CSI: Miami

Producer's Blog

11/17/09

Character-Driven Action
By: Robert H.

CSI: Miami is not strictly an action show, though there are moments of intense action: a gunfight, a foot chase, a house explosion. But there’s never a moment of action that doesn’t serve primarily to help tell the greater story, never a moment of violence that doesn’t tie directly to the pain, loss, or desperation of real characters.

So it was with last night’s episode, “Point of Impact,” the story of a family torn apart by a deadly automobile accident. Just before the tragedy occurs, we meet the typical family: a mother concerned with her daughter’s questionable driving skills, a daughter who wants to show her mother her independence, and a brother easily taunting his sister. Then all comes to a crunching halt as their Escalade collides with a Bentley. It’s the level of realism that our crew gives that collision that helps us, the audience, to feel for the characters. So how did they do it?

After a week or more of thorough planning, all roads finally lead to the Long Beach intersection location. The Stunt Team and Special Effects Team tag team the day, outfitting the rear underside of the Escalade with a special housing made for a small cannon filled with black powder, eight ounces worth. It’s rigged to explode when the heavily-strapped-in stunt driver (think, racecar driver) flips a hand switch at the appropriate point en route toward the stationary, dummy-occupied Bentley. The hope being that the power of the explosion will flip the truck, ending with the Escalade again on all fours.

The episode’s Director, Eric Mirich, says a total of seven cameras were set up to capture the entire crash sequence. Mirich says the cameras were positioned “to capture the most dynamic shots with safety in mind.” Four were “Eyemo” cameras, specially designed to run without an operator and which can withstand a certain amount of destructive force. Three of these were placed near the impact point and one inside the truck itself. The other three cameras were manned, and were set far away with long lenses.

With all set, the tension mounts. But it is not necessarily a once-or-nothing proposition. If the stunt fails, the cannon could be reloaded and a second attempt made. But, says Producer Don Tardino, safety is always first, and there was a broad definition given to what would be considered successful. “You can fit a lot of (filmed) pieces together from the different cameras to make it work,” he says. And that is what they did. When the powder went off, the Escalade only made it onto its back. A great shot, but the rest of the scene needed to have an upright vehicle. So a Pettibone crane was brought in to lift the beast onto its feet again, all on camera. This shot, when added to the rest, would make it appear the truck’s roll ended on its wheels.

Obviously, the Pettibone can’t be in the shot, so Visual Effects Supervisor Larry Detwiler and his team come to the rescue to hide the mechanics of the stunt from the audience by literally “erasing” them from the final image using Adobe After Effects.

The entire stunt took nearly three-quarters of the day to set up and shoot, but it goes by in just a few seconds onscreen. It’s in those few seconds, with the force of the impact, enhanced by editing and music, that we feel the brutality of the moment that leads to a lifetime of loss for the characters.

Robert H. is the Script Coordinator on CSI: Miami.

11/10/09

Leaving Las Vegas
By: Greg B.

What has murder? Multiple victims? Severed limbs? And, a first-class aerial landing of CSI’s own Dr. Raymond Langston in the middle of a Miami crime scene? The CSI: Miami trilogy episode, naturally. And slick and smooth as it might have seemed to deliver Dr. Langston right to Horatio Caine’s team, for CSI: Miami producers, delivering that single shot was anything but.

The first task was finding a suitable location to land a helicopter…in Long Beach, California. “The director, producers, assistant directors, director of photography, all visited multiple locations to find a suitable spot to land the helicopter,” remarked Production Supervisor Jack Lambert. In this case, that location was El Dorado Park, a swath of urban green nestled between the 605 and 405 freeways.

Next, location approvals had to be given by the Long Beach Film Commission, Long Beach Fire Department, Long Beach Police Special Events Division, and Hangar One, the helicopter company hired to execute the aerials.

