Olly Wiggins Selects The OConnor 2560

Crackanory is a storytelling television series for adults, featuring two 15-minute tales, narrated by comedians and actors. It incorporates live action, original music and animation, and the sets change each time – from the streets of Ancient Rome, to outer space, to New York in the 1940s.

Cinematographer Olly Wiggins is Director of Photography on the show, and said: "It's a wonderfully challenging shoot where each story is shot over two days on location and then we film a narration day in a studio. The dark and often macabre comedy allows us to try different visual styles and lighting techniques. Different actors and often different eras every two days all help keep the production team on its creative toes."

Wiggins, who is also co-founder of production company S+O Media, selected to use the OConnor 2560 for the series.

Commenting on his decision, he said: "[On Crackanory] We work on a very tight schedule without a full grip team to accompany our camera department. As a result, we need support that offers considerably quicker set up times and very fast repositioning. We ultimately chose to use the OConnor 2560 rigged in a 150 mm bowl with Carbon Fiber legs to make each location move as easy as it could be. Over the course of the production, the repositioning time we saved allowed us to get more coverage and helped keep post-shoot physiotherapy bills to a minimum."

Wiggins utilised the ARRI Alexa Mini and the OConnor 2560 head with the 150 mm bowl for better payload and configuration.

"The options of a 150 mm bowl and Moy fitting makes the 2560 head functional across the full range of shoots we do," he explained. "On Crackanory, we use the head rigged in both a 150 mm bowl for the fast-paced scripted elements and then rigged in Moy fit to utilize the Floatcam slider for the narrator segments. When rigged on the Floatcam, the head was carrying a fully-rigged ARRI Alexa Mini, ARRI Master Primes, Mattebox with onboard monitors, wireless follow focus, on-board powering, and a full-size Autocue. No matter what we put on it, the 2560 had us covered the whole time."

(JP/LM)