Frame & Reference Podcast - 1: "Fatman" DP Johnny Derango

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

Welcome to the Frame & Reference Podcast! In each episode cinematographer Kenny McMillan talks to working Cinematographers about their influences, interests, traditions, and techniques, centered around the project they've most recently shot. These talks are relatively unstructured, but aim to be as educational as they are entertaining. Each episode explores the ways each DP achieves the looks they're known for and the art that inspired them to make those images, as well as the assets that helped them succeed as cinematographers in the first place. In our first episode, Kenny talks with DP Johnny Derango about shooting Mel Gibsons latest film "Fatman." Johnny also shot the new Hulu series "Everyone is Doing Great" and the feature film "Small Town Crime." You can check out his full filmography on his IMDb page: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0220214/ Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition.  Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry.

Hello, I'm Kenny McMillan, and welcome to Frame and Reference. As this is the first episode, I figure I should take a minute to introduce myself. I am a cinematographer out here in Los Angeles. I am the founder of Albot Digital Cinema, a small production company out here. And I write for a website called Pro Video Coalition and have for the past four years. A big part of my job there, was doing interviews. And, you know, I interviewed tons of people from the guy who invented After Effects to recently the editor of MLK FBI. But in the middle of that, you know, as a DP, I always thought, why am I not interviewing DPs?

So, you know, took the prerequisite steps and now you're listening or watching to the result of that effort. So, yeah, this is a podcast where I, as a cinematographer, am interviewing other cinematographers in the first half of the discussion. I just want to kind of get to know them, talk about their influences, talk about how they got to where they are, that kind of thing. And then in the second half, we're going to talk about the film that they are there to promote because you genuinely or generally don't get to. to interview people unless they have been sent by a PR team to advertise something.

So, you know, maybe in the future that'll change and maybe you'll just get to talk to anybody who wants to talk to me, in which case we'll see how that goes. But for now, as we're just starting, that's kind of the vibe. And to that point, you know, I don't know how this podcast will evolve over time. I'm sure I will become a better interviewer. I certainly, in the first four episodes, learned a lot from each of them, you know, mistakes I made or things I wish I would have done better or things I'm happy I did, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, I'm sure at the beginning of any podcast, there's a rocky start. I've had a few podcasts in the past, but they were a little more loosey-goosey, as it were.

So, I actually, in this first episode, you're listening to the pilot, so to speak, with my friend Johnny Durango, the DP of the film Fat Man, starring Mel Gibson, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and Walton Goggins. We recorded this as a one-off, and it became frame and reference. So the format's a little different, the discussion's a little different than, well, you'll hear going forward. but I figured since we did it, it might be worth putting out there as episode one, which does cause an issue because the true episode one of frame and reference was with Josh Richards, the DP of Nomad Land. And I told him he was the first episode.

And, you know, he was. But now in podcast land, he's the second one. And the same thing happened to buy a Schleichler, German DP, of Ma Danny's Black Bottom. He's episode two for you guys, episode three. So going forward, you will hear those little missteps, but I will bring that back around going forward. But yeah, oh, another thing, this podcast actually does come in multiple formats. So if you're listening to this, then you found it. You know, it's available on Apple and Google and Spotify and Spotify and all those kind of things anchor but there's a video version where you can see

the Zoom call we're doing all these interviews over Zoom and you know I feel like body language and whatnot is definitely a large part of a discussion you know someone's intent and you can watch those on the owlbot YouTube channel my company's YouTube channel which is just YouTube.com O-W-L-B-O-T, like the bird and robot. And there's also a transcript of these interviews up on ProVidio Coalition.com. The transcript will likely include a link to the video and audio version, so maybe just go to Pro Video. I know I will be posting those links at my website, owlbot.co. So you can find them all over the place.

But that's just for your information. You can listen, watch, or read, frame and reference. I'd like to thank Pro Video for agreeing to distribute this. It's really helpful. Mark Pelly did the theme music, which was awesome. You turned that right around, and it was exactly what I wanted. Nate Truax of Truex Branding Company made the Matbox logo, the frame and reference matbox logo. Again, really quick, because I kind of started recording and then needed all that stuff, you know.

it's a moving it's a moving ship this this production um like i said this first interview is with johnny derango um we have a lot of fun talking about his work on fat man you know shooting in the snow is a big challenge so we talk about that um we talk about you know creative uses of green screen where you wouldn't expect it you know he talks about the interior locations the lighting, lighting fixtures that he uses. He shot on the Mini LF or the Alexa LF. I don't know if he used a mini. I think he did. Yeah. So I think that's enough of me rambling, but I figured it was worth for this first episode getting all that information out there. So that's it. Let's move on. Oh, and like I said, we're friends. So it really just, I think the first question is talk to me

about your relationship with your Gaffer. So we were in the middle of a conversation and then I just sort of haphazardly started. Again, each episode is my contribution to the conversation is going to get better. So without further ado, here is Johnny Durango. Hi, I'm Johnny Durango, and today I'm here to talk about the cinematography of Fat Man. So to start, talk to me about your collaboration with your gaffer. Yeah, so I deal. And who is he? My gaffer, I have a gaffer by the name of Mateo Gonzalez, great guy. We've done two features together now and a bunch of short form content. He's a really smart guy and we just have a really amazing shorthand. So ideally what happens is you go in and you do a location scout, a tech scout, and you get things figured out

and you talk through it on the day of the tech scout. And, you know, obviously not always the case. Sometimes there's curveballs and you have to be prepared. So when you're going through those locations, you're deciding what's going to be the best units based on what you're planning on doing, mostly based on like what time of day you're shooting. I'm really concentrating on the characters and the story and how I can bridge that with my lighting and my camera movement. So what I'm looking for on a location scout is interesting angles, interesting placement of windows where, you know, sometimes there may be just a single lamp that you look at and you go, okay, that could be an amazing, just single source for this scene. So I'm taking all that stuff into

account as I'm looking at it. I'm trying to figure out what's best going to work for the vision. On this, you know, with Krista's house, I wanted to have this really great homey feel. You know, I wanted it to be his safe place, the one place that you always felt comfortable in. So when I was sort of designing the lighting on that and the Tech Scout, we talked about it and I wanted like a nice soft wrap. So what we decided we would do is we would push light through the windows, a real soft effused light that felt natural coming in the windows. And then we would do small sources within the room to have some background pops, some boca in the background, some things like that.