The entire group convened at El Dorado Park, taking note of the landscape, surroundings, and any safety concerns. “At one point, they were concerned that the proximity to the 605 freeway would be an issue,” said Location Manager Adam Robinson. But, it was deemed a safe distance away, and CSI: Miami was given approval.

“We’ve done this before,” said Robinson, “and since we shoot quite a bit in Long Beach, the city is familiar with us, and luckily, things move quickly.”

Helicopter pilot Evan Jansen then carefully scouted a spot within the park to land. “He made sure trees were spaced apart enough,” recalled Robinson, “there was flat surface to land on. He took every safety precaution possible.” There was still one unpredictable menace: California coastal fog.

Jansen had to fly the helicopter to Long Beach airport the night before, storing it in a hangar. The next morning, he patiently waited for the fog to burn off, before safely attempting to fly to the park and attempt the shot. Of course, all local authorities were made aware of the shoot days prior, to avoid any confusion of why a helicopter was flying so low within city limits.

The morning of the shoot, the crew members fanned out, doing a slow, heads-down walk of the grassy landing area to pick up any and all debris. Even the smallest rock or wood chip could turn into a dangerous projectile once exposed to the high winds generated by a helicopter’s rotors. Next came a lengthy safety talk given by the ground safety team, another step to ensure a smooth operation.

And at last, camera crews were setup, extras placed, and ACTION! shouted by the director. Slowly but surely, the helicopter emerged over the treetops, whipped the trees into a frenzy, and floated to a gentle landing. Everyone watched with baited breath as the cockpit door swung open, and…a Raymond Langston stunt double stepped out on to the grass.

Of course, for safety reasons, the real Raymond Langston had to remain grounded. Quickly after landing, the stunt double was taken out of the scene, while the helicopter was still running. Dr. Langston then stepped into the stationary copter, re-opened the door, and greeted Horatio Caine as if he’d just come from the dry, wind-swept streets of Las Vegas.

Now, the real question becomes: what’s he going to use to land in New York? I guess you’ll just have to watch the second episode of the trilogy to find out.

Greg B. is the assistant to CSI:Miami Co-Creator/Showrunner/Executive Producer Ann Donahue.

11/03/09

Behind the Painting
By: Grace D.

Walter gets some good mystery-solving action this week, using his art-history-super-powers to help crack the case. The art theft story is a bit unusual for our show, and it got me wondering who would actually make a painting for an episode like this and how they would go about it. I journeyed over to the Art Department, where I spoke with the show’s Art Director, Roland Rosenkranz, about the process.

Before I talked to Roland, I had envisioned someone in our production building laboring over a canvas for days and days, crafting an original painting of a deer. Of course, I learned that such a thing would be a little too time-consuming for our schedule.

To make the prop painting, Roland first needed to find the right image to use. Instead of coming up with an original design, it’s much cheaper and faster to copy an existing painting. “We can utilize things produced before a certain copyright date,” Roland says. “Anything pre-1923 is fair game.”

They searched deer paintings that could legally be copied, and compiled a list from which the episode’s director could choose. Once the final painting was selected, a digital image was sent to a printer. It was printed on actual canvas, and the pigment was applied in layers to give it the texture of a real painting. In person—if you look closely—you can tell that it wasn’t hand-painted, but on camera you would never know.

All that was left was to frame it and attach the arrow, and the picture was good to go.

Besides the deer, Roland also had to find a painting by Henri Matisse to serve as the stolen masterpiece. Writer Brett Mahoney said he randomly decided upon Matisse. Luckily the Expressionist painter and sculptor worked in the early 20th century, so it would be easy to find an image to use.

Since we never see the full Matisse uncovered, there was no need to have it printed. The Art Department simply sent a digital file of the image to our Visual Effects Supervisor, Larry Detwiler, who inserted it into the shots of the painting seen through the microscope. All Larry had to do was apply a polarizing effect, which is what we see when Walter examines the painting with the T-Ray 4000.

The toughest part? “Just finding paintings within the date parameters that would suit the needs of the script,” Roland explains.

