Frame & Reference Podcast - 11: “Together Together” DP Frank Barrera

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

On todays episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast, Kenny talks with “Together Together” cinematographer Frank Barrera. You might have seen Franks work on shows like “Reno 911!”, “Children’s Hospital”, “The Mindy Project” and much more. You can see Franks full filmography on his IMDb page. Liking the podcast? Leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app! 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, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today I'm joined by Frank Barrera, the DP of the film Together Together, he's also shot a bunch of comedic television, you know, like the Mindy Project, Children's Hospital, the new Reno 9-1-1 additional seasons. Great, great filmmaker. This is kind of an almost a sequel to last week's episode where I wasn't able to get the screener for this film and we ended up talking for three hours. So this will be another very edited down podcast,

but it is a great discussion. You know, cinematography is kind of one part, creativity, one part technology, and one part interpersonal skills, you know, psychology almost. And if last week we talked about the technical side, this week is the interpersonal side, I feel. We had a great conversation about that element of cinematography, you know, the on set work, as it were, with others and working together. and all that kind of stuff. But we talk a lot about a lot of things.

Like I said, it over three hours. So, as always, I like to keep these intros short. So I will shut up and just let past me and past Frank. Fill your earholes with words. Anyway, here is my talk with Frank Barrera. So just kind of to get started, how did you get started? What brought you into the world of cinematography? Well, you know, like everybody, it's a long story.

Oh, wait, is this a three-hour version? Yeah, this is, yeah. So go ahead and send it. There's different versions of the story, different details of the story. Sort of typical kid growing up in the suburbs of Long Island in New York in the 1970s and 80s. and you know fell in love with the movies and never really thought of it as a job or something that you could do until I sort of had a moment I guess I could share that story I had a moment where where I learned suddenly that filmmaking as artificial and and sort of pretentious and pre-planned and all of it, it still can make people feel.

It could move people. You know, it's this really powerful thing, which I think most people obviously take for granted. I, when I was a senior in high school, I got a book given to me by a teacher who was trying to give me some inspiration and direction. It was called Swimming to Cambodia, which was a book by Spaulding Gray. And the book was about his experience acting in the film The Killing Fields,

the 1985 Roland Jaffe film about the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia. It's a great film, great story. And anyway, so the book is about Spaulding Gray is a comedian-writer, performer and he writes his funny book and it's about his experiences being in the movie and there's one scene in particular where it's just a few pages long in the book it's sort of a thin book to begin with but there's like a scene in the book an episode in the book where he describes a scene that he's in and it's the evacuation of Nome Pen the capital of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge is advancing on the

the capital and everybody's panicking people is like this is 1972 I believe it's a very dramatic moment everyone's trying to get out of the country who can because they know what's it going to happen if you don't get out you're going to wind up in a camp tortured or killed so it's a very heavy scene but in the book Spauldingray talks about it he sort of deconstructs it in a very funny way he sort of has a very New York I'm from New York. So he has a very New York sensibility, sense of humor. And so I had read the book a few times before I saw the movie. And then I was a year out of high school, not knowing what I was going to do with my life. And I finally got around to seeing the film. And the scene comes along.

And of course, I was sort of anticipating the scene thinking, oh, this will be interesting to watch this because I know so much about it. And sure enough, you know, it's incredibly moving. And even though I knew all of this sort of behind the scenes, a lot of comedy actually about how the scene was done, but with the combination of the photography and the editing and the music and the performance and the directing and the special effects, it's this five minute long scene that is just so powerful. And when I saw that, that was the moment for me. I said, oh, I want to do this. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn't know

anybody in the film business. I had no idea that there was even a job. I just, I just got so attracted to that idea that you could create something that is ridiculous. It makes no sense. I won't get into the three-hour version of this where the details of this particular scene, which it's just, you know, it's absurd. But when you edit it together and you have the collaboration of all these, you know, great talents, you can really move people. And so I got, I completely had no idea what I was thinking. I just said, ah, that's what I want to do.

And that was the beginning of my journey to go into film school and working in the business and, and then that journey ends right here where I'm talking to you. Well, hopefully it doesn't end. The, yeah, I had, I had a similar, you know, where it was, you watch a film, you know, for me, it was the classic, you know, Star Wars, Indiana Jones kind of thing. And then, yeah, just going. I've learned since then that what I really wanted to do is get into prop making and like production design.

But in my head, it was, as you were saying, like, you don't know what it is. You just know you want to do it. And so for me, it was like, I want to do the visuals. And then I learned cinematographers do visuals. I was like, I guess that's it. And just, and you know, cameras were more accessible to me than building props at the time. So I grew up in a tiny little town in Napa Valley. But was, so what attracted you to when, when you started realizing like, um, what

cinematography entailed and that kind of thing, was it, uh, was your initial attraction to like lighting or was it more kind of gear-based or was it, you know, what avenue first was interesting to you? Because, you know, depending on what department, especially, people come up in, they'll say that's the most important thing, you know. Right. That's an interesting question. I guess my answer is I went to film school. I went to SUNY purchase film school in New York, and it's a director's program. So I went in as a director thinking that that's. what you do and then by the end of my second somewhere in the middle of my second year it's a

four-year program and somewhere in the middle of my second year i realized that i was not crazy enough to be a director and so sort of cinematography was the default position um i was like i can't be a director at the time and honestly i still feel the same way i you know as much as i love the directors i've worked with and admired them and they're some of them are very close friends of mine and they're crazy. I mean, you have to be, you know, to make a movie, you have to be a little bit crazy. So it was sort of a default thing, and then it became just learning. So I guess, you know, the first step was once I got out of film school was going into lighting

because that seemed to me to be always knowing that my ultimate goal was to shoot, it seemed like being in the lighting department seemed to have much more value than being in the camera department. I've always thought, I mean, this is kind of rough, but I've always sort of felt like if you come up through camera and then you start, you become a cinematographer, you retain 20% of your, this is a very scientific analysis, by the way. you retain 20% of your skills and you jettison 80% of your skills.