We also had fireplaces inside that we knew we would have on, and we'd have the flicker of the fire too. So in crafting that, we decided we were going to need some bigger units to place outside, which we eventually popped into 12 by ultra bounces outside of all the windows, and then we got this beautiful soft. Because the house was a location. The house was the location. It was the second floor.

So that's another thing you have to be careful of as you're scouting. You've got to figure out if you need condors. if you need lifts of any kind, you have to decide where those lights are gonna be placed. You know, sometimes you're coming down from above on a lift with your lights underslung so that there's no stands or anything's out. The way we adjusted our angles and this,

we were able to come straight up on stands with the 12 buys and hit them in a way that pushed the light on the right angle we wanted without seeing outside. There was also some window covering some things like that. But those are the things that I'm looking for. I wanna know, you know, am I going to have to black out

the natural light behind my big pushes that are coming in because the time of day is going to be shifting. Am I ever going to get the sun coming in on an off axis that's going to compete with what I'm doing? So you've got to take all that stuff in account and say, okay, do I have the firepower to overpower the natural light? Is the natural light going to create a problem at any point? And based on that, you have to make decisions. And you try to make those decisions as far in advance. Like I said, sometimes you get thrown a curveball and you're showing up day of And you're like, okay, this is what I got. This is what is on the camera or on the on the grip electric truck.

And this is what we're going to do to make it work. Yeah. So you were saying the, you were putting 12 buys up behind the lights. But what were those wrapped with? So those were ultra bounce. Okay. So we, you know, black side of the sun, bright side shining in. You know, it does a little bit of double duty.

Bounces, bounce a stray light back, pushes the good light in. And so that was just to simulate the sunlight outside the windows and. Just a nice, soft, ambient push from all sides. Yeah, just to give a nice wrap to the characters on the inside and make it just feel real nice and homey, you know? That was something that was really important. There's three very distinct characters in this movie, and they needed to have their own distinct lighting and lensing.

And so that was something that I really concentrated on. With Mel, it was always soft, wrapping light, very traditional, very classic film light. So that, again, I was very careful to, in conversations with my gang, after talk about soft as possible. We did a lot of like snap grid type egg crate stuff with the chimeras, that kind of thing, direct the light, very soft light into where we wanted it. Because we're in really small environments and I never wanted that light spilling all around the place.

And for all intents and purposes, it's a thriller. And I wanted to maintain that feel. So even though it's soft wrapping light, there's still contrast all over the place. To get this sort of hominess of the interior of Chris's house, like what were some of the things that you did to achieve that? I wanted all the exteriors to have a little bit more of an icy blue, you know, but I wanted that inside of that house to always carry a warmth. There was a time where I thought about, you know, even playing that sort of icy blue

in through the windows and keeping his house nice and warm on the inside. And it was something that I tested. And in testing, I just found out it just sort of overpowered the environment. It didn't feel right to the character. So I stuck with the warmth at all points in his house, you know. The only time we feel the iciness. when he's outside in it, you know, especially the morning he comes home from delivering the presence and you have a very blue early dawn look. The contrast you got outside in the snow

is amazing. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, that was really interesting because that was actually day one of shooting. So talk about being thrown right into the fire, you know, we got Mel, we're outside, we're in freezing weather, we're trudging through snow that once you track through it, it's blown. Like, we had to be really careful where we walked. So I couldn't always get the gear that I wanted in, but in that scene that you're talking about in particular, I was able to, Mel was facing the camera, he's got his gun up, pointed almost directly at camera. To camera left, I was able to bring in some diffusion to break up the natural sun, just to soften to get it a little rapier. And then because we're in, you know, something like this, I was able to bring in

negative film from the right. And I walked it up pretty close to the edge of frame. So you get this really nice contrast. It still feels like natural sunlight coming through, because whatever the diffusion I used, I know, I can't remember off the top of my head what I used, but I went pretty light on it. So you still have that direct sun feel. Sure. And Mel's got such an amazing face.

And if you start to soften it up too much, you lose a little bit of that character. Right. So, and production design cannot be underestimated. You can light the most beautiful scene in the world, but if it's in a white room, it doesn't matter, you know? You've got to have, you've got to have elements that with, especially with his homestead and inside of his house,

it had to have this sort of weathered, lived-in feel to it. He's a character who's been around for thousands of years. He's been married for, who knows, hundreds or thousands of years. It just needed to feel lived in. And we found a tremendous location. So the location, along with Chris August, who was our production designer, did an excellent job, his production design, and the lighting that fit the environment,

it just all came together. And so you can, like I said, you can light the most beautiful scene in the world. But if you don't have those other elements in play, it's never going to look as good as it does when everything comes together. And I think in this project, all those elements were in play. Lights. Practical lights.

That's production design. That's not necessarily cinematography. But you guys got to really work together to make that a thing. I'm a big fan of practical units. And we were doing, in Billy's house, I really wanted there to be a lot of lamps and a lot of practicals because I wanted it to feel like it was sourcing from somewhere. I wanted to use the windows and I wanted to use the lamps.

