Frame & Reference Podcast - 109: "Anamorphic on Budget" creator Tito Ferradans

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Join us for an engaging chat with Tito Ferradans, creator of Anamorphic on a Budget, as we journey through his experience in filmmaking, from researching lenses and adapters to understanding the cinematic language. Tito shares the behind-the-scenes of his process, the struggles and successes he faced, and how his work evolved from a YouTube channel to a popular resource for aspiring filmmakers. We also touch on Tito's transition from computer science to film, a unique experience with Panavision, and his take on anamorphic lens development. In this episode, we reflect on the importance of film history in education and discuss the value of hands-on experience in film school. We delve into our personal experiences of giving bad advice, including Tito's recommendation to glue the inside of a lens with super glue and my suggestion to put a beach worth of sand inside a lens. Listen in as we explore how learning through trial and error played a crucial role in our understanding of the cinematic language. Tito also opens up about the challenges and opportunities he faced while collaborating with sponsors and growing his YouTube channel. We chat about his process of creating short films to test lenses, and the creative approaches he took to filming. Wrapping up the episode, we take a critical look at Netflix's meta trend, discuss our favorite sci-fi shows, and reminisce about our own college filmmaking experiences. (0:00:15) - Anamorphic Lenses and Sci-Fi Shows (0:14:32) - Anamorphic Filmmaking and Research Journey (0:19:44) - Discussion on Anamorphic Lens Development (0:32:31) - Exploring Panavision and Anamorphic Lenses (0:38:54) - YouTube Channels and Filmmaking Exploration (0:50:08) - YouTube Channel Growth and Filmmaking Exploration (0:59:54) - Collaborating and Growing on YouTube (1:13:39) - Film History's Importance in Education (1:17:46) - Action Films to Film School Transition ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow F&R on all your favorite social platforms!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ You can directly support Frame & Reference by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buying Me a Coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coast's 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, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and you're listening to Episode 109 with Tito Faradans, the creator of Anamorphic on a Budget. Enjoy. Are you watching anything cool recently? I started watching Black Mirror and it was, it was kind of weird because I watched the current season? Yeah. I watched the first two episodes and I was like, this shit's good. And then I went and just saw people talking trash about it.

I'm like, am I going crazy? Am I stupid? Is everyone stupid? I haven't finished the conclusion. Yeah. Yeah, me and my girlfriend just marathon the whole season. Because they only do like, well, four, six, seven. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, some of those episodes are brutal. They get in movies. They're an hour and a half long. Just make it a movie. Yeah, yeah. Just do that instead. Yeah.

I really like the first one. And then we're on episode three. So we watched the one with the astronauts. And I was like, and that was a pretty lame episode. Like, I get the references, but I don't. get the vibe i i think it was a good the astronaut one is a good uh like great stakes you know great moral quandary but the ending the ending i was definitely like i knew that was coming but yeah why yeah like you can see it from like minute to you're like oh they switch bodies

cool this is what's going to happen and then it happens and you're like yeah okay where's this surprise i i will say that's well i don't want to get into spoilers for people who haven't heard it but like i uh yeah that's a that's a good one what was the first one again that was where the one is the joan is awful it's when the yeah the woman's life is broadcast yeah that i will say i didn't see that that one coming where where she was where they finally figure out they're one of the layers. Yeah. It's like, I, uh, yeah, I don't know why it didn't occur to me, but that one's really,

also Netflix is getting way too meta. Yes, very true. I'm only a streamer called like streamberry or something like that. Yeah, stream berries. And it pops up in like two different episodes where you're watching a streamberry thing. Uh, they did get it too far. Yeah. Dude, you should watch, uh, because I know you're pretty big, uh, like sci-fi kind of dude.

um extrapolations is another really good i interviewed a couple of the dean i don't think well those episodes will be out by the time yours is out but okay uh they're not out right as we're talking but um oh i guess i could well anyway uh extrapolations it's on apple and it's basically like and the same kind of idea as black mirror where it's like an anthology but um so each episode are loosely linked but they're they're separated by sometimes like 20 30 years and it's and it's basically like if it's extrapolating out like what will happen to the world via climate change and not like what's happening to the world specifically but what's happening to the people in that world that has now changed so it's like each episode's like 2030 2060 2099 you know

oh wow yeah it's it's pretty good some good uh hard sci-fi there that seems very interesting i'm going to add it to the list when it shows up dude uh well the show is out now the interviews aren't but um the okay yeah but it's on apple apple tv is not missing everything on apple tv is good yeah we binged on severance and it was a slow burner like it started we watch one episode like yeah watched another's like yeah and then on episode three we're like oh okay got to finish this right now yeah and it really pays off yeah severance is great silo's great extrapolations is great we just watched the uh michael j fox documentary that's

yeah yeah i read silo i read all the books years ago and then i was like oh this looks familiar and i'm like oh yeah what uh what were the kind of the first uh because i watched your um like college films and they're they're all pretty much sci-fi dystopias which i think like it what because we're about the same age i think i'm only like a year too older than you and when i was in college it was the same thing we were all making like sci-fi dystopias or just the raunchest possible comedies yeah well in most in both of my classes there was people doing like romance or like depression films right and i was like i get it but also you're in You're in film school, and if you've got to push the boundary, this is the time.

Like, make it as expensive as you can because as soon as you're out of here, this is going to cost money. You're not going to have this much access to gear and stuff and people. They're in free labor. That was the big one. So on this podcast, we've definitely talked a lot about, like, the growing age between film and digital. You know, primarily we've always talked about the lens adapters, not the anamorphic ones, but just those giant, like, lettuce or red. Yeah, I use that. Yeah, and it's, uh, and it would make your camera three times as long, you know, you'd lose four stops of light here.

Yeah, it's completely unwieldy. The best part for me is that the image came upside down. Right. And I was like, this is how you frame. And then you'd spend like an hour rewiring your mind to be like, when I went up on left, I got a pen right. And if I want to go up, I got to look down. And it was just mind-boggling. Yeah.

The things we would do for simple. Like when kids complain about how like, oh, this camera is worse than this camera. I'm like, dude, be happy you're shooting on an SD card and you have 24P. Yes. Like anything after the Canon T2I, you can probably say, it's like, yeah, that's good enough. You can make it. Yeah. Yeah.

That was an interesting time to be. college how did you go from computer science to film and then basically back to science it was it was a good time i i was very into video games and i was young and then i was like you know video games or computers if i go to computer science and get to learn and make games i think that's what i thought it's been a while i have a similar thought and it was nothing like it it was just calculus and uh algebra geometry and I'm like this is not what I signed up for and at the same time I started to help what of like my teachers from high school was like he was using video for classes and he was like can you help me out with this stuff so I got into making video and then he'd started to pay

and my friends all got into it so we were like six seven people just all making videos on the weekend and then I jumped into Officer Effect because I was like, you know, I want to make like some muzzle flashes and fire some guns and light sabers. Oh man, light sabers take so much time.

So much time. So I got into that and then within a year I was like I'm going to drop out of computer science and I got to go to film school. I talked to my parents. The good thing is in Brazil

university education like the federal universities are free it's just a pain to get it so i was like i'm dropping out of this course that i didn't pay anything for and i want to go into this other one and they're like well if you want to do film you got to go to the best school you're like okay so the acceptance rate is one person gets accepted for every 35 that apply and it's a pretty hardcore exam so I like studied a bunch and then used filmmaking and photography that's when I really got into cameras that was my hobby during breaks of studying for the test so I learned like aperture so I had a canon XTI which yeah yeah classic and then I got into film and there was a four-year program I hated all the history classes and as soon as I graduated I was like oh man film history

was the best thing I could ever learn. Bring me back that. Bring me the time. And at the end of it, a lot of, like, because it was such a small class, the class was 35 people, a lot of them would be like parings of writer, directors,

and DPs, but people would take too long to develop their projects. And I was already like, I want to get out. I want to go into the real world. and deal with real problems. So I kind of like streamlined my project to fit within four or five different courses that I was taking at the time. So I could use the same project to pass all of those courses, which was a smart move, but also lots of stress.