Whereas if you come up through the lighting department, you retain 80% of your skills and jettison about, you know, 20%. So there's definitely, as I've gone on, I definitely have a deficit when it comes to the machinations of the camera department. Also like, you know, cameras and the technical side of cameras, So that's where, you know, a top-notch first AC comes in to play. But I'm, you know, I sort of, I didn't know what I was thinking other than that, and I'm glad I did that. You know, I came up as a gaffer and lighting to me became second nature.

And it also seems like, you know, if I could get a, you know, in a low-budget situation, If I could get a camera package together and somebody to help me work the lenses and the camera package, I could personally handle the rest, which, you know, there's people can debate this, I guess, all day long. But I would rather have the skills of a lighting person than a camera person because at the end of the day, nobody cares what camera or really nobody cares the lens of the camera nobody cares about that because you don't see it i mean you just see the lens obviously you know you can have some uh lenses with a lot of character and artifacts and all that of course but um but really the fundamentals is is lighting 100 percent i hope i don't upset anybody by saying no well i'll i'll tag on to that

because i when i was in film school uh i started just after high school uh and you know they taught us 16 millimeter. And then, but when I got into college, 2008-ish, you know, the red had just come out. The 5D had just come out. And so the focus immediately gravitated towards cameras. And people were already kind of hobnobbing, you know, the DVX with the lens adapters and the XL2 was a big thing. I had one of those. Dark, dark days, dark days for. Terrible. I lost jobs. In the early 2000s, I lost jobs because I, again, somebody would call me up and say uh you know start talking to me about a potential job and then i'd ask him like well what are you guys planning on uh what camera are you thinking and like well we own

some five ds or we owe we own a DVX 100 with the 35 millimeter adepa blah blah blah blah and then i would uh argue with them about it foolishly and uh and tell them why i didn't think that was a good way to go but of course it was stupid because that's what they were going to do they own the camera that's what they were going to do. And then I wouldn't get that job. But it wasn't, I just, it was so frustrating, dealing with that. And I never really understood, I mean, I understood why it was happening. But I, I was very dogmatic about, you know, if you're going to shoot,

like my first two movies were two-third-inch chip cameras. It was, my first movie was with a Panasonic Vary camp in 2003. you know, 720p with a canon E&G zoom lens. And, you know, that film projected at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. And it was gorgeous. And I even had a few people come up to me afterwards and say, oh, it was so cool that you guys shot film, you know, which is a stupid thing to say.

And of course, you know, whatever. They were just trying to say that they thought it looked great. And they're like, well, of course it wasn't. But there was like this short, there was a little window there where a lot of low-budget movies were being shot with these two-third-inch chip cameras. And some people were using adapters to put 35-millimeter lenses on them. And I felt, through my research, I felt like I'd rather put a lens that was designed for that chip than put a lens that was designed for super 35-millimeter format. Well, you would lose, you know, what, a stop or two of light?

It was flipped upside down. Pulling focus was a nightmare. Couldn't get wide enough. You know, even a 20, whatever, even an 18 millimeter on a DVX was, DVX wasn't super 35, right? That was. No, DVDX was a third inch, one third inch. Yeah.

That was, and they had, you know, the metabones or whatever, the rocket. Red Rock made one. Red Rock, lettuce made one. Yeah. And I maybe did one little short film with one of those, like a DVX with some 35 millimeter shit, and I just, I just said I couldn't do it again. And when, you know what it was, it was the, the Sony, the X1. Yep.

When that first came out, it had a lens that was designed for it. It was a half, you know, a half inch chip, a relatively, you know, pretty inexpensive camera. And I remember feeling such relief because it, felt like there was a change coming where people you know and i did a little research about that camera and they they they talked to real cinematographers who um and asked their advice about the lens and about the camera and um and so that was the change and it only got better you know red came along pretty soon after and um and of course Alexa and the rest is digital history as they say. Well, but that also goes to what you were saying about, you know, coming up in the camera

department versus lighting. What has changed for lighting for the past 20 years, let alone 100 years or other way around? But, you know, besides a couple fixtures, you know, LEDs versus hotlights, basically. Whereas, God, how many camera things have changed over the years to now the camera is almost irrelevant? You can shoot on anything now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was a time there where You get a call and during the 2000s and somebody would always say, hey, have you ever worked with X? The producer would ask me if I'd ever worked with a particular camera. And I would usually lie and say yes, and they get off the phone and make a bunch of phone calls

and try to figure out, well, what's going on with that camera? And that was such a weird time. I should actually look at it and try to come up with what years those were and when it started, when it ended, probably started around 1999, and it probably ended in the late 2008 or somewhere in there. I don't know when. I'd say 2012 when the Alexa came out. Yeah, I guess that's my timeline.