Wanted everything to feel very motivated. And again, with his lighting too, I wanted it soft because I wanted to tie him to Mel's character through the soft wrapping lighting. And there was a time when I kept requesting lamps and I kept asking lamps to be put in different spots. And I think it was the set dresser. Somebody goes, it looks like a fucking lamp store in here. I just lost my shit. To be fair, the lamp section of Home Depot is the best part of Home Depot. 100%. I just love walking through it.

You and me both. I get transfixed. I go and I get stuck pressing the buttons to see the different color temperatures. Yeah. But it was one of these things where I'm like, okay, it might look like a lamp store to you because you're looking at it all at once, but the angles I'm going to pick the way I'm going to set it up,

it's going to be very targeted. You're going to get the boca of things falling off in the background. It's not like I'm seeing 16 lamps in one shot. Just trust me, it's going to look great. And, you know, I think they were just, they were just messing with me. But yeah, it looks great, you know. Yeah. I know you shot the mini LF on this one. Part of the reason for using the LF for me was I wanted to differentiate the characters through the lensing. With Mel, I wanted to physically place the camera closer to him, use a little bit wider angle lenses for the close-ups. I knew we were going to be in some really

tight practical locations. And I wanted them, like I said, to feel homie, but I never wanted them to feel claustrophobic. Talk about the lens choice. Like what, uh, what, why did you, what did you go with? You went with the signature primes? I, no, I shot everything on the airy DNA primes. They're area's proprietary primes. Yeah, which are made up of all old glass. You know, they don't tell you what glass it's made up of, but it's, it's cobbled together of all these different lenses in modern day, yeah, in modern day housings. And they're great. They've got a lot more character than more modern lenses. I tested a lot of lenses. I tested some beautiful lenses. I mean, I tested signatures. I tested Supremes. I took a look at S-4s because S-4s are, you know,

one of my favorites. And they remind me more of the S-4s than any of the modern lenses. They have a S-4s tend to skew a little more yellow, which I like. I shot the, I shot Smalltown Crime on the S-4s, and I love the way that looks, and it fit really well with that film. Now, these, they're not as yellow. They skew warm, but not as much to the yellow side. So across the line, I think they have a little more warmth to them, and they definitely have more character, especially some of them towards the edges.

So interiors, you were mostly using practicals with the sort of outside big old bounce source coming in. Yeah, if I needed more of like a zippy edge light or something like that, I was using the airy L5s and the L7s, which are their LED frenels. Yeah. And those, they're awesome because they're not very big. I remember tucking them up.

Like, we had in Chris's bedroom, there was like a dresser. And I think I remember just like a C-stand arm flat on the top of the dresser, extended off with an L7, you know, right up against the ceiling. Yeah. And you get a nice edge for separation. So you got that nice soft wrapping light and then a little harder edge that plays as more direct sun coming through the window. Totally.

And then you were saying, I remember you're saying you were using tubes. You were using, like, helios tubes? Yeah, we used the helios tubes a lot on the film, and we would always push those through something soft. I was looking at one of my diagrams earlier, and I think we were playing a lot through, like, 216. I used a lot of the Celeb 250. Yeah.

Yeah, through Snapgrids with the Snapbags. I think that's what they're called. They're basic Chimira-style light, but with their grid on it, which is fantastic. Because, like I said, I wanted to use soft light. I wanted this to have a really great traditional. soft wrapping feel to it. And I don't want it spilling all over the rest of the room.

So those were really helped. Just depends what we were doing. I mean, we're in some tight environments. So, yeah. Those tubes are also awesome because they have the grids for them as well. And you can use those as an highlight almost anywhere. They're fantastic for highlights as well, you know. So talking more about interiors before we get to the exteriors and talk about the challenges

of working outside in the winter, the factory. The factory is a big old set. It was the inside of a former Nestle factory. So it was a former chocolate factory and absolutely enormous. I mean, it went on for, I can't even imagine the square footage on this thing. It was absolutely enormous. And it was not heated because it wasn't a functioning factory. So you're in a giant concrete freezer for days on end because it was while we were shooting,

it got down to negative 36 degrees. And so take that negative 36 degrees and trap it inside a concrete block. So it was sort of pocket heating the factory because you couldn't heat that entire factory. So that was a challenge in itself was doing that. And the factory floor set was enormous. They had to do a big build of all the machinery that the elves used to manufacture, the toys. And so I, in looking for reference, because reference is a big thing for me. I, you know, it can be in my head, but if I can't explain it to the directors, they have to just guess what I'm looking to do.

And I don't want any director to have to just guess what I'm doing. So I found a video that was done to promote a fight that Canella Alvarez was going to have. And it was this really great thing set in this boxing gym. And there was these amazing top lights just spotted down. And there was a ton of atmosphere in the place. And I was like, okay, that's what in my mind this factory looks like. So that was actually the shot that I pulled for reference. and I leaned pretty heavily on.

It's what I showed my gaffer. It's what I showed the directors. And I'll pull the frame and I'll send it to you so you can put it in your show notes or whatever. But that was something that I found because I wanted this factory. I felt like I was walking a fine line. I wanted the factory to have a warmth to it. But I also wanted to feel industrial because in talking to the directors, they really, it was like industrial revolution.

That's kind of what they wanted to do. They wanted to feel like, you know, the leather vests and the guys going off to do their factory work. And so we went for a bit of that. But at the same time, I didn't want it to feel like the elves were in a sweatshop because these elves are happy. They love what they're doing. So I was walking this fine line of trying to make it look moody and interesting and still have like a warmth to it. So that was the balance I was trying to strike. And I think I think we landed there because you never look at it and go, oh, man, these elves are being tortured.

