Overview

Burban Man (a short form of Suburban Man) is on a quest to discover and collect“swag”. Swag, as Burban Man discovers, has many definitions. In this episode(3.0), Burban Man visits his local tavern, intending to collect “bar room swag”;coasters, matchbooks, and swizzle sticks. The bartender invites him to sample a beverage which has “some real swag to it”.

Challenges & Approach

SWAG 3.0 takes place inside a tavern during night time. Since the tavern was only available for production in daytime, techniques were deployed to create a nighttime effect: Curtains were used to blackout the large front windows. Once the daylight was blocked, the fixed lighting in the tavern provided adequate lighting for the camera. Light was added to highlight the subject in close-ups.

The result

The practical lighting created a “speakeasy” effect that enhanced the dialog and deployed the long narrow features of the tavern. The “bleed-through” of colored lighting gave a neon pulse to some scenes, as if neon light was coming in off the street. The audio is intimate in the close-ups, and has roomy depth in the long shots.