have an on-set VFX supervisor, it can be a lot more difficult to determine on set whether you have actually nailed the exact movements you needed for post-production to work.
2. For money.
That VFX supe, as well as the CGI itself, can cost money. A lot of money.
Though we know audio elements were changed in post (Jeremy mentions in the Making Of video he blew the very last word of his take, and you can tell if you look closely they ADR’d “tickle” over “tazer”) it’s likely certain visual elements were touched up in post, eg. ‘we need more lazer dots on his shirt.
Those costs happens all the time, even on shots not this complex, and it’s a drop in the bucket to what seamlessly putting all this together and touching up those elements could cost.
3. For love.
Not the reason which is going to convince your producer to allow it, but if you can also make a shot like this work for your schedule, it’s got better looks, AND it’s cheaper, then you can have an absolute blast plotting and executing it.
What a rush!