And that's when I got into anamorphics because during that time, it was the digital revolution and it was Canon 5D. The 70 had just come out. And half the students in the program had a 70. And damn, yeah, it was a lot of cameras. Everybody had one. And they would have the same lenses. It was like the kit lens, 18 to 55, 175, 170 to 200 to 8, that costed like a car. That 514, that is like the busiest lens of all times.

And there was like a 2470, classic too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everybody had the same lenses and they were using the same set. Because we had the film department had one studio where you could build sets. But as a student, usually you're building a set. It looks like a set. Nowhere has like the experience to build and age a set. So everything looks like a set.

And I was like, all these movies are looking the same, including the stuff I made in the last few semesters. what where can I go weird and that pushed me into anamorphic adapters and vintage soviet lenses so it was kind of a mix where I bought a bunch of random parts I was like my budget is $1,500 I'm going to buy three adapters six different lenses everything is going to be like below $200 and it's going to be a pile of gear to go on And I started experimenting and like doing other shorts with friends also from school before I got to the final project. And during that time is when I like went through different combinations of adapters and figured out what is good or yeah, there was there was three classifications. What is bad, like objectively bad, what is good like it works and what I like. So I could like things in the two categories. but I try to be like what is what is feasible if I have good and I have stuff that I like how can I join these two things and push it into a project to make it like visually stand out from the other films that we're making and do all of this with like small crew not like everything that we were doing as students in the film department And I was like, I want to go backwards on it.

Just like take the ideas of composition and how to make a film. But don't use a set, just do locations for everything, figure out lighting, natural lighting for everything, and test these adopters. And just like test on a real project, because if things go wrong, that's how you're going to learn. They can test at home as much as you want to be like, this is perfect. Go on set, breaks on minute one. So that's where I went with my graduation project, which is this alternate reality where, at the time, like, the bus fare had gone up and this caused riots everywhere. The whole city was burning. And I was like, you know, if this kept escalating and the solution was to seal in the city, that's going to be the pitch.

That's, let's roll with this. So we're 20 years in the future. We're following this one character who's been trapped here and we don't know much about it. And I just needed to like set up some hooks and create officially compelling narrative, not necessarily like, oh my God, there's so many twists and turns. The story is so amazing. It has to be a mood and I got to have the chance to test all these lenses and deal with them failing and succeeding. And so I did that. And that's where I learned it's not a great idea to be writer, director, photography, editor, and visual effects artists all in one project.

Yeah, and I was acting in it as like a background character. I'm like, this is not the smartest idea, but we're halfway through it, so let's finish. And it worked. Like, I learned a lot. I wrote my graduation paper, which was 100 pages of preparation for the film, all the things that I did in terms of, like, creating the visual concepts, why anamorphics would play into this, why I wanted to go into anamorphics to make it look different, the process of researching lenses and adapters, the cameras used, which was like a Canon 50D, which because of magic. Lantern. It was filming in raw. It was a wild camera that was already dead by the time I was making the film and at a 5D, a 5D Mark 3, I think, which is full frame and also with Magic Lantern. And you sell all that research now as a PDF, right?

Yeah. So if you are, so the talk about using projects. Yeah, I actually was going to say that. I tried going on your website. Yeah. It sucks because it's been a flight for a month and I've been chasing the person who's responsible for keeping it up and I can't get it back. So it's going to be a minute. But the whole research in Portuguese is out there for free. And the first draft, like, the first draft happened because one time in 2015 I was, I went to see my family for Christmas and I had to go back to Vancouver for school. And I was flying overnight on December 3rd. 31st. So it was new year on the plane. And I'm like, I'm here by myself. There's nothing to do.

I might as well just start translating all of these hundred pages into English as both an exercise and contribution to the community. Right. Because a lot of it was not there. Like a lot of my graduation paper did not exist in English. I gathered from hundreds of different sources and personal experience. And no one had put that all organized and clean in one place. Like, EOS HD was the heart for anamorphic filmmaking. Andrew Reed would post things and test and hack his GH4 or something. So there was no, no central idea.

And then I'm like, I'm going to put this all in my blog and just like, translate a chapter, put it up, translate another, put it up. And for the longest time, it was there. It was, now the blog's offline, but I'm still bringing it back. And it is still pretty reliable. Like all of it still applies when it comes to adapters. And in 2020, I revised the whole thing. Like I had six years of speaking English.

So the quality of the translation improved significantly. And I also got rid of stuff that was like, this is clearly dead. All the magic lantern stuff is like way downscaled and focused more on the adapters and updated information. on adapters. So, yeah, that is one of the things that I sell. It's anamorphic on a budget guide. And it's, I like it. I'm still proud of it, which is a fun thing to say.

Yeah. Well, and you were saying that you were, you know, using one project to graduate multiple classes. Yeah. I mean, I don't think I can name a single person who can sell their research project to people. What? It's true.

I really went all out on this thing. Like, I thought about stopping the channel, a context on the channel, I guess. Right after I finished, yeah, the YouTube channel, right after I finished translating, I still had a bunch of adapters at home and nothing else to do. So I was like in between school and I was like, you know, I'm going to start making videos talking about. these adapters like lens reviews. But I'm going to put as little effort as possible and I'm going to keep it as objective as possible. And like looking back, I can see those were two shots on my feet. I was just like, you know what? Bam. Yeah. But it's a journey. So I started and it was very slow for several years. I always thought it was like, you know, this has got to be my business.

I got to monetize this. I got to make money out of it. And every time I try to monetize it, it would break. Like I would break. I would burn out. Or I'd look at the numbers and be like, I'm putting more and more hours and the returns are exactly the same. So financially speaking, it was bust the entire time.

But in terms of community, it gathered a really strong community of people. like some folks would send in their adapters from all parts of the world like oh wow $1,000, $2,000 lenses they would put in the mail and be like yeah you can make a video about this you can send it back when you're done and I'm like wow the level of trust yeah so those are pretty fun and then everything changed in 2019 when Surrey finally launched their like 15 millimeters anamorphic lens, which was the first lens that was really, really on a budget, like you could buy it with less than a thousand dollars. And from there, we've seen like the expansion of anamorphic lenses and adapters from so many different brands. So now the channel is like

growing exponentially. And I'm just trying to navigate. There's too much to talk about. Well, that's going to be exciting instead of hitting a dead spot and just being like, well, there's only so much you can talk about oval, boca 3D printed inserts, you know? Yes, it's very true. It is very true. I actually have. Sure. When I started my production company in 2015, I was like, all right, I'll just get the Sigma 18 to 35. But if I want to class it up, you got the old lettuce.

Oh, man. It's the old one. It's not the lettuce pro, but it's still also. still use it sometimes nice it's so heavy it's so heavy it's unnecessarily heavy yes and it I talked to lettuce like I had a guy on the channel that was like obsessed about it he was like I will want you in touch with them and I was like cool thanks and he did and I talked to the people at lettuce and they're like yeah we're going to send you these guys and then you can make your video and Love some feedback and how we can make it better.

