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Scott Williams is an IATSE- and ICG-affiliated cinematographer located in Bellingham, Wash. He has lensed many television series over his career, most recently shooting episodes of ABC Family's series Kyle XY in HD. See some of Williams' work from Kyle XY on his Reel-Exchange profile page.

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CE: As director of photography for a series like Kyle XY, what were the biggest shooting challenges?

SW: The biggest challenge on Kyle XY was time—same as always. There's always a push and pull between visions—the producers, the writers, the actors, the studio, the network, and yes, even the DP. Ultimately, we all want the same thing—a great-looking show that's a big hit that's done for the budget and appeals to the desired demographic—but sometimes it's hard to remember that we're all after the same goal. So it's always time that's the bottleneck—how to get it all done in 12 hours. That's another way the HD systems help, you can go a lot faster when working off WYSIWYG monitors. I haven't used a light meter on a video show in years. There's no guesswork about when something is "good enough"—and I cringe while I say that, but the truth is that an imperfect shot is better than no shot. They have a wonderful gaffer named Jeff Pentecost, and the monitors also allow him to work independently. I don't have to point things out to him—in fact, he can point things out to me. All that adds up to speed. We made Kyle XY in seven 12-hour days.

CE: Now that it's being picked up overseas, do you have to think differently as a DP as far as distribution—when setting up shots, etc.?

SW: As for the foreign side, we don't really do anything differently because of that. Everything over there is 16:9, so we have to shoot in a 4:3 frame but be sure that 16:9 is clear so that it can be transformed later. We've been doing that for years now anyway because of the switch to digital TV that's coming next year. It's a compromise, definitely—I think most of us would prefer shooting in the wider format [16:9] right from the start. But that's the way it is.

CE: What camera did you use?

SW: On Kyle XY, we used Sony [HDC-F950s] and SRW-1 recording decks from Sim Video, Vancouver, [British Columbia]. I mention them because I don't think the show would have been possible without Rob Sim and his team. ... I'm a big fan of the F950 camera, although Sony has now replaced the F950 with the F23. It's basically the same camera from my perspective. The advantage this system has over the standard workhorse F900 [with built-in deck] is the use of the SRW-1 recording deck. That is an amazing piece of technology. For one thing, it's a 10-bit recorder; whereas, the one on the F900 is 8-bit. That's four times as much info going onto the HDCAM SR tapes, which are the same size and just as easy to use as the regular HDCAM tapes that feed the F900.

So you can see it's a lot better quality for about the same effort. The F950 is always cabled, which some people resent, but I always like to keep the cameras cabled anyway so that I can use the Sony MSU/CSU engineering setup. This is why I prefer the Sony system to Panasonic's, or the Viper, or any of the others out there right now—the control you get from the MSU is incredible. Color, contrast, iris-pulls, knee—it's all right there at video village, no digging through the on-camera menus while the director melts down.

CE: Your beginnings tie to Northern Exposure. Describe the changes in cinematography for TV since that time—especially the move to broadcast HD in 2009.

SW: The changes in cinematography over the course of my career have been astonishing. Really, it's just over the last five years. Before video, the changes were small, incremental type things. Faster lenses every now and then, better and better film stocks, digital light meters (just when the film stocks got to where you didn't actually need a digital meter!). It was more about evolving lighting styles using the same set of tools, although I shouldn't forget the Steadicam. I was doing a show called Mysterious Ways, great show—way ahead of its time. We were using Arri 35mm gear from Clairmont Camera, Vancouver (another great vendor by the way), and in between seasons, the bosses decided they needed to save some money. One of the producers was a guy named Gordy Mark, and he came up with the idea of shooting on HD video. It was a funny phone call: "Scott, we love the look of the show, and we're going to switch to video."

That was a pretty radical idea then—there hadn't been any shows done that way on a network, none in Vancouver, and one or two little cable things in Toronto. I said that I didn't know anything about video, and Gordy, God bless him, said: "Get whatever you need, extra prep, whatever..." So I decided to embrace it. Believe me, there were a lot of people turning their noses up in those days—"I don't shoot video." You have to remember, there was no such thing as a DIT [Digital Imaging Tech] to run the machines. It was up to me and the camera assistants to hack it all. And we did. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't have to learn all of it, so I dove in there with Rob Sims' help and figured it all out. A few years later you could avoid the learning curve as a DP, but I'm glad I went through it because I have a better understanding now of how the cameras work and what's possible with them.

It's funny—all the argument over the years has been about resolution, color space, compressions, etc. Truth is, what's really radical here is what's possible with the cameras themselves. As for the future, I think you'll see smaller and smaller cameras with bigger and better chips. When it gets down to a lens, a little box, and a cable (or no cable, for that matter!), we'll be able to make some nice shots. Makes for a very exciting time to be a cinematographer.