The real paintings that were borrowed for this episode are Matisse’s “Vase With Two Handles,” painted in 1907, and the 1851 “Monarch of the Glen” by Sir Edwin Landseer.

Matisse is a name most people know, but Landseer was actually a famous Victorian-era artist, known for his portraits of animals. “Monarch of the Glen” isn’t actually that obscure a painting, Roland concedes, but the image works perfectly in the episode.

“The painting stuff is an interesting detour in the story,” Brett says. “It allowed for interesting science elements and interesting visual elements.” That deer, shot through the heart, displayed proudly in the middle of that disgusting hotel room definitely qualifies as interesting. Knowing how our Art Department made that painting, and made it look so real, is also pretty neat. Grace D. is the Production Assistant in the Writers’ Office at CSI: Miami.

10/19/09

Shades of Caine
By: Greg B.

Iconic and inimitable. They are the polarized punctuation mark of all justice served in Miami-Dade -- Horatio Caine’s sunglasses. For those curious about their true-to-life origins, here the myths are dispelled and truths revealed about the world’s most famous pair of shades.

First things first. They are, in fact, polarized. And, 100% UV resistant, according to the sticker affixed to a spanking new set. They’re unbelievably light, thin, and have a pliable frame. No hinges. That’s right, they just flex to fit your head. Put them on, and the world suddenly shifts into a light shade of green.

Brand? Silhouette. Manufactured at their headquarters in Austria. Model 8568/65 6062. But, slow down if you want to fire up Silhouette.com to order a pair-- they stopped fabricating this model over three years ago. The last batch was kindly donated to CSI: Miami by Silhouette. There are only around 130 pairs that still roam in the wild today, and they all nest inside a black-steel cabinet, stashed and padlocked in the props office on the studio lot.

“There are always around ten pairs on set,” says Assistant Props Master Katy Mau. They are given to Horatio at the beginning of the day and he returns them once he is finished with his scenes. And no, he never wears them while not in character. Well…almost never. CBS promotional appearances don’t count.

Damaged pairs are also held by the props department. During the many rigors of television production, they do occasionally become dirty, scratched, or more rarely, completely broken. Pairs declared K.I.A are simply swapped out with a fresh set, and the departed set to rest in the cabinet with the other optic casualties.

“We still get emails from fans about where they can find them,” says Mau. “I’d say your best chance would be to search eBay.”

If they did still exist, “They’d run you about 175 dollars a pair,” says CSI: Miami Property Master Bob Good. Included with the glasses would be a black hard-plastic case, grey micro-fiber lens cleaner, and of course, multi-lingual user guide. It’s translated into 26 different languages, just in case.

True fans know they’ve been sported by Horatio since the airing of “Cross Jurisdictions”, the CSI/CSI: Miami pilot spin-off in 2002. Do a quick search on youtube.com, and you’ll find thousands of imitations of Horatio donning his shades, most famously done, of course, by Jim Carrey on Late Night with David Letterman. Carey’s performance solidified their pop-culture status around the globe.

As for how they actually came to be chosen as “the pair”? “He picked them out himself,” confirms Good. He being, the show’s lead star, David Caruso. “It was two days before we were shooting the first episode, Cross Jurisdictions, in Miami,” notes Good. “The first time we met. He told me he had gone to a store, picked out a certain style, and reserved three pairs.” The next day, Bob found the store and bought all of them.

The rest, my friends, (dramatic pause) is called television history -- YEAAAAAAHHH!

Greg B. is the assistant to CSI:Miami Co-Creator/Showrunner/Executive Producer Ann Donahue.

10/13/09

Eye to Eye with the Guts of the Process
By: Robert H.

I’m what they call the “Script Coordinator” on the show. Means I live in the Writers’ Department, reading every script draft that comes down the pike, scanning for errors of any kind, from simple typos to story inconsistencies, making sure they don’t end up in the final draft for all the world to see.