And then they sent me the pro versions, the 133 and the 1.8. And the 1.8 didn't work. Straight out of the box. It was like there was something not working about it. So I never made the video about that. And the 1.33 was kind of good, but a big hassle. Like it's an adapter and it's a massive one. So there's a lot of the quirks from adapters of like,

you have to focus you're taking lens and the adapter at the same time just to rig it up like the thing is so massive that you're like okay I got to get some lens support I got to bolt this to the rails the pros even smaller this thing is fucking like unwieldy yeah the bro smaller but yeah I told them like lots of things like you can make this smaller you can make this lighter there's no distance markings on this there's like yeah just as one two three it's like yeah it's like numbers and like give me something that I can put like on a real set because this cannot um but yeah it was it didn't go anywhere i don't even know if they still make it every once in while i'll check in because lettuce like we

were saying earlier it was one of the original companies that made like the lens that you know the the the dx lens adapters yeah and they they just have a history of apparently making stuff stopping it and then starting a completely new idea like i think they make fucking tubes now like I don't even know yeah I'm on their website they have this weird gimbal thing called helix sure oh I remember

the helix that seems to be it oh no there's anamorphic adaptures fuel okay let's see they still make it it's what $4,000 oh no no no no no

no I'm not paying that no no no did I pay that there's no way I paid that for this thing I think this I do think this thing was like one and a half though it was up there maybe it was one no you know what I think I got the like nine hundred ninety nine dollar version that came with this stupid uh matte that doesn't hold a mat or if it does I was never given one

certainly doesn't have filters yeah now this map boxes I don't understand it's like I'm doing it for flares and then you put a giant heavy met box around it what is the point where are you going for with And I remember trying to take it off, and it doesn't, like, just, you can see I'm missing a screw. It doesn't, like, disconnect from the thing properly. I mean, it's fun, but, yeah. This is as close as I got to. I have looked into those, the modded helios is heli, but, yeah, like you were saying, now these companies are coming out with affordable, smaller, single unit.

Yeah. But there is an advantage to the modded Calius 44. Like there is an advantage to modifying lenses, which is you don't have to change your whole workflow. You like a lens, you're just like, I'm going to make this a little more interesting. And then you modify it. The Haley's adaptation is like, I can do it with my eyes closed, I think, in five minutes.

I've done at least a hundred of those at this point. And now I have a couple of Panasonic auto-focus lenses that I am throwing oval inserts inside because with the S-5-2 and S-5-2X that they have decent auto-focus. I'm like, you know what? Let's spice up this game and get autofocus with oval bouquet because no one's doing that yet. That is the nice, I will say that is the nice thing about this adapter.

I did a test the other day. I think I had, oh, you know what I had? I had the 40 millimeter pancake on my C-500 because it's a full frame lens, but it's this big. And I stuck that on there. It's a great lens.

And so I put that on the C-500 and then just put the adapter right up against it. So you're holding the C-500 and it just looks like this giant mat box on the front and you have an autofocus animorphic. Yeah. I'll send you a photo. of that because it's a silly looking setup. Oh, I would love that. I would love to see that setup

because yeah, that 40 mill is so tiny. I still love that lens. Yeah. It's a great match for anamorphic adapters, to be honest. Yeah, as long as you don't have to screw anything to it. Yeah, or just like, go ahead and support the hell out of it. Yeah, in the BTS footage of your film from 2013, it looked like you just had at least like two feet of adapter on the front. What was that whole rig? Yeah, so I think that rig is a Soviet lens. So it's a Lomo lens, a proper cinema, anamorphic. It's a front, anamorphic zoom, and it's a 37 to 140mm millimeters T4.5. But it's massive. It's like this big. And I bought one for cheap. That buying that lens was an adventure because I bought it from someone in like Prague and I my sister was in

Spain so I shipped it to my sister and she almost didn't get it before she had to go back to Brazil but she she got it back and then I had to figure out how to mount this because I didn't have EF adapter EF to PL I was still like PLL lenses are so fancy Canon cameras can't do this right so i had to find someone that had any f adapter for that lens and then change the amount myself and learn how to operate it the whole thing that i can't remember how much it weight but it was at least seven or eight pounds of just lens and the cool thing about it is you can zoom and it's parfocal so you could just like crank the zoom on a super on a two-times anamorphic lens and still have your image and focus.

The downside is a T4.5. It's still soft. So I like, ah, vintage optics. Don't we love them? And I don't think I ended up using a single Zoom shot in my pilot episode.

I was just like, this is cool? I got a real cinema anamorphic lens. I am very fancy right now. The fanciest I'll ever be. But I ended up selling it when I moved because there was too much of a hassle to you.

use it. Well, it is interesting how, you know, during that digital revolution, we were forced to use bad lenses because the nice ones were cinema lenses, you know. Yeah. Although looking back on it, I had a Nikon D90 and I had, I still have all my Nikor lenses from, you know, the AIS lenses. And I got from my uncle. I still use them all the time. Like, that's actually the secret weapon if you just want like, it's not quite K-3. 35 fudgy, but it's also not super clinical. It's this nice little middle ground between vintage and modern. But, you know, Nikon's all F-mount.

So I could have used those lenses on my D90 and shot video. But the point I'm getting at was even the D90 had just, it was so soft. You got 720 and it was just really, even if you had the sharpest lens in the world. So we were getting sharper and sharper and sharper lenses. And then cameras just subtly got so good. And now we're like, no, no, no, no. And now we're getting worse and worse and worse lenses. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

It's like they're dialing down or like we get lenses where the purpose, like the concept of anamorphic is aberration, imperfection, is softness, is you have to stop it down to get some depth of feel, some, like, I can tell that this is in focus now vibe. Right. But the animorphics that we're getting now from most of the Chinese companies are like super sharp. of the gaitically perfect yeah across the whole frame and then cool but then i have to degrade it in post i have to like make this look bad somehow um so that's been the struggle and that's where i really appreciate like the folks at atlas because they do a lot of research i interviewed dan for this podcast oh nice yeah dan is great we had so many good conversations and they go and talk to the people who are using the lenses or who want to use the lenses

and ask what do you want to see what kind of flares what kind of distortion what kind of bocary looking for a form factor like the mercurries are a pretty smart move as full frame lenses that are so tiny and anamorphic like it's hard to find full frame lenses Phenema style for frames lenses that are that tiny even less animorphic right now I've got these nice how do you like it

the Lauer Rangers I'm enjoying them they're kind of long but they're pretty light but like you said like optically perfect parfocal don't really breathe but um yeah not optically not very interesting

but you know the fall off is nice and stuff but To your point, it's like this is the first full frame zoom that I've seen that's even remotely affordable. Otherwise, it's like Cook. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And that was the game before Atlas still. It was like, oh, you want anamorphics?

Well, you can talk to Cook. They're the cheapest. Just 30 grand per lens. Yeah. Or rentals. And in Brazil, I could not rent. It was impossible. Like renting anything for a.

simple as it was, uh, it would be thousands and thousands of bucks. So it was not an option. It was like, you either own the gear that you're going to use or you use what's available for free. Yeah. It's the, yeah, how did, how did run, you know, running the, uh, ostensibly the main animorphic community on YouTube? How did the, the release of the original Orion's kind of shake things up for y'all it was a very interesting time because forest was an active member of all the animorphic groups and he was like testing weird stuff we had a call before he entered a business with with dan and like that they became atlas it was just like for us doing his stuff and it was really fascinating to see all of that like come from from the community and become something that will

change the community. So really fascinating. Still, I was like, I don't have $10,000 to pay on a lens. I love that this is happening. Still can't afford it. But like I kept in touch with them and followed up. And there's still to this day like rumors of like, oh, the Orion, they're not really designed. They're made up of things. You're like, calm down, man. That's what Panavision does. I actually know from a fact that a certain Panavision lenses are cobbled together from existing cinema lenses. Yep. I can't say a word about it. I made a video about me neither.

