FrameForge Studio is an invaluable tool that lets me play around and experiment in its virtual world to find interesting angles, and identify and avoid any potential problems that would otherwise have only been discovered in physical tests or during the shoot itself.

I've used the program through the years on shows I’ve done including Scrubs, Cougar Town and now Eva Longoria’s new NBC show Hot and Bothered.

On the pilot we shot Ana’s (Eva Longoria’s character) penthouse apartment on location and of course as we go into series we are building the set on Stage 43 at Universal.

No matter how good you are at mentally translating a blueprint into an image of your shooting location, it’s never the same as being in a real environment, and there are always unexpected issues and limitations, not to mention the happy accidents and inspiration a real location gives you.

But by building it first in FrameForge, the program removes all that guesswork and effectively takes you onto the set where you can play around and experiment, including placing actors and props to really mimic the actual stories you’ll be shooting. Within this virtual world, I can easily take an optically accurate version of the camera equipment I’ll be using and move it around the set and find interesting angles, and identify and avoid any potential problems that otherwise would only have been discovered in physical tests or during the shoot itself.

In the case of Hot and Bothered, I was able to take our production designer, Steven Jordan’s drawings into FrameForge's Room Builder and use them to build an accurate virtual set on my laptop. The beauty of doing this is that even while the set is still being built, Steven and I had the opportunity to walk through the virtual space and really wrap our heads around it.

This process also vastly improves the communication between departments, because we can all see exactly what we’re talking about.

One of the big issues with the set of Hot and Bothered in particular is that we have an integrated backdrop showing a Miami Beachfront, and we needed to find an optimal distance for it which would afford us the greatest number of workable angles while avoiding ever seeing its edges.

By doing tests in FrameForge, I was able to place quite a number of cameras at different positions, angles and focal lengths within the set and then instantly see the effect of moving the backdrop around from all of these angles simultaneously.

The FrameForge Studio program continues to be a fast and affordable workhorse which has become an integral part of my toolkit. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Andrew H. Rawson
Director of Photography