And people would say you've got, the people would want you to know a camera to make the producers feel comfortable with hiring you. And of course, today, nobody, I mean, you know, at a certain point, like if 2012, whatever it was, at a certain point, They just stopped asking because every eight months a new camera would come out. And so it was obvious. We're all going to have to learn the new software or the new protocol or whatever it was. And then Alexis seems like they really moved, you know,

they really moved the ball down the field in terms of having a menu structure that made sense. And it had a real effect. You know, everybody always talks about the Alexa, you know, other camera manufacturers. They'll have an Alexa Lut or something, you know. So, yeah, dark days. Those were dark days. And it's amazing that it ended.

I honestly, I'm almost sort of a cynic and a pessimist in general. And those were dark days. And I was really, because film was dead, basically. And, you know, like you said, I learned. on Super 16 and did some 35 millimeter work and I have made some features, a couple of features on film and it's wonderful for all, you know, the obvious reasons. So it was always sort of, it was there was always this frustration and a sadness about digital, but we got out of, you know, it's okay. It's okay now. We're good now, yeah.

When you were coming up, was there anyone who really helped you kind of craft your lighting style? Like, would you say you have kind of a style of lighting or is it always like anything changes based on the project? Or is there like kind of a thing that you like to do? Well, I think, first of all, you know, we always talk about mentors and I did not have one. you know my uh my education was um in the in the uh in the foxhole you know in the trenches and a low budget movies as a gaffer in the late 1990s um in early 2000s in new york and um i basically would look to uh dPs that i worked with uh or if i was working for a gaffer as an electrician or a key grip, I would look at what they were doing.

You know, that was the best education. Like, you know, what does a 1K open face going through a 4x frame with, you know, 216, what does that do? What does it not do? And just looking at it and saying, oh, okay, you know, and you file that away. So never had a really fancy education in that way. It was always just seeing the directors and the DPs and the gaffers that I worked with. So that's how I sort of learned.

And then in terms of style, I guess I kind of come down, you know, in general, I'm a cynic and I'm a purist, I suppose. I don't think DP should have a style. You know, I think that as much as I admire off the top of my head, Robert Richardson's work, really love it. i love it you know um but it is weird that like you can see a scene and say oh that's robert richardson um i don't know like i'm still trying to wrap my head around what that means but for me personally uh it should be about the project you know the there's that idea that the the everyone should be supporting the director and the producer if we're just talking about movies right so everyone should support the director and the producer in the um

pursuit of making this movie and so I don't I think that um you know in terms of style the style I think you know actually the style for me is how you conduct yourself on set and how you work in during prep and and how you how the day goes that's that's the style for sure it's a combination of um of uh onset morale is a is important i mean it sounds so obvious right but there are i mean i worked um over the years i have worked on and also have heard many stories and i'm sure you've heard them as well uh of people who've worked on sets with dPs or directors uh who are angry a lot of the time uh and are difficult people um and are impulsive and you know no matter how talented they are um they are difficult people and um they are

difficult people to, to collaborate with. So, um, I'm not a difficult person. Yeah, the ego problem. Look, I mean, I got as much of ego as the next person, but, uh, my egos, uh, I have a long, my long game is, is I want to survive. And so I, I want to make nice, you know, I want to play nice. So I like to have a good and, you know, a, um, I don't want to say happy, but like, I want to have a pleasant experience when I go to work.

I want our crew to have a pleasant experience. I love music. I mean, I always forget the guitars there, but I love music. Music's really important to me. And so I play, when appropriate, I play, you know, I have like a little speaker with my iPod. Yes, I have an iPod. I still got the first one.

Yeah. Is it, did the hard drive still work? Yeah, no, I replaced it in the battery. Dr. iPod? The, yeah, no, no, I did it. I just pride the back off. Oh, you did it? And so you put a new, you put a new, a new SD drive in there?

No, no, it was still, I did this a handful of years ago, but it was still the spinning drive and then just the new battery that you could buy on line. Well, there's a guy, Dr. I put, not to get up on a tangent, with Dr. iPod, here's a plug. Dr. iPod, he's in Hancock Park. This guy will, for 200 bucks, he'll put in a new drive, but you can't get the spinning drives anymore so he puts in a CF card he built a ribbon that connects a CF card a 128 gig CF card to the motherboard so for 200 bucks you get a hundred 28 gig CF card and a new battery it's amazing so but anyway so yeah I love playing music on

set when appropriate of course I you know I like to have fun most of my work is comedy almost all the television I've worked on is comedy so there's always a light mood anyway and so I like to keep it light

I like to hire key crew members who who want to have fun you know but there's always that like that fine line between having too much fun you know you don't want everybody like chatting

all day long people having the right sensibility. But I do feel, you know, the style is making sure that people are enjoying themselves, people are being listened to, people are being respected. And I mean, I have been told a number of, by a number of different line producers that one of the main reasons they like to hire me is because they like my key crew members that I bring along because, and this is actually stuff that happens offset, you know, just like negotiating the rate for the rentals on camera and lighting and all that, and trying to negotiate, like, just having people who are just like they're not, it's not an aggressive, you know, situation, which of course exists. There's a lot of

people who are very aggressive, vendors who are aggressive, and that's, it is what it is, you know, but I don't want to live my life that way. So I try to create an environment on set where the crew feels, you know, like a little bit of a family, you know, a little family vibe. I want to make sure everybody's friendly. I've become very close friends over the years with people who I've hired. And then this really, all of this is leading to the most important thing, which is creating an environment on set where the director and the actors feel like they can get their work done.