And I'm still waiting to hear from their lawyers. I hope I never do, but I'm still afraid. Oh, that, yeah. I mean, as long as he is, all you got to do is say allegedly. We learned that from, uh, D's arrow. Just say allegedly. Good to know. But yeah, because I was filming at Panavision.

and I was brought in by people from Pan of Vision, Vancouver. Oh, that's how you get in trouble. Yes. And it was like, it was a situation where like some people that were new to Panofision but knew me, they're like, yeah, we want to facilitate this. And then like got the ball rolling. I went there with a few friends. And then I went there again to like film the actual video.

And then as we're filming, I can see one of the guys just getting more and more uncomfortable. And I'm like, I got to do some damage control before I leave here. Otherwise, they'll be like, give me your SD cards and I'll smash it right now. Was it just that you were learning too much about their process or what was, why were they, uh, getting nervous? They're extremely open when you're there. They're extremely open to talk about what it is, what things are, what they have, how they make it. Um, but then there's navigating that that you're going there as a, as a, like an individual. And the fact that I am making this to go on a YouTube channel that has 40,000 subscribers. and constantly talks about the competition pretty much because everyone wants to beep out of vision road that when I think anamorphic I think of the C series yeah yeah I think most people think of the C series and so during that day of filming there I had like three 20 minute videos planned for that visit and I was going to show like the projector room how to assess lenses on a actor. I was going to show, talk like extensively about the primos and everything that goes in them

and break down all of the animorphics and how they're assembled, allegedly. Yeah. And how all of those things go on. And as I was going and like noticing the shift in the mood, I was like, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to cut this short. I'm going to do one video. It's going to be something and I'm going to like figure out what I'm going to lose. Everything that I'm like, this could be useful as like a trade secret, I'm going to get it up. And had a conversation with their marketing person from Panavision, Vancouver. And I was like, okay, I'm going to, like, I'm going to cut everything that I think would be bad for both of us because we don't, neither of us like lawyers. So not get them involved.

And I'll just make this to be like an interesting thing about Panavision because it's so closed off. that there's not like people talking having access to bedivision to talk about it in a non-sponsored way where it's like oh yeah we had pedivision lenses for this hundred million dollar film he's like no the name of the channel is anamorphic on a budget and i'm talking about pedophysion like where is this going to go yeah well i suppose you could say like well that's what they don't want but i was going to say you could talk about how to get close to a C series. I think, so this actually brings up an interesting question that I have. And that is, you know, obviously, flares, Boka, those can be modified. The sort of shape of the lens, you know, the bulge can be changed. You've mentioned Vashy's After Effects profile. Now, of course, just fucking trash.

There's just, it's been so, there's been construction trash. Sorry to people. But if I close my window, it'll get 90 degrees and you're so fast. Oh, my God, I don't die. It's brutal. For some reason, it's great insulation in this house. But anyway, flares, boca, the sort of mumps. I wish Bashie could make that, could make that for Premiere.

So I don't have to hop over to After Effects. I'm sure there's a way to do it. Yeah, yeah. I've done it in Resolve. There's like a... Resolve is so easy. Yeah. But the one thing that doesn't, I at least don't know how to translate it, is the kind of fall off, the anamorphic fall off, which is an optical aberration, not like a thing that I can add.

And I was wondering if, is that just one of those things that can't be faked? Pretty much. And the reason that happens is because you have effectively two different focal lengths that you're working with. You have your vertical focal length, which is like, let's say, it's a 50 millimeter two times anamorphic. So vertically, you have the field of view of 50 millimeters, and horizontally you have the field of view of a 25 millimeter. And that is going to optically, like the fall off will be of the vertical, of the longer lens. It will be of a 50 mil. But since you have all that width, it's,

seems that you have a wide shot with a very narrow depth of field like you have that special fall off and it it's the whole point of the process like you can't cheat uh i'm just oh yeah for my wides i'm going to use a wide spherical lens and then i'm just going to crop the top and bottom but that's going to stand out so much yeah so so much and that's one of the things i haven't figured out how to how to hack just yet without a crazy amount of masking and like and it still looks quite right i have done and it still does not does not do it yeah it's uh it's crazy what it feels i suppose nice uh because all the wild shit we used to do to bump the production value up as students and then now it's like you can kind of pick any camera you can

get a vintage a vintage nice i like those those nichores you can pick up for a hundred two hundred bucks yeah and and as long as you have some good production design lights are cheap you know and small yeah i don't i don't really know what do you do to kind of bump up production value now besides obviously like anamorphic stuff what do you what do you what do you think when you're thinking production value at modern times yeah i think production value now comes down a lot more to the knowledge and the understanding and using the cinematic language than the gear itself like the the gear barrier has been conquered now it's like how you understand ways to tell a story visually how do you make a shot memorable through blocking through camera

movement through lighting changes all of those things are what what's going to push the boundaries and it's it's cool because a lot of it you can learn by trial and error um like i've been to film school three times and the one thing i take away from the three experiences is you're going to mess up in the beginning so just get it out of the way as fast as possible like yeah try to make as much as you can as fast as possible. And you're done with one thing, you're like, I hate it, but I learned this. So you take the thing that worked

and you work on all the things that failed and you're like, okay, next project, I have this tool, I can bring these other attempts. Like I wanna make a film noir because that's a very student thing to do. Yeah, yeah. Briefcase full of cocaine, kick a hobo, single red rose, the whole thing.

Yep. Yes. And you go and you're like, what is the, language and studying a lot of that or like studying by watching YouTube videos or by watching films and being like, oh, I really like how, I don't know, would Punch Drunk Love be classified as a noir? No, Kiss Kiss Kiss, Bing Bang. Kiss Kiss Bing Bang.

I would call a neo-noir. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just the wrong name. Not visually, but I was sitting here going Punch Drunk Love.

Yeah, I always mistake the two titles. Kiss Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is underrated. That's a great film. Yes, so entertaining. But you can take story elements or pace elements from that and be like, cool, I'm going to bring one of these ideas into my film. And visually, I'm going to make it look like no country for old men. All Take Places in Desert. And then figure out what is that you have to do to make a desert look good.

Like, oh, yeah, I'm going to use super long lenses and play into the temperature, like the heat ripples, distorting the image. Or I'm going to try and do some visual effects and, like, get really wide shots where I'm extending the set. All of the tools are at our reach, and it's much more of teamwork. work, like your team is going to make or break your film and how you approach storytelling. The stories they're being told, the team, and the technical site, the creative technical. Yeah. Well, something that's been said a lot in the world and gets a lot of pushback,

but it's been said on this podcast, too, is like, oh, if you want to make your thing, grab your cell phone and go do it. And everyone always gets pissed off at that because they're like, but then it doesn't look serious. And I'm like, well, as just as you're saying, write a better script. Because like everyone wants, I mean, it was the same reason I think you and I both wanted to get anamorphic or any lens back of the day. I was like, well, I know my story sucks ass. I just want it to look good. And then people will take me seriously.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I didn't want to be a director the whole time. Like I was very happy being a DP because my goal was I like to make pretty pictures. Right. I don't, like, if the story sucks, but it's visually good, I'm happy. That's why I have a YouTube channel. There's no pressure in telling a good story.

It's like, make it look good. This lens helps me. This lens does not. This is what you can do. And like, try to keep it objective. So, well, yeah. There's also the, I mean, moment doesn't really make cases anymore. But I still, I have the moment anamorphic adapter.

