Baltimore Sun has an interview with the director and an executive producer of Modern Family, Jason Winer. The pilot that Winer directed, which debuted Sept. 23, was far and away the most-talked-about comedy pilot of the fall and touched on multiculturalism, gay identity and family life.
Here’s what Winer says about the filming of the show: “Instead of a normal comedy where you would be in right up in the actor’s faces with the lenses, I thought, ‘Well, if this is supposed to be a documentary, let’s back way off and really shoot like a documentary.’” So, Winer says, he and the crew “moved way off across the field and used lenses to zoom in on the actors — with all the business of the soccer game running back and forth in front of us.” The result for the viewer: “You make the dialogue feel like it’s captured accidentally and spontaneously,” Winer says.