Right. And creating an environment where there's a freedom for the director and the actors to do their job. and so I guess that's that's a rambling thing but my style is personal is it's a personal style and making sure that people feel you know safe and and and loved and that they're that they're having good time and that they want to be there and I've you know I've had the unfortunate experience infrequently but there's been a couple times where I have made mistakes hiring the wrong person

and you know I've had to you know I've had to fire only twice I've had to fire somebody because they were literally well not literally but

poison they were literally poison but they were poisoning the well and they were going through both of both times they were going through a lot of personal struggles and it was a bad time for them and I right we all recognize that everybody recognized that this person was going through a difficult time um and um so but you can't have that on set you can't have the outside stuff

coming in you know you got that many sort of temporary family and you got to keep it like you were saying fun but still on the beats you know how do you how do you how do you work on especially if you've done a lot of television this is a great question for you I feel um how do you move quickly? What are some like some things that have helped you? You know, obviously a happy crew is not going to be dragging ass so much. But like what things come to mind when you're like, all right, you know, we only have so many takes we can have on this setup and then we got to move. You know, are you, are you for instance, lighting, you know, for 360 nowadays, you can kind of do that? Or do you have like kind of a shorthand with your

crew that allows for that kind of speed and efficiency? Yeah, I mean, the answer to that, I guess, varies. But hopefully, hopefully, you know beforehand when you're going to be in that situation. So when you're in prep, you know, oh, well, this day or these days, like it could be like four days in a row. Well, you know that they're going to be tough, a high page count. You know, let's say sometimes in a TV show, like in a comedy TV show, some days you're doing. you know 10 12 pages a day I mean you do the math like that you you take lunch it's a 12 hour a day you take lunch out of there loading in loading out you don't have a lot of

time to do something like a 12 page day for example so but you um hopefully you're a d I've been incredibly lucky that I've worked with some great ADs who uh who you know, who identify these things and they're able to shepherd us through those things. So when you know that you have a big day, you got to come up with a plan. You know, you have to have a plan and maybe it is the 360. You know, there's actually a scene and I know you didn't get to see together together, but there is a scene where that actually happened where we had, actually I'm not even sure, I should find out how many pages it was.

It was a ton of work and it was it was in a sort of a, we're sort of making fun of sort of a hippie-dippy, um, Lamaz's birth class space. So we shot it in a yoga studio. And the idea was that our main characters were going and they took, this is like, uh, they took, they took, a couple classes in this at this place so it was a ton of pages and uh no windows so we couldn't even do that you know i love you know i love natural light and so to to just like uh create natural light you know like a big especially for comedy uh having a big soft source coming through a window and in drama as well i love it in drama a big soft stars coming through window and then you could that's your base and then people can either be looking at that or looking away from it or in profile or whatever you want but you have to just start with this big beautiful light we couldn't do that there there's no windows it looked terrible um so great location yeah it was a terrible location and um so we had a plan so that the answer is you know you got to come with a plan so for that instance our plan was to basically we had to build a grid uh over the

set. And you know, it was a yoga studio. It was probably maybe a 40 feet by 30 feet with some brick wall, which was, you know, nice. And then some white. And we tried to do the best we could production design wise. And we basically built a grid and sort of lit 360 in that we put units. We put both soft and hard units, we put, what was it? We put M18s in each corner. And then in between the M18s, we put some light mats, some light mat force. Those are getting popular. I'm hearing about those all that. I mean, they've been around for a while, but like, I'm hearing them deployed all the time now. They're great. I mean, you know, kinos, we use kinos forever and they have replaced kinos, you know, for the most part. You can control them. And that was also another, you know,

side note. This, together together, this movie was the first time I've ever worked with Illumiere, the DMX app. Yeah, the app. And Chris Tonkovich was our gaffer. And he spoiled me because you know unbelievable like the especially in a low budget movie where you're moving really fast and invariably what happens is you're you work work work for 20 minutes you've done all the major lighting and tweaking and now you're ready to shoot and then you look in the ip so you look in the monitor and you realize boy wouldn't be great if we could just take down that one light just a third of a stop, maybe, maybe a half a stop. And Chris was right there with his iPad.

And within 30, and it became a routine, he would make sure that within 60 seconds before we shot, he would be standing right there at the monitor with me. And he could just make these immediate color and volume, you know, intensity changes. So it was incredible. So we had in that yoga studio scene, we had those, all these units.

and basically when people were looking this way we brought these we turned those M18s off we turned the backlights on you know and wherever they were looking we made sure people were getting a back edge and they were getting some kind of side key and we were able to control them

now I'll be honest it's not my favorite you know it's not my favorite in the movie it's actually it looks like TV is what you know it looks like it looks like you know like a 30-minute single-camera studio show, which is, you know, it's a look. But there's a reason why those shows do 10, 12 pages a day.

You know, you have a setup and you can. So the answer is, you know, you got to have a plan. But I guess a deeper question would be if you don't know that you're in that situation, what do you do? Right. So if we know we're going to be in that situation on day 12, great, I can come up with a plan. We can all come up with a plan. But let's say something goes wrong on a particular day where you thought it was going to be a relatively straightforward day. And something, who knows, you know, an actor shows up late or a, or the truck, the camera truck gets stuck, who goes into a ravine, you know, who knows, something terrible happens.