So even if you want to shoot on your cell phone and shoot anamorphic, you can do that. Yep. And I did that. I had the moment case until my phone died recently. So I had to replace it. I was like, okay, it's time to move on. I still like, I did this whole, like on my Instagram I'll do like years of stuff. I guess this is the year of not really posting that much. But like two years ago, it was all black and white. It was really educational in terms of just seeing light. Like it made me a better DP, you know, way, more than a lot of other things just because suddenly I was like constantly looking for light. And I would compose images in black and white, even if I was shooting color, because then you see

contrast better and you're like, okay, that's a more dynamic image versus like getting distracted with color. But then one year it was all mobile photography. I wrote a few articles about it. And I was using those moment tellies. And they kind of have like the wide was just, I mean, it was cool, but it was just wide and sharp. But the telly. had like this weird fudginess around the edges that was kind of vintage-esque that I was shooting on a pixel three and it's like it's kind of a sick lens yeah yeah my phone was a pixel too and I used their animorphic for like more than a year and it was fun it's like it's fun like making movies with your phone is something that I am conceptually for and in practice

I'm like yeah you should definitely do it I'm not going to going to do it but you should do it yeah well i think that advice is literally just to like get people to as you're saying make those mistakes to like just get and get in the rhythm of failing yeah in very low stakes easy environments versus yeah you know i think we all did this in film school where you put so much i mean your your uh project coming out of film school looked great mine looked like dog shit because i did it last second uh also great uh Speaking of that project, like, that was something that I learned at New York Film Academy that you did was like starting off with a bang, like high production value start, and then there's like two people in a room. Yeah, yeah.

But you see that high value production value start. You're like, okay, good. This is a good movie. And then you're willing to listen, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I learned that on just like cutting reels for visual effects. Like you put your first, your best shot first and then you go slower.

but your first shot has always to be like the most capturing thing you can think of yeah yeah there's there's a few oh i did want to my brain is all over the place right now it usually is but i didn't want to ask about because i haven't really interviewed anyone who has like a pretty successful youtube channel and i was wondering what um you know a is that's how do you keep that creatively satisfying obviously educate i get really stoked on education you know and learning things so i think that's probably for you one thing but how do you keep that creatively satisfying and also what are some of the challenges in working within an ecosystem like youtube because obviously anyone can start a youtube channel but defeating the algorithm or whatever it is like getting seen seems to be

incredibly difficult yeah yeah those are great questions so uh on staying uh getting like creative fulfillment it's the ongoing battle like at first I was just happy that I was making videos and like getting that stuff out there because I'm like now I don't have to worry about this people will find this information it was just

just education and then I started to get feedback like your audio sucks and very constructive thank you very much because that's the internet I get I get you talk too much a lot oh wow on YouTube talk too much bro you talk too much get to the point and i'm like go to someone else's fucking channel yeah yeah it's like if you're here you're you're choosing this package this is what you're getting like yeah for me is like i will go off on very technical things that

i'm talking way too fast and showing graphics that are moving way too fast to follow and then i'm like well i guess that's what i do yeah exactly in my like hit pause yeah uh uh But then, like, for the first several years was like getting the technical side correct. Like getting better camera, better lighting, figuring out a way to make the videos consistent, better sound, learning how to be a better editor and coming up with tests for the lenses. Until I started to be like, you know, this should be a business. I should make money out of this. That was like every time I've had this mindset, it's been a mistake.

If I'm doing the channel for fun, I can do it forever. If I'm doing it for the money, I'm burning out in no time. So in 2019, I spent six months without posting. I was like, I just don't want to do this anymore. Every video is the same. It's my girlfriend walking in the park and touching some leaves and sun flares. And I'm like, enough of this. I'm tired.

This is not going anywhere. It doesn't make any money. It takes too much time. I need to get a job. So I didn't do anything. And then in December, I was going to New York and a guy from New York said, hey, I'm in New York. I'm in New York. I watch your channel. And I have an Atlas Ryan.

I have a 40mm. Have you ever tried it? And I was like, no. He's like, well, if you ever come through, just let me know. And you can have it for a little bit. And I was like, okay. So I was going to spend Christmas with my girlfriend's family in Connecticut and coming in through New York. So I messaged him. I was like, hey, Nick, how's that Orion thing?

Is it going to, like, are you for real? And so we met at Grand Central Station at 8 a.m. on like a random weekday. And he gave me a case with a $10,000 lens. Like, he was giving a lens to a person he never met before, run it on a like a station. And I'm like, cool, thank you. Here's my number. I will be back here on this day and then we figure out how to return. And it's like, that's great.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And I was like, oh, my God. Yeah, Grand Central too, where you could literally disappear. Yes. And I was like, that was a joke of like the people who are watching this channel, like the material that I'm putting out, they do trust me as a person. Like, but beyond the, oh, this is an internet. personality this is a real person that I trust and to me that meant a lot so I had

the lens for two weeks and then I met him again on the way when I was heading back to Vancouver and gave him the lens and like thanked him profusely took several months to edit the videos and I was like you know what this is going to be my goodbye like reviewing this lens is going to be the goodbye to the channel and I'm done and decided to go to NAB because I always wanted to go to NAB but I never did And I'm like, ah, I'd as well go. So I went sitting at a talk by Adobe, the guys at Corridor Digital aren't just like doing their thing and talking. The talk is over.

And then Sam is like, I love your channel. And I'm like, nah, nah. Like, yeah, with the lens mods and the amorphic stuff. I'm like, he actually does know what the channel is. And that's when I realized I had no idea of who's watching the videos. who's learning from it, whose career is changing because of them for better or for worse, for like for being broke because you bought too many lenses or for like being successful because you use this new tool and that like slingshot you forward.

So at that point, I was like, I'm going to go back to it. It's not going to be a business and it's going to be on my terms, which is if I'm not having fun, I'm taking a break. And started to push for like more creative approaches. like if I'm going to test a bunch of lenses I want to do a short film get the people get like some sort of a script even if it's not the most brilliant thing like a three minute thing because it's not painful to watch and I kept doing this and then since then I've taken a couple breaks but now with the mercuries now before that in 2020 I started to do the cookbook

which is a series of videos that are, like, foundational. So you can watch those. They're not product reviews. They teach the basics, like history of anamorphic lenses, how the things work internally. What do you have to think about when you're choosing a camera if filming anamorphic is one of your purposes? And then there's two modules that are going to go more into optics

for sphericals and for anamorphics. And now I'm working on a module about rigging. So it's like, what is, you have to account for if you're rigging for anamorphic lenses and a lot of it has to do with rigging in general like how do you put a camera that is reliable on the field and that has all the spots for all the tools that you're going to need to one make your life easy on set and to make your cruise life easy on set um and then talk about being on set and post production and all of those things like i've tried to get sponsorships for them it's a hassle but yeah three

years and 100 episodes of this that year old years will probably be like episode 111 or something like that and uh somewhere around there but uh yeah no sponsors it's just man i'm giving here education for free uh atlas jumped on board for the first and the second module which is great collaborating with them like i learned a lot i had lots of technical questions that they were able to answer in a heartbeat they sent me the lenses to play with uh i got to keep a 40 mil which is my favorite Yeah, that's the good one. Yeah. So, like, finding the sponsors is very hard, but it's the project that I'm putting forward as, like, this is where I strive because it's, it's pure education.