Good job if you’re looking to get a front row seat to big-time TV. GREAT job if the people at the switch are as generous as this writing staff. Thanks to them, that’s my name you saw listed as “written by” in the opening credits of “In Plane Sight,” our Episode 804. For the first time, I got to follow a script on its trip through the guts of the process, from inception to airing. Many memories of that journey come to mind, but a few stand out:

I remember the first day of “breaking” the story -- the process of turning disconnected possibilities into a coherent story outline. I was amazed that so many ideas were coming out of the writers’ heads, some sticking to the dry erase board, some dying a quiet death in the air just above the gum packets in the center of the table. I remember sitting there, finally understanding in a much more three-dimensional way that our scripts are not just written, but wrestled into submission by some wickedly dark imaginations.

I remember the first day I sat down to write the first draft of the script. I had full confidence that after three years of reading everyone else’s scripts, I had Horatio and Calleigh flowing through my veins. I was wrong. Because it’s not just putting words into the characters’ mouths, it’s finding a way to carry an entire story inside your head, knowing how this moment comes out of the last and how it fits with the next, and being able to find the emotional heart of a forensic-driven scene. Bottom line: not easy.

I remember being on set the first day of shooting, at the outdoor mall where we meet Allison Burgess. I was working alongside Writer/Producer Krystal Houghton, who was there to shepherd me through the entire episode, when I first heard the words that were up to that point only on paper, now being spoken by the actors. It was then that things really clicked, and the script became a living, breathing thing.

I remember walking for the first time into Matt Smith’s special effects and makeup room, where he was hunched over the “neck” he’d built for the CSI Shots of Howard Burgess being strangled. We were surrounded by shelves of severed legs, oversized hands, and even a horse’s cross section, the art from previous episodes. He showed me how the ingenious model he’d built articulates, shoving a vertebra out of whack and squeezing the jugulars as he tightened the rope. I’ve never been so fascinated by something so designed to disturb me.

I remember the first time I sat in James Wilcox’s editing bay, watching an early “rough cut” of the episode. The moments I’d seen on set were now, miraculously, pulsing with the vibrancy of an episode. That “big”, cinematic scope of the image, married to techno music and rudimentary sound effects – even in this early stage, it was a clear demonstration of how everyone’s talents come together for something much larger than the sum of its parts.

But mostly I remember how exhaustively detailed every aspect of the show is. You know it intuitively when you’re watching. But it only truly comes out of individual hard work, like that of property master Bob Good, who spent hours creating Howard Burgess’s meticulously kept accounting ledger – a prop that was on the air for fleeting seconds, but was created within an inch of its life because on CSI: Miami, the details ARE the show.

The producers aim for a feature film every week, and they reach it on a comparatively small budget with a fraction of the preparatory time. I thought I knew all this going in. But seeing it first-hand helped me to truly understand and respect the people I work with.

Robert H. is the Script Coordinator on CSI: Miami.

10/06/09

Lightning in a Toggle
By: Scott L.

So here goes a tip of the iceberg glimpse into the Visual Effects in last night’s episode of CSI: Miami, entitled, “Bolt Action.” The main VFX challenges consisted of replicating electricity and lightning, done by the brilliant CSI: Miami in-house visual effects team of VFX Lead Artist, Robert Konuch, VFX Artists Jeffrey Olney and Russell Welch, and VFX Supervisor, Larry Detwiler.

I’ll highlight a shot from last night’s episode, a close-up of the beach volleyball court that pulls out and up to an overhead shot. It features electricity surging through cables, followed by the death of three of the volleyball players. This shot involved several basic elements in order to create the final look seen.

The first element was a pull-out from a close-up on sand and then up, to reveal a stationery volleyball player. The second is the same exact shot, with cables added on the ground. Both shots could be filmed exactly the same way several times because they were performed using a motion-control rig, which allowed for the same exact camera movement to be replicated identically over multiple takes.