No, you know, it is funny. You bring that up because I, you do get that vibe that they're kind of in like a dingier spot. But they're stoked, like they're the, especially the main elf. Yeah, seven. He's really determined to let the military know like, hey man, this is important shit we're doing. Yeah. And that character's fantastic. I think they do a great job. And the elves, credit to the guys and the makeup department and really honing in because I feel like that's a really, really interesting take on the elves when people see what the elves look like. They're definitely more human than elf. And they didn't go like over the top. They didn't go, okay, we're going to

make them green and we're going to make them all little people. They're more diminutive people. Yeah. And they have prosthetic ears and, you know, really great shoes and, and a more jaundiced makeup. But it's not crazy. It feels, it fits in with the whole directive of the entire movie, which was to take this fantastical story and grounded in the real world so that people can go along for the ride without going, wait a second. Right. Yeah, nothing feels fake. You know, it all feels believable. That floor, and again, this is working with production design, like I said, is very important. So all those lights were sourced by the art department. You know, there's, I think, 36 China hats on that, on the factory floor. And that provides the bulk of the lighting in that

scene. We used spot bulbs, like exterior, like floodlights, but the spot version. Like Home Depot, and there's spot bulbs. Yeah, I purchased them at Home Depot myself. And, and, and, Anyway, there was 36 of those on the floor, and then we had some image 80s pinned up, I think about seven image 80s, and then a bunch of park cans around the perimeter so that we always had a backlight when we weren't in the exact right spot. And then for the ground lighting, we would bring in larger bounces and, you know, hit something from the floor into the bounce and bring it back and then, you know, wrap around with a little something more. So that was pretty much the game plan in those sets. And a lot of atmosphere in those sets just so you could read those spots. It was important to me that you could sort of see the beams coming off those spots

and so that the backlights had a little more pop to them. Because they were supposed to look like, I guess, industrial instead of theatrical. Yeah. Like legit, just like, what would you call it? Factory floor floodlight. Yeah, so everything. I mean, I did not go out of my way to keep lights out of the shot in the factory floor because they all felt, you know, natural to the environment.

Yeah. Which is nice when you have an environment like that. It's not like when you're in a house and you can't have a park hand in the background in the shot, right? Totally. With this, you have a little more leeway. There's a little more creative freedom. How often do you find out, you know, LEDs are obviously the way with the future, but how often do you find yourself just using regular old lecos? You know, it's generally when you got a longer throw, when you have something like the factory floor like that, the LEDs, at least for the price point that you're operating in and the number you need on something like this is not going to be very effective. So when you need that longer, harder throw, they tend to be still the choice. If you're working inside in a smaller environment, you can get an LED light that'll do virtually the same thing.

Sure. Like, Aperture makes some great lights, but even those don't have the punch of a standard tungsten, you know, or incandescent parcan or leco. The factory's built underneath the barn. I'm assuming the barn and the factory were not. I'm assuming the Hershey plant wasn't under a barn. It was not, you are correct. And that was really interesting because that barn itself on the property was just a plastic hardshell top with metal frames on the outside. So it was wide open to all the sides.

Oh, wow. So the art department had to come in and face that barn and add sides to the front, add sides to it. And we had to create a ramp that looked like it was going down in this factory. Now, Canadian government regulations only allow the art department to dig down four feet. without some sort of permit and scaffolding and stuff like that. So there's literally only a four-foot ramp. So the actors could only go down four feet. So they built up another four feet in frame the top of it.

And then at the bottom, we put green screen in. So it's literally, like if you saw the dailies, it's hilarious because they would walk down and they would have to stop at a certain point. Or I think it was Walton or Mell or one of them went and walked straight into it. It was really funny. But it's basically that's just tubes. That's tubes behind the beams lighting a green screen. And for a four-foot walk down, you know, I think it was maybe a 10, I don't know how long the walk is.

Maybe it was eight to 10 feet going down. And then they built inside the Hershey factory, they built a full-scale ramp. So there was actually, I don't know, probably 15-foot high ramp inside the factory that ran probably a good 40 feet. And we married the two together. And in those, I used these sort of like scons, industrial sconces. that are more like architectural lights. And I use those to bridge the barn down into the factory. And those run down the factory rampant all the way throughout the factory.

So the factory inside is kind of staggered. It's got these sconces to the sides. And then it's offset with China hats in the hallway. So it goes one in the middle, two to the side, one in the middle to the side. And part of my reasoning and logic behind that was I knew that a lot of the time when we were in the factory, we were looking at the elves. And if we were going to be looking at the elves and I wanted to end up, any sort of interesting boca or anything interesting

in the background, I had to have something down on their level because you were not really gonna see those china hats, which on a regular size person, you might be able to look up a little bit more into them. So I had to have lights that played at different levels in there. And you're talking about those like kind of cage bulbs, right? You've seen them on films. I can't quite remember what they were.

The ones that I have, I believe, were more the, so they're the angled face. It's like a glass angled face with a hood that out just a little bit over it. If you, and then they can angle up and down like this. Gotcha. So, yeah, they're on the ramp and then they run throughout the factory. But that was something that where the whole movie was supposed to be, like I've already

said, grounded in reality. I wanted it to be no country for snowmen like I told you before. And that was sort of my directive to my crew was like, we're making no country for snowmen. This is a real movie. This isn't fantasy. Right. So in bridging from the real world down into the factory, I wanted a little hint

that magic. So when he goes into the barn, the barn feels like a little more Raiders of the Lost Ark than it does no country for old men. And then you get down to the factory and it's, it's even more fantastical, but still in a weird, oddly grounded way. The most Christmas I think you ever feel is very early on in the story when this actor Sean is coming down the street to sell a baseball bat that he got in his childhood to the skinny man. And there's carolers outside singing and there's a crowded like bustling street where there's people Christmas shopping. And I feel like that is our biggest single glimpse

into Christmas that. And then Billy's foyer where he has the Christmas tree and all the wrapped presents and you know. And he gets the rock. Which by the way, you should always talk to the art department before you touch the coal because sometimes the coal is freshly painted and

it gets on your fingers. That's something I learned on this movie. You were saying that you couldn't walk around the snow like for certain shots how what was that sort of dance like you know having to manipulate or having to work around your own behavior as well as the snow the sun the weather yeah in in doing especially the final there's a big confrontation at the end between chris and the skinny man and it was going to take place over three or four days and i knew shooting in ottawa the the