Right. And now you're stuck. you think fast I mean you know you um it's I guess you know you

that's where your experience comes in you know there's no way to manufacture that man you know it's like I can think of a many times where that has happened to me and there's been times where we're in this situation right now we have three hours

to do a really important dramatic emotional scene and we thought it was going to be a daytime scene and had this beautiful light coming through the windows but we're behind schedule so now it's a nighttime scene and we're not prepared for that and everybody's going to be up against his wall and what do we do right and that's where your years of experience come into play and that's when you come you bring your key grip and your gaffer and your camera operator and you say we got to move really fast

and you guys just got to trust me on this one and this is what we're going to do and it's going to be okay but we got to move really fast and it's those are the times where you I to be honest that's sort of when you become

I don't want to say an asshole, but quicker, you got to become a little more stern. A little more stern. And what's great is that if you, you've built up this, this equity with the crew by being, you know, and that's not a put on, like I'm a good person and so I, I treat people, you know, with respect and love. Sure. But you really make sure you do that because there's going to be times, where there's going to be days or hours where suddenly you're going to have to say,

okay, guys, we now need to move it. And you're going to see another side of me. Well, and I, you know, I assume it's just kind of the difference between having the time to be kind and not having the time. You know, you don't have to be mean if you're being short. But if you've worked with them for so long, I would assume it's easier to go like, all right, I don't, I'm going to come off angry. I'm not. I'm just being expedient.

Yes. Yeah. We all have to get on the same page. So, but there are, you know, simple things. I mean, you know, it's just, it's, it's, it's, I don't really think, you know, it's a, it's a good question. And I think that it almost sounds like a cop out to say, well, it comes down to your experience. It's not a comment out. Sometimes that's the answer. It's sort of like, it's like knowing what's the fastest way of making this, um, I'll say this.

This is maybe a good answer. When you're in prep, which is my favorite part of the process, you have no limitations. You know, you know, so you can create a language. And so you create the language of the director and the producer. You establish that.

And then you you convey the, the language to the key crew members, including the production designer, who's also part of the language making. And you make sure that what I like to do is I like to make sure in prep that everyone understands the language of this film. And you just repeat it. Like when we're on tech scouts and we're having meetings, you just keep on repeating things. Like, well, remember, we do XYZ. This is, you know, the first act of the film is going to be all soft and warm and fuzzy. Remember, we always talked about that. Remember, remember, remember.

And then there's this transition. And then the third act, it becomes hard light and it's darker and colder. You know, something, you know, like, for example. And so you talk to the AD understands this too. And everybody understands it. I don't want that to be any surprises. Everybody has to understand the language of the film. and the great value of that

is when the shit hits the fan and now suddenly we lost our location you know something everything's gone wrong right well what do you do you fall back everyone knows the movie we all know the language of this film and that could be the

set director that could be the key grip that could be the gaffer that could be the camera operator everybody understands what this movie talks and looks like. So now if all of a sudden we have to change the location or change the time of day, it becomes that much more easier for us to do it.

And then ideally, when the movie's edited together, nobody notices. Anybody looks at that scene and just thinks, oh, it's, you know, it feels like the rest of the movie. and nobody it wouldn't even you know so it's um i guess so the long-winded answer but i think it has to do with um it has to do with understanding the language of the film deeply deep understanding um of what and and it could be all these different little things about framing or about where does the light come from is there an eye light is there not an eye light and is there a reason you know having reasons

for everything um never nothing is willy-nilly you know we right uh It's like, although there is room for improvisation, but it's like, it's like music, you know, you, you're still within a genre of a song, but you can improvise. And as long as you know what key you're in, I guess is the analogy. Sure. If you know the key, then you can do a little bebop, maybe, if it's appropriate, but you're going to stay in that key. Well, it sounds, you know, it's about the language, I think. Well, and it sounds like involving everyone, you know, there's the, I don't know, I guess this doesn't really happen anymore, but, you know, getting everyone together to watch

dailies I've heard was like a really important thing that doesn't happen anymore. No, it doesn't happen anymore. I mean, you're lucky to even watch them. I mean, like, I've done movies where we're on such a tight schedule that I don't, what's the point? Because you're not going back to shoot something. Right. you know um i'm always a little sometimes a little surprised when i'm doing like a small movie

on like a three week schedule or something and um and after the first couple days somebody asked me hey have you been looking at the dailies i'm like where are those why am i what no i mean i don't say that but i think to myself no i say something more diplomatic and like oh i haven't been able to for well because also you're working you know 13 hours a day and you've got to sleep and what really is the point of uh of watching the tallies you can't do anything about it anyway unless there's a technical issue of course and and then that's the job of you know that's the one thing i will do is uh is make sure it's to confirm that the daly's report is positive and that there's no weird technical problems uh that anybody saw it is

one of the great things about digital, right? So we're shooting. We just shot that. All right, I just saw it. I know that it was in focus and I know that it was, I know that it was exposed properly. The dailies, right, the tradition was, we don't know if it was in focus. We don't know if it was exposed properly. We don't know if the registration was, you know, fucked up. So there's a whole bunch of reasons to watch that of the dailies that we don't really have anymore. So yeah, I think it's the prep. It's more important now to make sure that, like you said, make sure everybody's on the same page during prep.

