BEHIND THE SCENES PHOTOS!

[Dadrian]

@fakespyder I believe Sonny calls him Mark in “Free Verse”. 

RIP 

[Tom]

Here is another BTS shot from that episode and that location. Trudy signing autographs in her last scene in the series.

 

[Tom]

another rare shot from Phill the shill. 

[Dadrian]

2 hours ago, Tom said:

another rare shot from Phill the shill. 

“ALBÓNDIGAS! Albóndigas...”  

[Tom]

Gerade eben schrieb Dadrian:

“ALBÓNDIGAS! Albóndigas...”  

And not to forget: "You must take me for a right wanker, son?" - "Well a right wanker with no furniture, man!"

I love this episode for the great lines 

[Tom]

or "Athletes, celebrities, head of state, dentists .... you pick the fish, I bait the hook."

Just hilarious and a quintessential line for Izzy´s character....

[Dadrian]

2 minutes ago, Tom said:

dentists

^^^ My personal favorite  

[Tom]

vor 20 Stunden schrieb Tom:

Here is another BTS shot from that episode and that location. Trudy signing autographs in her last scene in the series.

 

Here are the stills from Freefall as a comparison to the BTS shots posted recently. Filmed at Villa Crono, Pinetree Drive, Miami Beach. The tracks are there because they used a panning camera shot at the beginning of that establishing shot of the safe house. Of course that camera movement cannot be recreated properly by a still here. As noticed earlier, the red haired OCB guy in the BTS pic named Mark gets stabbed there at night.

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Tom

[Tom]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb Tom:

another rare shot from Phill the shill. 

And while we´re at it with comparisons BTS and on TV ...that is the exact frame from that BTS pic on TV, filming over Izzy´s shoulder.

 

[Tom]

And the third comparison BTS vs. TV ....

P.S. does anyone wonder about that early version of "product placement" (the term was certainly not invented in 1985) of Adidas by Phil´s trunks? (I cannot imagine he took this on scene from his private wardrobe).

Edited December 8, 2020 by Tom

[pahonu]

7 hours ago, Dadrian said:

“ALBÓNDIGAS! Albóndigas...”  

I always thought he was saying abondigas, the Mexican meatball soup, which is just as farcical any way, as Izzy slaughters two languages! 

[Dadrian]

1 hour ago, pahonu said:

I always thought he was saying abondigas, the Mexican meatball soup, which is just as farcical any way, as Izzy slaughters two languages! 

No, you’re correct! You just spelled it wrong. 

What I don’t know is the decorating/architecture English word that is similar. That would be the real joke!

Does anybody know?

Edited December 8, 2020 by Dadrian

[pahonu]

1 minute ago, Dadrian said:

No, you’re correct! You just spelled it wrong. 

I know I don’t know MV as well as you so I thought I missed something.  Either way, it’s some of the best Izzy dialogue of the whole show!

[Dadrian]

3 minutes ago, pahonu said:

I know I don’t know MV as well as you

Thanks, but only know a little about all of it.

Does that make sense?  

We have some sure enough experts here though on nearly every topic! 

[pahonu]

30 minutes ago, Dadrian said:

Thanks, but only know a little about all of it.

Does that make sense?  

We have some sure enough experts here though on nearly every topic! 

I get it, your breadth of knowledge on MV is impressive though, a true fan.  I have parts of the show that fascinate me endlessly but other, often very popular elements that I haven’t a clue.  I love all aspects of boating on the show and much of the architecture shown in South Beach, though strangely I’m not into location hunting.  I also know jack squat about fashion and pay little attention to those threads.  I’m also not musical, in as much as the only thing I play is the radio, but I listen to lots of music and enjoy that part of the show.  There’s lots of different things to like in the show for all kinds of reasons.  Perhaps that’s a part of its popularity?

[Dadrian]

25 minutes ago, pahonu said:

There’s lots of different things to like in the show for all kinds of reasons.  Perhaps that’s a part of its popularity?

That’s always been my opinion!

[fakespyder]

14 hours ago, Tom said:

another rare shot from Phill the shill. 

So that camera they're shooting the scene with...I have a question as I'm ignorant on the technical aspects. But it sure likes like a widescreen aspect ratio, by which I mean 16:9 and not the shows 4:3. Do they crop the sides or am I just plain wrong?

[pahonu]

4 hours ago, fakespyder said:

So that camera they're shooting the scene with...I have a question as I'm ignorant on the technical aspects. But it sure likes like a widescreen aspect ratio, by which I mean 16:9 and not the shows 4:3. Do they crop the sides or am I just plain wrong?

That’s a Panaflex 35mm, likely gold, and yes, it is wide screen, but can be masked down for a 4:3 aspect ratio.  

[Tom]

vor 9 Stunden schrieb fakespyder:

So that camera they're shooting the scene with...I have a question as I'm ignorant on the technical aspects. But it sure likes like a widescreen aspect ratio, by which I mean 16:9 and not the shows 4:3. Do they crop the sides or am I just plain wrong?

Yes, 16:9 and the 35mm film they were using (this was quite unique at that time for a TV series!) had a pixel resolution comparable to today´s 4K resolution. The digital masters that Universal has done off the original 35mm film roughly 10 years ago is only HD resolution though. This master has to be used by all labels for DVD/Bluray releases, but each label can decide on the encoding, i.e. how close to the maximum of the master they will get. Original DVD releases were often cropped to 4:3 and had low resolution due to DVD, the subsequent BluRay releases had better resolution potential of course but did not utilize it due to bad encoding (bad color due to gamma shift, too dull, too blurry).