The weather's not like it is in Vancouver. In Vancouver, you get long stretches of overcast where you can shoot things with more consistency in Ottawa. Day to day, hour to hour, it changed. So that was something that was really on my mind going into pre-production, trying to figure out how I was going to combat that, especially on a scene that takes place in five to seven minutes on screen,

and it takes place over four days in real life. So I talked to a bunch of different people. I went over it with my Gaff or my key grip. I talked to other DPs and it was one of these things where I knew that I couldn't control it the way that I wanted it. It would have taken construction trains and massive, massive overheads that we just didn't have the budget or time for. So I had to be a little more nimble and a little more creative.

And it became more of a game of exposure and picking my angles. And the directors were really awesome in the fact that they understood what I was up against. And so we decided to shoot in sequence because we saw that the weather, was going to arc in a pattern that felt like it would work with the continuity of the scene. So the scene starts in Overcast, then it goes to snow, then it gets a little bit brighter back to Overcast, and then it goes to full-on sun. But because it happens in a sequential order, and it's not jumping back and forth between one side being snowy and the other side being bright and sunny, as you watch the scene,

it transitions pretty seamlessly. No, absolutely. I thought that scene was shot in a day. I thought you just knocked it out. I'm really glad to hear that. That means we won. But, yeah, that kind of stuff where we didn't have the money in the time for, like I said, for big overheads. And we didn't have the budget, I assume, for giant sky replacements to replace an entire scene worth of sky.

So it was just being nimble and going back to our indie roots and going, okay, this is the way we're going to do it. We're going to game plan for it. And it worked. You know, obviously when we got into closer up stuff, we could use some overhead, small overheads. Because you'll see when that standoff starts, it's. It's like the Sergio Leone Western, the shot pushing through the gate coming from behind Walton. You see Mel standing on his side. Then we turn around.

We look the other way. This is beautiful, epic wide shots. But there's no room because you can't disturb that snow. Even though I had, you know, a fly swatter or two, the reach it would have taken to get to where we needed to be without disturbing the snow. It just, it was impractical. So I said, all right, let's find another way to do it. And we did. So there was no snow replacement, no VFX snow replacement at all.

you just dealt with it? No, we went with it. We didn't disturb the snow. And then there is a little bit of VFX snow to even out the snow throughout the scene. But otherwise, like from the sky. From the sky. Yeah. And actually even landing on the characters, it's really interesting. It's amazing what the VFX department did as far as that goes. Yeah, I would not have, I would not have guessed that. And it's good. I think that lends a lot of that is because we did as much practically as possible. And then that's sort of like the cherry on top just to even it out, which is the way that you'd want to do it. Yeah.

Are there any shots or setups that you're like particularly proud of or maybe like challenged you in a way you didn't expect? So there's a scene in the movie where Chris is getting ready to go out and deliver the presents on Christmas Eve. And I think it's one of the first times that you really realize there he is. He's Santa. He's got the coat on. He's got the hat on.

And that's an emotional. By the way is awesome. It's amazing, right? Yeah. Like the downplayed color, that was a discussion I had with the directors. And yeah, the directors were all about like muting that color and making it more of a burgundy. And so we all had this discussion, the wardroom department myself, the directors.

And they just crushed it. Yeah. And so he's getting suited up. He's just had like a really difficult phone call where he's trying to solve his problem. He can't get it done. And so he's suiting up to go out. And he's having this heart-to-heart conversation with Ruth, played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who was just amazing in the movie. I mean, their chemistry is phenomenal.

And it's just one of these really endearing moments where you see, like, his plight. He just, he doesn't have the answer. And now he's going out to do the biggest thing that he does every year. And it's heavy on his heart and it's heavy on his mind. And I just, there's this moment where he stops right before the door. And he says, because I failed. And then he walks out. And I just remember everything.

It was just one of these things where I got the lights in all the positions I wanted. And I just feel from the time he comes down the stairs, it almost feels like it's not one shot. But if you watch the scene, it almost feels like it's one shot. He comes down the stairs. He goes into the living room. He gets his coat out of the thing. We're looking at Marianne in a close-up. We come back.

But it just feels so nice, so warm. You know what he's about to go out and do. And then he gets to the door. And there's this light that's just right down the middle of his face where it's got this beautiful wrap to it. And he's in profile. And he just delivers that line. And it's like, oh, man.

So that was a moment where I was really, really happy. Yeah, there's a couple of months. The flip side of that, too, is the Friday of the first week, we did a big night exterior where it's the continuation of the scene. It's the other half of it where he walks outside and Marianne comes trailing behind him. And we had a big snow machine and we had big fans and it was just a big night exterior setup where, again, I did the same thing I did from the interiors where I put a fly swatter up with a big ultramount. And I took my lights from ground level and pushed up into it and just did like a big soft return.

And it just looked beautiful. And then deeper in the background behind the barn, he's going out to the stable where the reindeer are. There's another condor back behind there playing our backlight illuminating the whole scope of the land. And that was one where I just, it was something about that was magical. Like I said, it was our Friday the first week. And I saw it. Like I saw everything so clearly. And it was just so pretty.

