How is "All My Children" shot? (1 Viewer)

[Ric Easton]

So I've been home this week doing a bunch of painting, crown molding and other kinds of fun and I happen to pass by the TV which I left on from the noon news and I caught the first 5 minutes of "All My Children". Does anyone know how they shoot this? It had a much different look than what I remember soaps looking like.

The show had a much more "film look" about it. It didn't look like the brightly lit videotaped shows that I remember. They were also making use of hand held cameras. What kind of process is used? I assume they are still using videotape because film would be very expensive. Is this the norm for soap these days or does AMC shoot things differently? Just curious.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

They switched a couple months ago to the new 'style' and I believe HD. You should have seen it when they first did the switch. It was 'half and half' and looked incredibly funny. Guess there was a lot of experimenting going on trying to figure out what they wanted to do. Not all their ideas were good ones.

 

[Ric Easton]

I checked on our HD-set and it was not in widescreen. Still, I appreciated the "new look". Too bad I gave up on soaps in the mid 80's. Yeah, I was there for Luke and Laura and the weather machine on GH!

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

We don't have HD at the office so was never able to check. I just figured since, like you mentioned, it looks a lot more 'filmlike'. They definitely had to of changed cameras at least.

It's usually just on in the background, haven't followed the story much.

Edit: Looks like they just changed their video process to give it that 'film' look. And to add to the style, they got some steadicams.