'CSI' Speaks In A Visual Language

CSI gets up close and personal.

One of the signatures of the CSI franchise is the "CSI shot", a visual effects shot that takes the camera--and the viewer--inside of the human body. The first "CSI shot" appeared in the very first episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Show creator Anthony Zuiker was a fan of the film Three Kings. As Larry Detwiler, the original visual effects supervisor on CSI (who now works on CSI: Miami), explained to CBS Watch, that movie had a couple of shots "that follow the path of a bullet that enters its victim's body and makes contact with an organ. So in the pilot script, Anthony was looking for a similar type of image--it was even worded 'Three Kings shot' in the script."

Detwiler's Stargate Digital team came up with a way to film the scene using prosthetic models of the human body and a special camera. "It's essentially a medical imaging lens, called an endoscope," said Visual Effects Director of Photography Dave Drzwiecki. "It's the same kind doctors use in laparoscopic surgery to put cameras inside the body." From that point on, the visual effects became a signature of the franchise. "They were inherent in CSI from the very first episode, and brought so much of the visual language that we still use today," said writer and executive producer Naren Shankar.

CSI now uses digital models to create these body shots, but Miami and CSI: New York continue to use the prosthetic models. The end result is the same either way. "They're a way to keep the audience on the same page as the investigators," explained Brad Tanenbaum, CSI's Second Unit Director. "We do them to allow you, the viewer, to become the third investigator with Catherine [Marg Helgenberger] and Grissom [William Petersen]." Tanenbaum went on to say that the shots explain things that the characters already know because "for the audience, there's only so much the writers can do without spelling it out for you. Instead, we show it visually."

From digital magic to stark reality, CBS Watch writer Joel Stein found out what it's like to be a real forensic scientist. He spoke to Rich Catalani, a technical advisor and writer for CSI, who told him that real crime scene investigators are civilians rather than police officers. He also pointed out that real lab work is much slower and less precise than is shown in the CSI franchise. "We sometimes cheat the ease with which we can search these databases," Catalani explained, talking about DNA, fingerprints and VIN numbers. In real life, it can be an involved process that involves making connections and getting permission to access databases. "You'd find that access process uninteresting," he explained, so the franchise takes liberties. The results of the lab tests are also not as exact as they appear to be on CSI. "In reality, there are very few areas of forensics where you can have a definite match," Catalani said. "In the real world, we use weasel words like 'consistent with', 'could have originated from', [and] 'the same source.'"

Perhaps the biggest difference between the CSI franchise and real forensic work is the role the CSIs play in the investigation itself. "In our world, since the CSI are the heroes, they find the piece of physical evidence and that leads to a suspect instead of the other way around," Catalani said. "But in the real world, detectives get a lot of their information by talking to witnesses. Their cases are corroborated by lab evidence, but they're not solved that way. In our TV world we make it look like the CSIs are handling the case, and in reality, they work for the cops."

Check out the December issue of CBS Watch for the full articles, including a more detailed description of how "CSI shots" are created, how the show uses green screens to put the actors in different locations and even more about what it means to be a real crime scene investigator.

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