And it just felt so magical to fake snow whipping. and him walking out. And my favorite part about this is we wrapped, and I was just like, I was just, I was up here. I was just so happy with the way the first week had gone. The directors, they're big huggers, and they were giving Mel a hug. And I just jumped right in.

Mel doesn't know me at this one. I just gave Mel a big hug. I think I surprised him, but, you know, it was great. He's a great guy. And, you know, I think everybody was just excited how well it was going and how great everything looked and the performances were just fantastic. So, yeah, that was.

That was one of those moments. It's really cool to, especially like with a relatively simple setup. I mean, take some execution, but relatively simple setup to make something that makes you like excited on the inside. You know, when like how, you know, obviously as a cinematography, you have to absorb light that you see in nature. But how often do you just catch yourself just like taking mental notes? Mental notes are good, but I find myself now because everybody has a camera on them at all times. I find myself just pulling out my phone and just taking pictures so that I can reference it back at some point. in the future. Like, I can't tell you how many times I've done this, the alleyway down by my

trash can by the dumpster downstairs gets this beautiful light cutting through it in the late afternoon. And I was down in the garage the other day playing hockey with my nephew. And I took a picture of the dumpster because the light cutting through was just incredible. And I'm like, at some point I'm going to delete this off my phone because why do we have a picture of a dumpster on my phone? But it was one of those mental things. It's the same thing. like down in that same hallway, that corridor, the building has these lights and wood posts that come out of it, right? So at some point in the afternoon,

those wood posts get the beautiful long shadows. And I can't tell you how many times I've just taken pictures of that. Yeah. Our parking garage has the same, I think we catch the same light. And it's just like, but this is the thing that like, if you want to film that,

you've got 10 minutes. Which is why I'm really fascinated by the digital, LED walls like doing virtual production because if you can if you can get into volume and you can have that light for 12 hours yeah get out of here like that that to me is incredible and that's something that I'm really really interested in right now I mean that's a hundred percent the future especially you know if we're going to be doing all this COVID filmmaking for the next year like yep if you've got an in with like even a small volume because I don't know if you've watched the Mandalorian behind the scenes stuff but like yeah yeah they're only

building like a little bit of set and then the rest of it like even in the first season when mando and the kid go to that hut that gina carano's in the whole hut is volume i thought they at least built the walls no it's volume it's all volume it's absolutely incredible yeah i have a friend that i went to college with who's a dp and he shot a he shot an indie romantic comedy and they did the driving stuff in a volume And I don't know that I need to talk to. I don't know the exact reason why they did it, the reasoning behind it. Maybe it's because of the time of the year it was, it was snowy,

and maybe it was conditions. They didn't want the actors driving. And I don't know. And there is almost a head-on collision with a semi. So maybe that played something into it. So they didn't have to put the actors in that situation. But it looked great. That's the Fincher move.

Like once he built that process truck, that van with like, it's got like 18 reds around it. And they were just driving around DC. I think it was for House of Cards. Or no, Mine Hunter. And they just put, they just, did everything on set. They're like, fuck it.

Why will we go outside, do a process? Like, just plop them down. Oh, believe me. You get the reflections. Yeah, we did process trailer on this. And if there's a way I could have been in a volume instead, 100% rather do that.

Yeah. Because no matter how quickly you think you're going to work in a process trailer, it just, it's everything grinds to a screeching halt. Every time you have to change an angle, every time you have to change a vehicle, every time you have to change an actor. Like, it's not a fun process.

Process. What's the lighting situation like on a trailer? Do you just like send it or were you pretty conservative? No, I ride obviously up front with my monitors and I'm in control. I've got my, I always have an iris control for A&B camera in front of me at all time. So I can make my nude adjustments or, you know, there's times where I'm actually doing a full iris pull on a move. So with that, you know, that's usually an HMI off one of the corners of the process trailer pushing through. And then again, it depends where the shot is.

But, you know, you may be bringing negative fill inside the vehicle. You know, you may have the shot may cut off here from the driver side, you know, the fill side. And you might be bringing something into right here to wrap it, you know. Totally. Going back to working with Mel, obviously, you know, legendary actor. I'm pretty sure. He's directed before, hasn't he? You may have directed once or twice.

I think he has. um so what uh what was it like working with him from like did did he did he give input or did he strict did he sit on acting or did he kind of give little like tips here and there he's amazing man he is a wealth of knowledge i mean he's been doing this since since before i was born yeah and the fact that he you know won an academy award for brave heart was nominated for hacksaw ridge i mean the guy is just absolutely incredible and an amazing director one of the best out there so i always tried to keep an ear open. I tried to listen to what he was doing. But by the same token, I knew that I had to be two steps ahead of any time, you know, because if I wasn't two steps

ahead, I knew who would know. I mean, he knows my job probably as good as I know my job, you know, when you've been around it as long as he has. So that was one thing that I really concentrated on was listening to what he was saying, especially the directors, but he's very respectful. He worked so well with the guys. I never felt like he ever tried to, to overpower or anything, they had a strong vision for this movie and he signed up to go with their vision. You know, he was good about, you know, if he had a thought, absolutely. And it's always worth listening to a thought when a guy like that is laying it out there. Totally. But as far as being overpowering or, you know, now, he was an absolute pleasure to work

with a lunch with the cast and crew every day. The guys would cut him after he was done and he would still hang out on set outside. That was one of the things that I'll never forget. like, they turn it around and they're like, whoa, what are you still doing here, Mel? He's like, oh, I'm just, like, you know we cut you, right? You don't have to be out here. And he's like, no, he's like, you guys are out here. I'm going to stay out here with you guys. And it wasn't like, it wasn't like, I don't trust you.

