Hollywood at my front door

For the last couple of weeks, Downtown LA streets have been blocked every which-a-way. You had a Japanese religious festival, a commercial video for a downscale Honda Accord zooming down 4th, the filming of a Gray's Anatomy special, and the biggie, an upcoming TV series production. I suppose I should be blasé about all this stuff, but, hey, DTLA is practically Hollywood's back lot and who can hate that?

Seen here is the view from the 2nd floor mezzanine of my apartment building in the heart of Downtown, a live-action shot from the upcoming "Ironsides" TV series, with Blair Underwood in the wheelchair. (Notice the production stills photographer at the front of the NYPD cop car? Sweet job.)

This scene is staged and lit as a night scene, even though it was only about 6 PM with sunset an hour and a half away, and the RAW's histogram is actually pretty flat. In pre-visualizing the final image, I wanted to duplicate the look of a prime-time TV production, which these days features low-key lighting, lots of gamma tweaking & deep shadows for "atmosphere" and shifting the color temperatures high into the blue. Edited in Lightroom 4.3 with my own home-brew 'Cinema Blue' preset, and finished in Photoshop CS6.