I don't have to cater to anyone's message of like, oh, you got to show how amazing our lens is. I'm going to show your lens is amazing by simply using the lens. But know what I always hate with, because I write for. pro video coalition so i do a lot of reviews and stuff and the one i always hate is like don't compare us to any other product i'm like oh your shit exists in the vacuum great yep yeah exactly so there's that um and then recently with the mercurries um i my sister works in film she moved from brazil here as well she started off in the camera department as a trainee and over a year she's gotten to camera operator and then people recognize the last name

from the channel and it's like you know this person and she's like yeah that's my brother so i've got a lot of people saying like yo i want to help with the channel and then i started to leverage all of this industry expertise into video so it's like okay we're going to make a short and it's going to be something but technically we're going to take it seriously the story might be garbage but technically we're going to like play as if it's real and then we're going to see where the gear succeeds where it breaks what opinions do we have based on industry experience and that has enriched the process a lot like i learned a ton the videos become more interesting i think like having some sort of narrative test is better than walking in the park and just like waving

in the wind because like no one is going to actually someone who's buying a lens is less likely to use it filming randomly in the park and more likely to use it in a narrative sense so if they can figure out what are compromises they're going to have to work with or strains that the product has been working on set that's way better that's way more value and that's what I'm trying to do just like staying connected with people and working on way more narrative driven projects for the channel not like oh yeah this is going to be my short film I tell Tell everyone, this is going on a YouTube channel.

Like, if you're getting stressed about it, it's not worth it. Yeah, yeah. Very low stakes today. Yeah, exactly. There's actually, when I was in college, because I'm not a writer, there was a guy, I'm sure it's still out there. There's a guy who wrote like, I don't know, a hundred short scripts, you know, five, ten minutes. And they're just all online. And he was like, yeah, these are for students to use people, whatever, just make sure you credit me.

Oh, wow. I'll have to, I'll look that up for you because I bet you could just steal a bunch of those. Yeah, I've been using script revolution, I think. And there's another one, like a catalog of script website where you can go and just, you have to credit the writer and that's it. But a lot of the scripts are just so out there where for me, what's been working the best is doing the Rodriguez list, which is like Robert Rodriguez approach to. filmmaking you make a list of all the cool assets that you have access to and then you make a

story that uses those elements yeah so i'm like okay i have a motorcycle how can i use this what do i do i do with it yeah before i actually do want to talk about resources but before we get there i did want to circle back and ask about like growing a youtube channel how do you how do you do you do that because i'm sure a lot of people are interested in like that process from a nuts and bolts perspective yeah so that has been a stop-and-go thing every time i think about it as a business i come up with a strategy and i use that strategy for like synchronizing instagram and planning schedules and going on facebook and reaching out to people and that works which is very upsetting because it's also super tiring like it's good that it works because if it was tiring and it didn't work that would suck

But a lot of it has been extremely organic for the channel. I can basically every year the channel doubles. That has been happening for the last three or four years. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I've been noticing that. And it's great. It's super good to have like a not doubles, 50%. So one and a half times. that level of interest like it helps that there's a ton of new anamorphic lenses that make

people go what are anamorphic lenses on YouTube then there's basically me there and no one else talking about it or like people go in one-off reviews but in the channel like even if I'm not directly comparing one lens to the other you have the context of like this is the same person and i know kind of how they think so i can make my own conclusions from watching these two videos uh about two products i'm thinking about right yeah and reaching out collaborating with people is immense in terms of growth both like online i've done a few things with mitchie stern who does vintage lenses in france yeah we met when i was in paris 2019 as well. It was great. I met, who else did I collaborate with? During any, I showed

up on a bunch of random people's videos. But like reaching out and creating ideas to work together on episodes that will go on like two separate channels and connect through the subject. Works really well and like talking about it. You're reaching out to people. and being engaged, answering comments, and trying to promote things without going out of my way. Like, I'm not going to go and be click baity because I don't agree with it, even if it is for my own personal success.

I'm like, I don't agree this as a mindset. I don't want to encourage it. Right. So just promoting it and consistently talking about it, recently focusing on like more close range groups, people that i know and would like to work with uh or the people that i've been working with like all these industry people that have suddenly joined to work on the channel uh their friends would be like oh i was watching that video and you were there like you know that guy right and they're like

yeah that's kind of cool um so i don't have a recipe i think i fail more than i succeed in terms of growing an audience and the only reason i'm striving is because i'm doing it on my terms yeah if if i wanted to have a successful youtube channel i would have given up by now right it's like it's just because i really like doing it so yeah my advice is if you're thinking about doing a youtube channel make sure that you really like doing the work yeah and that is enough if that is enough you just keep going eventually it's going to go somewhere or you're gonna get tired and be like yeah I don't want this anymore but it's wild to think that when we were in college YouTube basically had just

started yeah we were still I was still putting videos on daily motion and fucking wow yeah I was I had a lot of Vimeo stuff and then I abandoned yeah it's real the death of a giant right there it's their website is so hard to use why am i paying you so much money for to not be like you click you're like i would like to edit this and it's like watch it and like no edit and it goes watch it on a different page no yes that is that is the that is the fin your experience um and you have to pay for everything now everything it's so and then also at which i've learned which i might just nuke the vimeo altogether but like if you stop paying

they just delete or paywall all your stuff and you can't even get to lock your stuff from yourself yeah i have a bunch of lucked stuff on zanio so i'm like yeah they're still paying for the fucking storage for it too it's not like this is a good move for anyone yeah it's like a kidnapping like oh you want you want your stuff back well here's the ransom note yeah and now i guess i guess they're focusing on businesses now which whatever but because their player i do i do like their player better than YouTube. Yes. Especially the way that... Swapping videos. Yes. YouTube needs to get it together on the swapping videos. Like one one fucking misspelling of someone's name at a lower third and I got to go nuke the entire thing. Yeah. That's how it goes. That's how it goes. Well, I guess if you're like a big, big YouTuber, they kind of halfway give you, I remember there's a, speaking to the corridor

boys, I remember they, uh, there was a video that they chopped its section out of that, that, the captions were still, uh, of that removed section, but the section was gone. And because I had the same moment that a bunch of people in the comments had, which is like, I remember you guys talking about this. I, I'm not crazy. I remember specifically this conversation. And then someone was like, turn on the captions. It's still there. Wow. Yeah, I think you can't cut pieces out of YouTube, but you can't fix them. Like, you either cut the sound or you cut the section or you, You leave it or you delete the whole thing.

Yeah. Yeah, they're not. YouTube's funny. Oh, but the point I was getting to is it's crazy that it was just a thingy. And now there are people who were like the live off of it. Live off of it. But also like there are people alive today who are functional adults who never lived in a world without YouTube. Yes.

Yes. It's such a strange thought to me because to me it's still just a website. You know, it's not like the internet. Like YouTube is like the internet to some people. Yeah, it's a thing that it was always there and it just exists. I think this is where like the first two episodes of Black Mirror really caught me because they felt really grounded. They were like, this is stuff that happens today.

Like we are this close for those things to actually happen in real life. Like the obsession with true crime and like that episode is even meta because they're making a film about something and the character's like no we should make it about this crime like everybody want to know about this they're like well this sucked for my family and well it's going to make you faint did it yeah yeah that episode's so good yeah and funny too that's the weird thing it's a disturbing episode and it's very funny yes yeah yeah it's very true and and i think that's why I liked it because it's it feels almost not black mirror it's like this could just like the missing submarine that all the memes are talking about right now right like those two episodes

of black mirror feel that are in the same realm as the missing submarine yeah it's like things just went horribly wrong somewhere and that's like yeah i i got to say to anyone making like jokes like it the circumstances surrounding that submarine are absurd so i get why it's like funny but those people are for sure dead and we like i'm just seeing way too many like well making too too light or like yeah yeah like yes i mean screw the guy who flaunted safety measures and made the thing and but like they're for sure dead but yeah that's a bring the room down but it's those are yeah hopefully that's a crazy thing about submarines everyone's like i hope it just collapsed instantly like that's the best case scenario that it just went and they were going yeah

cool just everything all the other options suck yeah yeah and people keep like i was just as at the bar room we were having this conversation someone was like well why don't why don't they just go rescue it? And I'm like, because there's only like two things in the world that can go that deep. We don't go that deep. That's why we're not made for it. Yeah,

it's not like the, the, the U.S. Navy doesn't have a submarine that goes that deep. James Cameron starts. You have to get a hold of James Cameron and he's busy making Avatar. Yeah, too busy.