I'm looking at you. I'm watching what you're doing. It was like, you know, I'm part of the process. I'm here, you know, I'm going to show everybody. I'm here in solidarity with you guys. So that was really great, a great message to the cast and the crew that, you know, if Mel is going to do this, you know, you better be tough, you better hang with us. Totally.

And I, you know, you got to imagine, like, you've been doing it this long. Like, you got to love it. Do it, you know, hanging around is probably enjoyable. It's not like. There's no doubt in my mind that he loves it more than anything, you know, at this point, if he didn't want to do it, he wouldn't have to keep doing it. So I think he just truly enjoys it. And like I said, he was just, he was a wonderful presence on set, as was the whole cast.

Yeah. You know, you got Walton, who is intense as can be at all times. I think part of the cast and crew took to just calling him skinny at all times because he's a method actor man like there was times where he would partially answer you as Walton and partially answer you as the skinny man and yeah so he was he was a little more

intense in his process but just a terrific actor and a really great guy that's awesome and same with Marianne Marianne is if I could get a calm or whatever that app is of her reading me bedtime stories She says the most pleasing voice I've ever heard and is talented beyond words and just sweet on top of that, which is amazing. Yeah, you already said it, but it has to be stated like their chemistry is fucking perfect. Yeah.

So there's a moment in the movie where she brings a file folder out to him while he's hitting a punching bag. And then he comes back in and they have this moment in the kitchen. And it's such an amazing moment because I feel like I've been married for 12 years. and I feel like it's an honest, heartfelt conversation that my wife and I could have had ourselves. So the writing is tremendous in that scene and their delivery is just phenomenal. Like, you buy it.

There's never a part of me, and I think most of the audience who sees us, that ever doubts that relationship. No, absolutely. Yes, it's genuinely like, for so much anger going on in the film, that every moment with the two of them is just a shining beacon of love.

Yeah. There's an amazing emotional core and heart to this movie. You know, it's a thriller about a hitman killing Santa Claus set by this bratty 12-year-old kid and a kid who played him, Chance Hurstfield was absolutely fantastic.

I mean, he went from being like this Machiavellian little shit in one scene to at the end of the movie. He's nearly dropping tears. And he's just, he's really good. And I think that he's going to have a really big career down the line. So working in an environment like Ottawa, an environment that I wasn't familiar with and I'd never been in before, in shooting and snow, you're dealing with just this bright white sheet, and you've got to figure out how you're going to expose your actors against it.

So like we talked about earlier with the negative contrast, I had to figure out what the negative fill, I had to figure out a way to create contrast between my actors and the background. And you realize right away, the amount of light it would take to pump the actors up above the background is just insane. and it feels so natural that it's not the way to go. So when I was testing, I was doing camera tests early on, and I realized when I put my actors, I'm about a stop to a stop and a half below key, there was like this reverse contrast where all of a sudden they were popping out,

and it had this really great look. And since I knew we were doing a thriller, action movie, dark comedy, it was the way to go. And so I was really excited when I realized that I could get that contrast, and it fit completely with what we were doing. So that was something that I concentrated on trying to do as often as I could. It's all about contrast. All of filmmaking is all just about contrast.

100% in its various forms. Absolutely. So yeah, that was something that I'm glad that and that's where testing comes in. And if you have the time to test, otherwise you have to figure out the first couple days what the hell you're doing. And hopefully, you know, you haven't shot so much that you can't still keep a consistent look. Yeah. But in this case, I had done those tests. And it was always changing. Like I said, There was days where it was bright and sunny, like the first day when we shot and Mel was shooting the cans off the fence. That was a day where, you know, negative fill and softening the hard direct sun was important. And then you have days where Sean, like I said, the actor was walking down the street to go take the baseball bat to Skinny Man. And you've soft, beautiful overhead light with snow coming down.

And then in that case, you know, you're trying to either walk some sort of negative fill alongside him along Steady Cam or if the wind is too hard and that proves difficult. You know, you're picking the angle the best you can to get the best lighting and the best shape on him. But when he's landing in a close-up, then you're bringing something in. I think in that particular case, I had somebody with a bounce that was moving in to get him when he landed in his final position. There's a lot of that, too, you can get an eye light with a bounce. You know, when your exterior daylight, you just, you know, even if it's not pushing a lot of light into the actual face, sometimes it's nice just to have that reflector there just to get a little something in the eyes. And, you know, with sun, too, a lot of times you're looking at harsh light coming from above.

So you're doing the little bit of an underfill. There's little things like that that I think you only come from experience. Yeah. I'm a big fan of trying to work with the natural daylight. I try whenever I can to make my exterior a grip show versus an electric show. Sometimes you get in situations where you need huge lights, but I'm always the philosophy. If I can make the natural daylight work for me, I'll do that. And that's exactly what we did on that shootout.

because once you start adding giant things, especially giant overheads, you just start slowing things down. And I never want anybody looking at me going, okay, we're going to miss our day because of you. Right. Because I feel an obligation and responsibility to myself, the directors, and the producers to come in on time and on budget and still make it look beautiful. So you've got to be resourceful and you've got to figure things out.

Well, and that too is a lot easier like we were saying with, you know, digital cameras now. You can use bounce and neg way more than you could back in the day when you needed the power of a light pretty much everywhere. As an example in film theory, you can go back and you can look at older movies, especially black and white movies and just look at the quality of the light and see how hard they had a pump light just to get exposure. I was watching a scene from something the other day and it was a Western and there was a woman at the window and it felt pretty natural at the window. But as soon as she turned around, you saw as she came into the house. house, there was a couple pockets of light that she walked through that they were just pounding, because you could see the hard shadows that are nothing like the light that was coming in the window. So, yeah. I mean, we're fortunate in the fact that we have higher ISOs than we did, you know,

years ago. And so you can do some really interesting thing at low levels. But then again, there's a scene in here that I'm really happy with where Walton is on a job. And there's a couple sleeping in bed, and he's in the bedroom with them. And that, That scene, I pumped the hell out of the light. If you walked into that bedroom, it looked like broad daylight. And if you watch it, it's one of the most contrasty scenes in the film. And it's because I ND down, I'm shooting wide open, even though my stop is deep. Just because I got this amazing contrast that you can't get otherwise.