It's such a, you know, it's this collaborative. Everyone talks about filmmaking as a collaboration. It's a collaborative art form. And the success, I mean, look, this is why, right, look up any of your favorite directors and cinematographers and filmmakers, you always see the same thing. It's the same, the director works with the same DP, the same editor, the same sound designer, the same AD, you know.

Yeah. There's a reason why, because everybody, the shorthand, right? You learn the shorthand, and it only benefits for when the shit hits the fan and then everybody knows the language of the film. It's almost like, you know, if everybody knows the language, let's say the director breaks an arm or something. Right. Skits out for some reason. Clearly, I'm not a writer.

But let's say the director disappears. The director gets abducted by aliens one day. You know, in theory, the cinematographer should be able to at least maintain. some semblance of what that film is on that day, the shooting of it, because you should be intimate with where they are in their head, where the whole movie is creatively, the language, you know, the language, the language, the language. It's the most important, it's the most important thing. The language is absolutely the most important thing. And a movie lives and dies on whether or not it has a cohesive language. Well, as long as the script is good,

there's a cohesive language and it's honored and maintained, you know, throughout the shooting. Sure. I've got a question for you because I actually, you said it earlier, and it's something that I believe. What musicians or bands would you say have influenced your cinematography the most? for me it's queens of the stone age josh hami josh hammy's approach to music has influenced my filmmaking in a lot of ways that i think what is what is that approach exactly um so like one big one is i am a big fan of escapism you know uh josh has said a number of times that uh his music or music in general or the kind that he likes is like an ice cream parlor or an arcade you know people come in and start talking about real problems and you go shit it's ice cream parlor shut the

fuck up you know um and i always love that about film that it could transport you places and and there's a another phrase that i use a lot is um i don't know how this can translate visually but uh hard enough for the boys and sweet enough for the girls you know something that's fucking cool but isn't so aggressive that it's uh right puts other people off right right right the strong feminism kind of thing in terms of loud music yeah yeah I'm a big you know rock metal guy so do you let me ask you do listen to music all day long you know what so no but when I don't I find myself getting anxious and angry and it'll be weird where I'll start to listen again you know maybe I haven't been driving for a while

especially this year you know I'm not driving around a lot yeah and so I'm like oh I got to prepare got to repair so I'm like reading and I'm like can't listen to music or I'm editing something. I can't listen to music. It'll distract me. And then I start getting like, antsy, you know? And then it'll, and then one day I'll be like, I just need to relax day. And I'll play music. And it's literally all day flipping records, Spotify, whatever. Did you, did you grow up here? You get on the psychiatrist couch now. Yeah. Did you grow up with music all the time? Yeah. My dad was a drummer. He was in drum before the whole thing, got me into drumming. and then I you know as a drummer it's difficult to practice you know we had a drum set but it's like

you need other people you can't so I started to get into guitar and was okay at that but yeah and I was kind of a latchkey kid at the same time so there was just a lot of spare time and you know I was on the internet but this was early you know late 90s early 2000 so it wasn't there wasn't as much distractions. So there was a lot of time to just play music and explore the space, you know, build stuff. Yeah, I said, I mean, I also grew up with music all the time. And now I have two kids and there's music on, you know, constantly. And I hadn't really thought about it, the effect of music until as my kids now are teenagers. And now I'm starting to think, you know, my wife and I are sometimes we have these conversations like well what did we do like how did

you they're basically the kids are cooked you know there's really nothing more we can do so we're starting to look back and say well what did we do that we thought was good bad ugly whatever it was and so i have thought relatively recently i've been thinking wow you know um i've uh brainwashed the kids to think that having music on all the time is a good thing and you know the effect of that right is you and they're happy kids so they're well-adjusted normal kids so they associate happy days with you know with music as as do I so you know you associate music with a normal situation like you're saying so without music you start to get a little weird I've actually very recently I've been trying I mean literally in the last week I've been trying to not listen to

music um sometimes because i'm like you know maybe i should it's just a different you know experience to try to like listen to my surroundings without the music um and all is that all that is to say to answer the question i i don't really think i may i will think about it more but i don't i don't think um that there is any particular uh musician uh or music even that I think of, it's just, but you know, like I was saying before, I do, while we're lighting and setting up, I love playing, you know, like jazz or maybe some classical music or some other, you know, maybe a wide range of stuff. And it's partly to give, I mean, for lack of a better phrase more of a party atmosphere when you're on set so people are enjoying themselves and really

i'm enjoying myself like that's what i want to hear like some new orleans you know dixieland jazz or something while we're we're setting up and of course you got to be careful you don't want to be too loud because people need to be able to talk and i definitely i've definitely have gotten you know the stink guy from an ad or two over the years where they're like turn it off We're not, this is not, you know, Lollapalooza. We're trying to, but, yeah, I don't really think it's interesting because, and it's weird, because I am, music is so integral. I'm also, you know, I'm an amateur musician, and music is so important to me, but I don't think about music. The one thing I will say with music and cinematography, it's that muddy waters,

uh once said talking about playing the blues he said you know it's not the notes you play it's the notes you don't play and um he i'm sure he stole that from somebody else who stole it from somebody else because there is a school of uh of art uh a philosophy of art that um the um the omission of information is can be very powerful yes so it's like you know putting somebody having a beautiful light and making sure that the actor does not hit that light for example they're only partially hit by that light or something like that you know um the idea that um when working especially in you know dramatic uh or dramatic material um you know thinking about about what's outside of your frame, for example,

and how that information can help support the storymaking. So there's that little sort of jazz, blues idea of the notes you're gonna play. So there's a musicality to it, also the idea of a false note, which is super important to me, is to avoid the false notes. And, you know, that could even be, you know,

as harsh as it is, I mean, we've seen, and I know we've all been, we've all seen lots of short films and low-budget movies. And one of the most common false notes, I think, is the casting, you know, and having like an actor who may or may not be a great actor but guess what if they don't look the part that is a false note you know it's it's flat it's bad and you know you can't we were just what we're just talking about um i'm in prep now on a movie we're going to shoot in the summer and there was a table reading um and one of the actors who has been just was brought on any as i am