I can't handle that right now. I did want to, before I let you go here, I did want to, you had mentioned the Robert Rodriguez, like, list. And I know, he wrote a book, right? Yeah, Rebel Without a Crew. Yeah. Then there's also, I'm sure, you know, the DB Rebels guide, the all of the students,

well, Stu Mashwitz. Yeah. Give me a message the other way. Oh, did he? Yeah. I was at NAB and I posted something. Oh, no, I left to comment on his post. And he was like, oh, man, you were here.

I would have loved to meet. And I was like, holy shit. Stu Mashwitz knows me. What the fuck? The three books you mentioned are basically my go to when I have a problem and the tales from the script behind the lens. No, behind the lens. Oh, Jay Holbin's right. Jay Holbin.

Yeah. He also did a shot in the dark. No, no. Yes? I have all the books over there, but I'm not going to go get them. But behind the lens is a good one. Jay Holbin's great. I interviewed him for that.

He's a friend of mine now. I confidently call him a friend now. He used to be the coins. I talked to him at NAD and the biggest compliment I ever got was, yeah, watching your channel doesn't make me want to punch the screen. And I'm like, that's it. That's only I could ask for. I still want to make something with him and he was like, yeah, just reach out and figure out what it is.

And I haven't figured what it is that I want to work with Jehovah. Yeah. Have you read the whole Sydney Lensman? Like, have you gone through it or have you only? I started and then like, I don't have the good time right now and i want to dedicate full attention to this thing but i think i just have to compromise and read it in parts i i just know to it whenever i have questions because i can't same thing i can't read it like a book it's a reference manual but it is so like i always have

arguments with people online about fucking speed boosters oh it makes my thing full frame i'm like no it doesn't stop they're like it's the same thing it's yeah i one comment on one of my videos a guy big long post and at the very end he goes again incredibly easy to test and i was like buddy so i emailed matthew douglose and i was like can you please respond to this and he goes and he just made a response it i was like thank you and i just copy pasted it that is amazing yeah because yeah yeah those three books like the city lens manual is for the future but the dv rebels guide and rebels out Drew were foundation of books for my filmmaking career. The TV Rebels Guide is so genius.

Like, Stu Mashowitz is like, here's production value for you with just a tiny bit of post. Right. Just like, 10 minutes of After Effects. And that's what got me into After Effects. That's like, yeah, I could do more. Yeah. Him and Andrew Kramer. Yes.

Oh, God bless. It's hard. Yeah. Do you know what's funny is I remember for when I was playing, a much bigger film for my thesis for college. I called student. I don't know how I got his phone number. I think it was like in the DV.

I don't know how I got his phone number, but I called him. And I'm, you know, whatever, 20 years old. And I was like, hey, I'm doing a student film at Arizona State. I was hoping you could be the DP. And he just laughed and he goes, uh, I'm good right now, but thanks. It's like, okay, thank you.

Man, serious guts to that. Amazing drive. amazingly stupid at the time. That era of my life was very like, anything's possible. You're just call people. Whatever. Very common. But I did want to ask, are there any other books that you found? Because I've got a nice little library. I'm always trying to add things to it. But any other books that you've run into that you think are good resources for the filmmaker? Actually, there is a book called Vision. And I can't remember the name of the author. Hold up. Let me pull this up. Or it's not that I can't remembers they can't pronounce well fair enough vision color and composition by hanspeed baka

and he worked at disney for countless years in their 2d animation department and he talks about composition like nothing i've ever seen before he talks about it in animation terms but everything he says you can apply to lighting and blocking every single thing And a friend gave me this book and it's been my mission to give it to other people. So like whenever someone mentions something that's along the lines, I'm like, you should check out this book. Here's a copy. Oh yeah. Yeah.

It's super, super good. I'll have to, I don't think I haven't. No. Check it out. The one that I'll recommend to you because it was recommended to me by Eric Mezershmet. What is Hitchcock by Perfoe? Oh, yes. I've read several segments of this book.

Oh, okay, cool. During film. That's cool. Oh, got to. Yeah, no, that one, I interviewed him like six months ago and six, seven months ago. And I was like, oh, I had just bought it maybe. But I had heard like he recommended it somewhere else or something like that. But I was going to, I'll send you up a thing.

It's very cool because Hitchcock and Truffo have very different approaches to the films they make are incredibly different, but their conversation is extremely eloquent and like interconnected. It's like they really know the craft of filmmaking disconnected from the films that they make, and that is truly fascinating. Yeah, yeah, no, it's like you were saying, like the getting into. film history only realizing that you needed the film history knowledge when it was too late yeah it's so important it is so important that is the one thing i missed the most in the last two times i went to film school uh it was just like no history and i'm like no history how am i supposed to move forward i got to learn from someone's mistakes yeah well and it's it's the frustrating thing when people go like oh you can you know don't go to film school you can learn everything online and it's like you can

You can, but you won't have anyone to tell you what to look for, and you certainly won't go searching for a film history. You'll just land on, you know, today's review of the fucking GH5. Yes. Yeah, you can learn technical a lot without going to film school. Like, I even recommend learning technical without going to film school. Volunteer on a set. Just go one day and, like, watch stuff. Go in every department and see what happens.

But for me, the value of film school is. film history and the connections that you make yeah and the safe space to fail yes uh which a lot of film schools don't promote which i find weird like this is where you should fail you should encourage your students to like try really weird stuff and don't punish them for it yeah because what i what i witnessed is like oh we tried this and it didn't work out so our film sucks and then that reflects in a bad grade and i'm like that does not sound right like you try it hard you think failed not because of you but because it was an experiment so you learned a lot that should reflect in a good grade like yeah the way of evaluating uh film students has to be different yeah i mean i haven't uh

when i went to as u at the film school i think we had like two dvxes and then eventually we got a 5d that everyone had to fight over um yeah it was it was very minimal you know uh and now they have like a fucking full-on studio with like stages and greens like it's wild what they've got there because they got a ton of money and it's now called the sydney portier school of film and arts or something like that so i i want to go back and because me uh the film school started in oh six i got there in 08. And so I ran into at NAB. I ran into my old editing professor who now runs the whole thing. And he was like, we need to have you guys come back and tell all these stupid kids what they're taking for granted. And I was like, I would love to do that. Yes. It's always good

to tell people, just like your life is so easy and you don't know it. Right. That's, yeah, the old man screaming at clouds has definitely become part of my aesthetic I've noticed. Yeah. But it, well, But to your point, it would be interesting to go back and see how, because I was graded the same way. Like, they would give you a task. And if you did not, if you failed that task, bad grinned. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're trying to do different, you're like, oh, yeah, I just don't want to.