In October a German labelKoch published a full BluRay set in Europe with the best encoding from the Universal master so far: original picture ratio, perfect colors due to corrected gamma shift, very good sharpness, but some grains as the original material was analog film material of course and not digital as we are used to today. They even manually corrected many episodes. I have this box set and I have never seen MV that way. It blows your mind in terms of sharpness, details and colors compared to watching it on TV or on amazon prime. More info about this you find in the DVD/BluRay section.

Bottom line: we could even watch MV in 4K 16:9, if Universal did a new master from the original 35mm film in best resolution. But as the only master is HD, we have to stick to HD max, but we can get sharpness of BluRay standard if we buy the right box set.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Tom

[Tom]

next BTS pic from "Bad Timing"

[pahonu]

8 hours ago, Tom said:

Yes, 16:9 and the 35mm film they were using (this was quite unique at that time for a TV series!) had a pixel resolution comparable to today´s 4K resolution. The digital masters that Universal has done off the original 35mm film roughly 10 years ago is only HD resolution though. This master has to be used by all labels for DVD/Bluray releases, but each label can decide on the encoding, i.e. how close to the maximum of the master they will get. Original DVD releases were often cropped to 4:3 and had low resolution due to DVD, the subsequent BluRay releases had better resolution potential of course but did not utilize it due to bad encoding (bad color due to gamma shift, too dull, too blurry).

In October a German labelKoch published a full BluRay set in Europe with the best encoding from the Universal master so far: original picture ratio, perfect colors due to corrected gamma shift, very good sharpness, but some grains as the original material was analog film material of course and not digital as we are used to today. They even manually corrected many episodes. I have this box set and I have never seen MV that way. It blows your mind in terms of sharpness, details and colors compared to watching it on TV or on amazon prime. More info about this you find in the DVD/BluRay section.

Bottom line: we could even watch MV in 4K 16:9, if Universal did a new master from the original 35mm film in best resolution. But as the only master is HD, we have to stick to HD max, but we can get sharpness of BluRay standard if we buy the right box set.

Interesting information, Tom but I have one quibble.  The Panaflex 35mm film camera was actually the most commonly used camera system for hour-long dramatic TV series for most of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s until replaced by digital equipment.  The Rockford Files, Magnum pi, Miami Vice, and other shows of the type all used Panaflex cameras.  I worked in production on Baywatch in the early 90’s and they used them too.  The camera operator used a mask over the viewfinder that showed the 4/3 ratio to compose the shots with the DP.  Whatever was outside that was still on the film, and could be viewed today, but it was not what was intended to be seen. It could have random images on it.

[fakespyder]

Thanks for the info guys.

It is cool to think there may be a widescreen print of MV. Of course if they didn't take the 16:9 frame into account then the resulting image could look bad in some instances.

For example the show Buffy: the vampire Slayer. While originally shot in 4:3, they released a Widescreen version with extra viewing area on the sides. But it was so badly done that you could see camera crew, boom mics etc in certain scenes due to the extra size. The later seasons didn't have this problem because they began broadcasting in widescreen around season 5 (I think) and started framing all their shots accordingly. 

[pahonu]

1 minute ago, fakespyder said:

Thanks for the info guys.

It is cool to think there may be a widescreen print of MV. Of course if they didn't take the 16:9 frame into account then the resulting image could look bad in some instances.

For example the show Buffy: the vampire Slayer. While originally shot in 4:3, they released a Widescreen version with extra viewing area on the sides. But it was so badly done that you could see camera crew, boom mics etc in certain scenes due to the extra size. The later seasons didn't have this problem because they began broadcasting in widescreen around season 5 (I think) and started framing all their shots accordingly. 

That’s really interesting.  Buffy was right in the middle of that transition period.  Over the years several forum members have expressed their dream to see MV in widescreen.  I explained it to them the same way, but I didn’t realize any show had actually released the footage that way.  I’m not at all surprised it showed those things.  
 

Though I was just a PA, I had a chance to look through the viewfinder a couple of times.  You could not see anything outside the mask.  They were composing the shot for the small screen so everything else simply didn’t matter.  I’m sure they never even thought about it.  I think when fans first realized it was photographed in 35mm wide screen like films, using the same equipment in most cases, they had dreams of something great.  It just isn’t the reality.  
 

I’m not sure why some people get hung up on the aspect ratio.  There wasn’t any real standard in the film industry before 1932. There are still two standards today.  Some great films were made in all kinds of ratios and some not so great.  Lawrence of Arabia was in Super 70 Panavision 2.2:1 but so was Lord Jim also with Peter O’Toole, a bit of a dud.  Many 30’s and 40’s classics were in the Academy standard which is 1.37:1, essentially TV’s old 4:3.  Some more recent films have been near square.  Check out this article:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2019-12-21/shift-to-older-screen-format-gains-favor%3f_amp=true

[fakespyder]

It was perhaps overall not as bad as I describe, but Buffy fans were picking the HD versions to pieces and there are some funny examples. I don't want derail this cool thread so I'll point you to a good article if you want more info.

I think you are right about the fans. I'd be excited to see Miami Vice in widescreen but the show was so meticulous in framing their shots, I think there's a good chance some scenes wouldn't work as well with the extra information 16:9 would bring (even if there were no crew members or other errors in the shot)

 

17 hours ago, Tom said:

next BTS pic from "Bad Timing"

That's a great shot. Before Sonny got scruffy-looking

[Tom]

New one... this is BTS from Freefall, just in case you wanted to know who was behind the black masks of the unknown gunmen who attacked Crockett&Tubbs in Villa Crono.

The guy left of DJ is Marc MacAulay, a quite busy actor and stuntman from South Florida (at least at that time). He was in many VICE episodes, e.g. the hitman in Streetwise, Johnny Gotman in World of Trouble (killed in the teaser), Doc in Bad Timing, the porn expert in Death and the lady, etc.

He is married to Lori Wyman who was casting agent for MV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Macaulay