Next, the sand was made to look transparent so it appeared that the cable was buried underneath it. VFX artists blurred the edges around the sand, color-timed to match the sand on previous shots, blurred out the sides of the sand to make it blend with beach images shot at a separate location, and filled in the backgrounds to make it pop and look authentic. There were actually nearly one hundred individual VFX elements within the shot, though highlighting just the above was complex on its own.

The genesis of the lightning is also worth noting. A visual effects computer program called Adobe After-Effects provides a filter that looks like lightning. The artist can control that filter in many, many ways, approximately fifty in fact. The artist can make the lightning move, animate, adjust the amount of segments, speed, color, angle, rebranching, and on and on.

Where things become complicated, is that shots, rather than the individual tasks within them, are divided amongst artists. So, with three people all working on shots of lightning and electricity for the same episode, communication between artists is key so that they maintain a common look, or effect. Once the look is fine-tuned, the preferences can be saved and uploaded by all the artists so each is then working from identical-looking lightning.

In addition to these specialized shots which provide powerful visual insight into crimes, the VFX Team is charged with many tasks that can often go unnoticed. Just a short list includes: supplying the Miami skyline, speeding up or slowing things down, enhancing macro shots, creating POVs (Point-of-View) on micro shots, obscuring things, applying graphics (often original) to cell phone and laptop screens, and creating visuals for the A.V. Lab’s Surface Computing Table and A.V. Wall. In the end, all a tall order that, as we witness each week, is always expertly, beautifully, and ever quickly fulfilled by the talented CSI: Miami VFX team.

Scott L. is an Assistant to the Writing Staff of CSI: Miami.

9/29/09

The Right Twist
By: Grace D.

It’s the second episode of the new season and we’ve already seen explosions in MDPD, hostages in Firearms, and a near-deadly shooting --- not to mention counterfeiting, false testimony and a new member of the CSI team almost taken out by SWAT.

But the best part of the episode, for me at least, is the surprise ending. After the team follows the hostage-taker’s clues, we find out his ex-wife has been hurting their son and framing him as the abuser.

It’s definitely a shocker, but what’s coolest about this ending is that it wasn’t in the original script. In fact, there were numerous endings written and then scrapped before “Hostile Takeover” made it to air.

Every episode goes through multiple outlines before even becoming a script, and the script itself goes through at least four drafts before shooting begins. Corey Evett and Matt Partney, who wrote this particular episode, said they started the episode wanting to do a hostage situation in the crime lab. It was the hostage taker’s back-story that ended up shaping the plot.

With nothing left to lose, Mathew Sloan attacks MDPD to get Horatio’s attention. As Matt describes, “He’s a guy wronged by society and screwed by the economy.” Sloan wants Horatio to right the various wrongs done to him. The writers’ work was deciding what those wrongs were.

In one of the first outlines, they had Sloan seeking revenge on the man responsible for getting his mom put in prison. This man was Sloan’s mom’s boyfriend, also the counterfeiter in this version, and Sloan had a disturbing Oedipal obsession with his mom. The idea was nixed.

The ex-wife was the baddie in a later outline, conspiring with Sloan’s doctor to over-medicate him and get custody of their son. The evil doctor made it into the first draft of the script, getting arrested when the team finds another patient dead in his car.

In these early versions Sloan was outrageously unstable and not very relatable. Corey says the changes were written each time to make him “less unhinged, more desperate.”

They settled on the child abuse storyline by the second draft of the script. In that draft, Sloan claims his son was injured when they went surfing. Jesse, an avid surfer himself, believes Sloan. The kid is afraid to admit that they went surfing because his mom forbade it, and he doesn’t want to get his dad in trouble. Horatio convinces him that it’s okay to tell the truth.

The writers stuck with the surfing storyline in the next draft too. Corey worked with our show’s researchers to find information on jellyfish. The idea was that a jellyfish sting would confirm that Sloan and his son actually went surfing. This storyline came really close to making it on the air. The props department even went so far as to purchase a prop jellyfish.