If you do different and succeed, excellent, amazing, everybody loves you. If you do different and you fail, that was a waste of time from the beginning. And I told you so. Like, bro, that's not how it works. Yeah. I remember there was one kid who, uh, tried different. and I don't know what planet he landed on, but it was out there. And the only reason we could tell that he like phoned this in is not because it was very like conceptual, you know,

it was just like kind of a string of shots. But like we knew he phoned it in because the credits sequence was outside the bounds of the screen. Like it went, it was really long, like each thing, it was just very long. And it went up in like one bar and we were like, okay, guy. Like, you tried, you tried to get us here, but you phoned this one in. Oh, yeah. And yeah, in Brazil, we have like the European tradition of film. So it's like slower or drama, experimental stuff.

And I was very not on board with that. I was like, I want action. I want to do like gun fights and car chases. That's what I'm here for. And so there was this one other guy who would, he started a YouTube channel too. and then he killed it, but it was greatly successful in Brazil. It was the zombie kill show. And every week he would have a little like one minute episode of this post-apocalyptic world

where someone ran into zombies and they had like did something epic about it. And it was like lots of visual effects, lots of action. I was like, this is dope. This is where I want to go. And this is how I ended up in Canada. Yeah, the man, I do really miss the like kind of. wide-eyed excitement of getting like dialed in an after effect so there's another company tv a lamb dv i think one of a uh i think they became a bigger editing company now i can't

remember what i think sony ended up buying them at the end of the day but um yeah all that was all so much fun to just because that was i think it sounds like you were kind of the same thing where like the matrix came out and like all these visual spectacle films we're like i want to That's me with that voice. I want to do that. Yeah. I go buy trench coat a bunch of airsoft guns. Yeah.

And just not, I have so much tape of just me and my friends in fucking trench coats with airsoft guns in locations that make no sense. Oh yeah. And you nerds, you know. Like the way you have available. Yeah, bank parking lot. It's just places people wouldn't see us, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. I know we've gone over time, so I will let you go, but I end the podcast asking everyone the same question, which is, you know, a lot of times on podcast, people go, oh, what's the best piece of advice you ever got? And the answer is always like, stick with it. So I want to know, what's the worst piece of advice you ever got? The worst piece of advice I ever got. Man, I've gotten so many. So much stuff. The worst piece of advice I ever got. on a one of them at least yeah one of them i think one of them was almost the entirety of the last time i went to film school which was the mindset of be a director like a director has to have answers you must know all the answers about your film and you command the crew and like that threw me into an identity crisis because i was like i don't want to do that but i still want to make films I just don't believe in any of this.

So it was such bad advice that pushed me into meeting people for good advice, where I, like, for my graduation project, I was like, I don't want to do that. What do I do? And one of the professors is like, you open, open the process. Just like, instead of having it vertical, just horizontalize the whole thing. Just give everybody same amount of power and say when you don't have solutions. Yeah. So, yeah, that turned out to be the best piece of advice I ever got. So they're interconnected.

There you go. Let me see if I have one that's really funny, though. A lot of, I don't know, I've given lots of bad advice, does that count? I've given advice. You should glue this part inside of a lens with super glue. like that's something I said it's on in one of the videos and

years later it was like don't do that that was a terrible idea for multiple reasons like the super glue emits in vapors and it sticks to grease

so if you have greasy fingerprints on the lens because you're just touching the holocaid the super glue will crystallize there and you're done isn't that how they do it I remember there's like a movie

where they they maybe it was CSI or something where they're dusting for fingerprints and they use super glue oh wow i hadn't even that's what because i didn't know what the fuck was i was like oh okay cool but they like aerosolize super glue it's interesting i didn't know that was an actual thing it's an actual thing like yeah whatever i use super glue like you always have that white fog beyond the area of the super glue and it's just a vapor attaching to grease wow all right yeah that's not good advice Don't use... Don't use...

Don't even super glue. Don't disassemble lenses on set. Things are done. Lenses are so... Like, they're built, like, those rangers, they're built so strong. And then if, like, one thing gets loose, it's all game over. Yes. How'd you put a beach worth of sand in this?

You're like, uh, I put it on the ground for a second. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've ripped through a helicoid of a very special contacts 28 mil. once because i was like i got to put a lens gear on it so i 3d printed it was a little a little too tight and i was like i'm just going to warm it up and push it but in pushing it i did not focus the lens to infinity and that put a ton of stress on the helicoid so every time

i would focus in either direction it would eat more into it to the point where the lens became a brick and i had this brick lens for like three years it's i think it's now a two thousand dollar lens. So, yeah. That is the one thing that I have to say, you and the rest of the, like, lens YouTubers are really fucking up for everyone is eBay prices. Whenever you come out with a video, eBay prices just get bonkers. Yes.

I think that's kind of why I stopped. Like, people would come to ask for advice. Like, how much should I sell this for? And I'm like, I don't tell people what to sell their lenses for. You label it as you want. I don't want to influence the market more. than I already do and now that we have so many new anamorphics like the prices are coming down especially for adapters but all sphericals are gone it's it's YouTubers and rehousing companies

because they're like like zero object will be like oh yeah we should rehouse these next and then they'll go and buy everything and then by the time they announce it's already scars so it's instantaneous that the price jumps because it's like oh there's little but it's cheap and then there's less but I can charge more and then it's like go on yeah I actually I interviewed Alex

for the pod I had a whole lens I think I told you so I had a whole lens so it was like Alex Nelson Dan Cain's um uh dude from Tokina Ryan Avery and Jay Holbin

were the four interviews but I really want Zero Optic once I get you know a fucking loan I want I want Alex to re-house my NICORs. Yeah.

Their NICOR re-housing are good. They're so good. Yeah. But that is, I think they're like, it's like 14 grand or something. Yeah. Like total. I think it'll be like 14, 15 grand for the,

for the three of a set. Yeah. That makes sense. Because that's the thing too. It's like I have, I have like a whole set of nightquards, but I only ever used the, basically the 35 and the 50.

Yeah. 24 and a 28 and I barely touch them. Yeah, I have because I'm on a full frame. So it's like, you know, I have a full set of contacts like 15, 21, 28, 35, 50, 60, 85, 150, 60, 85, 135 and 180. And I'm like, I should rehouse this. And then I look at the price and I'm like, I should sell this. Yeah. I barely use them, but it was such a hassle to collect.

And like, there is emotional investment in there, which is the thing that has. happens when you're like, you've had lenses for years. Like, I'm invested in this. I don't use it and I don't collect it. Potentially rent them out. I tried, but it's, I just don't want to deal with it anymore. I think it would want the space now. Well, yeah, so if you have a, you're in Vancouver, find a rental house close to you and ask if you can just park the set there. And they'll give you like 50, well, I'm just telling you what the local house does for me, but they'll give you roughly 50% of whatever the rental is. And then you just leave it in their gear cage.

Good to know. I might. I have some people I could approach with this that. Yeah. Do that. Because I mean, obviously people would want a rehoused one, but I'm sure there's plenty of people would hear that they're the photo lenses.

And they're like, they'll fuck it. Like, I want that for my music video or short film or. Yeah, because they look special. Like they, the glass is fucking amazing.

So. Yeah. Um, well, It was fucking great talking to you, man. I'd love to have you back on at some point and just keep the chat going. But definitely stay in touch. And yeah, thanks for doing the show.

Thank you for having me. It was a great conversation. I was very insecure at first, but I had a great time. Thank you. Awesome. That's best compliment I could have. And I definitely have to go back for all those interviews that you mentioned just now. I'm like, I could hear those people talk for hours.

So I'm going to go back and check them out. And you will. All right. All right. We'll do. Thank you, brother. You too. Bye-bye.

Frame and reference is an Albot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. As this is an independently funded podcast, we rely on support from listeners like you. So if you'd like to help, you can go to buy me a coffee.com slash frame and ref pod. We really appreciate your support. And as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.