He is a supporting cast member, and we did a Zoom, a Zoom table read of the script. And I was afterwards, I was talking to the director about this particular actor who I was like, you know, he just, just from the table read, he elevated the whole project. That's the opposite of false note. You know, it's like, I like to say, you know, bassist. Yes, absolutely, yes. So with all, we'll try to wrap this up so that you can get along your way. About the film, can you tell me a little bit about Together Together? Because I would like to rent it or get it or something. But what's the film about for people listening? So Together Together is this wonderful little film with starring Ed Helms and Patty Harrison. And it's the story about Ed's character who's a 40-something

app developer in Silicon Valley. The movie takes place in San Francisco. And he's single and has had a lot of financial success. And so he gets the idea in his head that he wants to have a family. But he does not have a partner. So there is a trend where men in his situation will hire, a surrogate, usually a young woman, to have his baby so that he can have a child and by himself. So that's the story. And it basically covers the, you know, the first scene in the movie is when

Ed interviews Patty. And then the last scene of the movie is she has the baby, right? So it's it's comedy it's not giving anything away yeah so you know and um so it's uh most of the movies them together uh it exp uh the movie the really there's a couple of beautiful things about this film that i love so much and uh but the main uh driving uh force of the film is that it explores platonic love um you know if this movie was made 10 50 20 years ago, they would get together. Right. So the title of the film is together together,

as if somebody is asking you, hey, are you guys like together together, you know? And so it explores their relationship and the ups and downs, which is really great. Nicole Beckwith, the writer-directors, really brilliant, and she just came out with this really wonderful idea of a film. of a film and um so we uh we made this movie last year and a half ago and so no covid

problems you were able to yeah we finished uh yeah we did uh we were coloring we were color correcting during the pandemic um which was weird and um how are you doing that like ever cast or something because that pipeline has got to be obnoxious what we did we worked color accuracy. Yeah, we worked at light iron. And so what we did was they put us in a room that was normally a commercial coloring suite. And so we would be in Nicole, myself, and Anthony Brandenicio, the producer, the three of us would be in this room with two monitors and then two, I think there were like 22 inch monitors and then one like 55 inch the 55 inch we want to looking at it was not great monitor but we sort of like well what would most people see like what is like what is the

average consumer what are they going to so we always look at that it was like a little green or something and it was fine um so the monitors were great in there for us and then we had our colorist was um he was at home and um you know we just basically had a live zoom thing so he had a monitor at his place we had a monitor in our place so that was tough but uh so we finished that up and uh movie was at sundance which was a lot of fun we had sundance in my house in my living room uh so everything was uh you know streamed into the living room uh i saw about seven 17 movies, which I think there's no way I would have seen 17 movies if I had gone to, you know, Park City. So that was kind of cool in a way. Are you still like a Blu-ray person at all?

Do you still buy physical media? I never, I never did Blu-ray. Really was a cost thing. You know, I never had the money to invest. Honestly, you're talking to a guy who never bought it. I bought my first television i won't tell you how old i am but let's just say i you know i was gaffing movies in the late 1990s um i um i didn't buy my first tv until about four years ago i every tv i've ever had has been like a hand me down or a we found it or somebody just gave it to us and the reason is because i uh the only tv is like i'd go to best buy and look at a tv and be like okay This looks good. How much is it? Oh, $2,000. Yeah, I'm like, I'm not spending that kind of money on a TV. I'm not going to do it. I had a 20-inch CRT, you know, a tube TV for literally 20 years. And it was beautiful. And that was it. That was my world. And recently, finally I got, I don't, not going to talk about the TV, but finally I got a TV. And so it was just an experience. expense thing. You know, I never had the money to, uh, you know, to buy a real TV or to do

Blu-ray for, for, uh, for that matter. Um, it was always DVD and, um, you know, and I know, obviously, it, there's a lot of drawbacks, uh, for, for the quality. Um, and, you know, if I really wanted to see a movie, I'd, I'd make sure I'd go see it in the theater. Sure. No. I mean, to be fair to you, though, I just bought my first TV last year. Is that right? So, I mean, I'm probably a little younger than you, but still, the idea of waiting for a long time to get one. Yeah, you know, to try to get the way. Yeah.