When you're lighting at really low light levels, you're not always getting the contrast that you want. And that's what was important to me in that scene. I wanted a heavy contrast. And if I'm just barely have my levels up, I can't really push one way higher than the other and get the background to fall off. So I was hitting Walton really hard. He had an overhead, and then I was blowing a light in through the window, which this was one of my favorite things, because it's screaming on the window, it's night, but there was a mirror on the wall, and it hits the mirror, and it throws across the other side. So I have these two amazing pools of light behind him, plus the light he's in, and it just worked really well. But if I had tried to do that at a really low level of light, you know, stuff starts to get milky and noisy.

With this, I was able to control my contrasts get really deep blacks and make it feel really spooky. You know, there's a, there's the shot before he gets into the bedroom. He's walking down the hallway, and I did this with Walton wherever I could. His shadow precedes him. So if you look in the movie, when he's coming down the hallway, you see a big shadow dropped on the wall until he gets in there. When you see him in the basement with Billy in the next scene, I believe we see him in, he's coming out from behind a furnace. You don't know where he's coming from,

but a shadow comes up before he comes out. So wherever I could drop Walton's shadow before he got there, I did. And even, and this is one that I love. And this is, you know, what you talk about, like watching natural light and watching things unfold. One of my favorite moments in the movie,

he's in a parking lot in broad daylight outside a convenience store. And there's a little boy, and he's hanging out the window of his car with an airplane that he got from Santa. Walton crosses the camera and goes out of frame, and you see the kid in a, his dad, and the dad leaves, and the kid has left, and Walton's shadow is falling right on the

driver's side door. And it's so ominous, but it's one of these things where I saw it in the rehearsal. And I'm like, Walton, you got to stand right here because look at what your shadows. It's like, that's what I'm fucking talking about. It's like he got all jazzed. And I was like, yes. So that was cool. You know, he got all fired up. And when an actor gets fired up like that, it's super rewarding, you know, you just feel good about it. So yeah, it was sort of like a motif. There was at least three times where his shadow led him. which is really cool. The image is not complete in the camera.

It's complete in the D.I. So what was the relationship like with your colorist? As far as post goes, it's really cool because we have a great relationship with Jay Cody Baker, who's over at Company 3, and he did color for us on small town crime. And he's just, he works light and fast, and he gets it.

He got both times exactly what I was trying to do. And so going in to do small town crime, I was a little more apprehensive. I get a little more apprehensive every time I go in with a new colorist. And the experience I had on that movie was awesome because I really, really, really focus on my luts. And I do live grade on set to get things as dialed in as I can. And so when we got into the final grade, it's not like he was pushing to throw it out. You know, we put the base lot on that I had crafted, and then we refined from there.

And it works really well because he's got great instincts. He understands what myself and the directors are going for. and he'll offer suggestions on things, which is what you want in a collaborator. That's what I want in every collaborator I work with. I don't care if you're the third grip. If you've got a great idea, tell me. It's my job to vet those ideas

and get those best ideas on screen. As I said earlier, once in a while, you'll get into a situation where you end up at a location that you haven't been to, you haven't tech scouted, you haven't location scouted. You're not unentirely prepared because you always should be mentally prepared

to attack something you haven't seen. So in this movie, the convenience store, the exterior of the convenience store was one that we had not seen. It was a last second edition. And Walton's character, it was my directive to always keep him as contrasty as possible. And now I got there and I look and the sun is blowing directly back into the front of the building, which means he's going to be completely frontlit.

And I'm like, all right, how do I put a spin on this? And how do I make this interesting? Because that's not who I built the character up to be. And that's where I was talking about he walks around the car and a shadow drop. So we get the shadow, which is cool, because that ties to his character. But then I was like, okay, this is what I need to do. What I want to do is because there's a shot where we're inside the car looking out and the kid is playing with the airplane and Walton steps in.

So what I did was I fired directly back in the sun. So when Walton steps in, it's that flared backlight. And it just sort of like for a second blows out and then dips in and he's under exposed to that. And it just had this great contrast. So like you're saying, you know, your instinct is a filmmaker, especially young filmmakers, are like, how am I going to, you know, how am I going to do this? But it was one of those things where just years of experience told me, okay, put him in a hard backlight, he'll cross into it, you'll get an interesting flare, he'll be slightly

under-exposed the background, and it still stays in continuity with what I was trying to do with his character. Yeah. So that is it for my conversation with Johnny Durango. Thank you to him so much, again, for taking that time out of his day to talk with me. If you saw that version, you'll notice that it looks really nice, and that's because he and I both used our nice cameras and recorded nice audio separately. Going forward, all the conversations are on Zoom, so you'll have to, at least for the moment, so you'll have to forgive any

audio discrepancies. I'm working on finding a way to really boost the production value there on the guest side. But for now, that's just what we're dealing with. Thanks again to Pro Video Coalition for distributing this. Mark Pelly for the theme song, Nate Shrachs for the logo, and And most importantly, thank you for watching or listening. We'll see you next time. Or you'll hear me next time. I should think of a good sign off. Freeman Reference is an Owlbot production.

It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the F&R Matt Vox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truex branding company. You can read or watch the interview you've just heard by visiting provideocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.