Ultimately, the ending with the ex-wife as abuser was the most resonant. Also, as Matt says, “it was a twist upon a twist.” At first you think it’s Sloan, then you think it’s the step-dad. The kid’s mom seems the least likely.

Matt and Corey assured me that every episode goes through revisions, although this one seemed like it went through a lot. They both enjoyed writing the episode, even though they were still writing revisions after it started shooting. The storyline with our CSIs, and the basic notion of Sloan leading the team to uncover his injustices never altered. “The heart of it was always the same. That made the changes easier,” says Corey.

I had fun reading each new draft of this episode as it came in, and it was exciting to see where they ultimately took the story. Co-Executive Producer Barry O’Brien credits Matt and Corey for so deftly handling this episode’s challenges. “Each time around,” Barry says, “the story deepened and the episode gained more heart and more meaning.”

Grace D. is the Production Assistant in the Writers’ Office at CSI: Miami.

9/22/09

The Curious Case of CSI: Miami
By: Greg B.

Horatio Caine sans sunglasses. Eric Delko, still a young, backwater scrap monger. Bright-eyed Calleigh Duquesne, and a mustachioed Officer Tripp. All ingredients of a CSI: Miami premiere that shuttled us back to 1997. A premiere that challenged the CSI: Miami creative team to turn back time on cast members and their world, but also ensure that both looked and felt authentic. As I found out through some sleuthing, a conceit drenched with daunting technical hurdles.

The back-in-time premiere concept sprouted in the writer's room in February of 2009. Over 4-6 weeks in June and July, the writers quickly pecked out nearly a half-dozen drafts before arriving at camera-ready script in mid-July. Then, it was off to the races.

"We kinda scratched our heads and wondered, 'How are we gonna do all this?'," said veteran CSI: Miami director Sam Hill. It took a scant ten days for his crew and seasoned cast members to run and gun through nearly 60 pages of script, a blistering shooting pace.

Once filming wrapped, the footage was whisked away to Technicolor labs, where all the "1997" scenes had their colors and grain level adjusted to give them a different look and feel, visually separating "1997" from 2009. It was then the transformation of cast members that proved trickiest. Research led visual effects supervisor Larry Detwiler to Lola VFX, the company responsible for Brad Pitt's epoch defying metamorphosis in 2008's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button".

"If you had pitched this idea in a room ten years ago," remarked Detwiler, "you would have heard crickets. It would be impossible. The technology simply didn't exist."

CSI: Miami's schedule was so grueling, Lola VFX artists worked double shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, literally, to deliver footage in time for the premiere -- and they were responsible for just close-up shots. To be fair, there were only 173 of them... CSI: Miami's own VFX team of just three people then completed nearly 90 wide and medium-angle shots, one frame at a time (for perspective, there are twenty four individual frames in just one second of on-screen footage). A single five-second shot required anywhere from 3 hours to 3 days to complete. Then each shot was critiqued, adjusted, re-critiqued and adjusted again.

Over ten notes sessions later, all the in-house VFX were stamped with approval. Then another speed bump: the delicate art of editing together the in-house visual effects with those completed by Lola VFX, into the final editorial cut of the episode.

Detwiler visited Lola VFX personally nearly a half dozen times to ensure visual continuity between the footage. After his careful review, the Lola VFX shots were then inserted into the final cut of the episode, all sound was mastered, and finally, the completed product delivered to CBS for its prime time premiere, just days before air. VFX lead artist Robert Konuch later reflected of the process, "It's kind of like landing a man on the moon," with Detwiler adding concordantly, "You don't know how to get him there, but you know you have to. In a way, figuring out how to achieve that is more interesting than the actual work."

After watching CSI: Miami's Season 8 premiere, I think it's safe to say all involved helped land him safely and softly, on two feet.

Greg B. is the assistant to CSI:Miami Co-Creator/Showrunner/Executive Producer Ann Donahue.