So, yeah, I'm not a Blu-ray guy. I mean, I don't even, you know, it's like, look, we, I was just watching, actually, I was just watching Smallax, the Steve McQueen thing. Have you seen any of those yet? No. it's terrific and so i was watching one of those films last night um called lovers rock which is wonderful wonderful film um and there's some very under-exposed uh scenes and on my you know sony bravia uh it couldn't handle it like you know it's like there's there's some

under-exposed areas that you get some artifacting because of the streaming it's through Amazon or whatever the fuck it is and you know I don't you know I don't I don't get

persnickety about that kind of stuff I the only time I get particular is when you know for example there's going to be a screening of some of my work sure you know a proper screening that's when i'm like okay let's make sure we get this right you know

when we're doing color correction um i want to make sure that uh we're doing it correctly right but that's also in a weird way it's like most people are going to be watching movies it's it's true right most people are going to be watching on their on their phone yeah well i mean that's the uh i was just listening to a lot of uh eric master schmidt's interviews about mank and he was talking about how uh actually going back to the music discussion uh the old fincher axiom of um it's not the audience knows you can do anything so what do you not do and that kind of informs the but also they said that you know yeah they're going to shoot hDR and they're going to master for it and all that but then they're also really doing it for the ipad if it looks

good on the ipad they know they've that's what it's going to end up looking like it's it's it's it's it's it's I remember the first movie I ever did. We colored at a Technicolor in New York. It was a low-budget movie shot on the Vary Cam, 720P, and it looks awesome. This is one of my favorite things I've ever done. What was that called again? Runaway.

I'll look it up. Yeah, runaway by Tim McCann, psychological thriller. And the first day we walked in and talked to the folks at Technicolor, I asked the colorist, I said, okay, so what do we, how do you do this? Like, how do you, like, how do you, like, how do you color because you don't know how somebody's going to be looking at it? You know, you don't know if it's going to be the projection. It's probably not going to be a projection.

It's going to probably be on a computer or an iPad or on their phone or on an airplane or whatever it's going to be. And he just looked at me, he looked at me and he said, you can't. He's like, you just got to pick one thing. And ever since then, I said, all right, we're just going to, we're just going to pick the projection. We're going to, you know, look at the projection, make that work. And then you can't, like, there's no way to control for all this other stuff. So you only, you know, you only look at one thing.

A couple years ago, I operated and did some second unit photography for John Bailey. on a movie called How to Be a Latin Lover. And we were shooting widescreen and I asked John why even though most people were going to be watching the movie on their 16 by 9 monitors or TVs, what's your thinking? like how do you decide whether or not to go widescreen or go you know 185 or 60 by 9 or something and he just looked at me he smiled he's like we're making a movie this is for projection this is for the movie theater right period the rest of it is not my problem and so of course he it's john bailey so he can have you know uh pure approaches and strategies like that.

But I do, I mean, I think the essence of it is right. You know, you just focus on, you forget about all the other stuff because there's nothing you can do. I mean, it drives me crazy when somebody shows me their phone or their computer and they're like, oh, let's look at this scene. Let's say we're doing some research looking for references during prep for a project. And somebody will show me their laptop, their MacBook. pro and they start they hit play and i'm looking and they've got the brightness just down

rat 50% yeah and i'm like what and like yeah i'm trying to save battery i'm like why are you trying to save battery there's look it in show me the way it's supposed to look we have electricity we're surrounded by electricity there's outplug there's outlets everywhere and you're trying to save what come on yeah we need to see this so you can't control that people are just you know they have their blue filter on you know you know it's crazy so who knows and everything is terrible so all you can do is uh is look you know the same problem on tv like when doing tv production um we're doing color correction sometimes um it's uh it can be painful to watch the broadcasting of the work we did and you know it just goes through a like a sausage the QC process and the whole thing

and then and then somebody and then the end user who knows what their settings are on their motion smoothing is turned on we've been talking about Rachel Morrison's uh rallying against the automatic settings on TVs a lot recently yeah of course of course of course I love when sometimes I go over somebody's house I'm gonna I do the same thing you're about to say I just I'll wait till everybody's out of the room, and I'm like, you know, I'll start changing the settings. And then I'll be like, oh, no, I didn't do anything. 100% I do that, too. Yeah.

Hotels, change them. I've been super fortunate in my career to have made of several movies that have had theatrical releases. And so it's been very satisfying to go through the whole process and to actually have it in the theater. um and have that experience because there is nothing there's nothing like it you know i mean people can have a a giant tv in the home theater you can do that and that's great but being in a room full of strangers by the way um and i remember one of the um the last great theatrical experiences we had before the pandemic i went with my family my wife and the two kids we went to see jojo rabbit It was it probably had only been out for about a week and um love that film yeah and um theater was

packed uh and it was a wonderful film it looked at the center ramadome actually oh did you really yeah you can't imagine what that was like um but you know i was there with my kids and there was obviously other families with older kids there and um there were moments where the whole room was having the was having the same emotional experience um the shoes all say is the shoes yeah the fucking the house got humid yeah yeah and uh you can't recreate that that's why it'll never go away um it's like vinyl like you know vinyl will never go away it'll be a niche it will be a niche like theatrical you know like the the watching of uh low and medium budget movies will will be a rare thing, but it'll never die out because there's that experience of being

in a room full of people and seeing a close-up of a person's face and it's 30-foot-tall face. Yeah. It's just, there's nothing like it. So, like I said, I had to chop that down. Thanks so much to Frank for spending all that time with me. It was a fantastic discussion. Even the stuff you guys didn't hear was really valuable, for me at least. And I suppose that's the advantage of being a podcast host is I get those opportunities.

But thanks again for listening. And I hope you found that as informative and enjoyable as I had doing it. So anyway, that's all for me. We'll see you next week or you'll hear us next week. I never know how to sign off. Goodbye. Frame and references. an Owlbaud 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 Ethad Art Mapbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truax Branding Company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to Pro Video Coalition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.