Frame & Reference Podcast - 110: "Wednesday" DP David Lanzenberg

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Join us as we explore the world of lighting and camera technology in film production with our special guest, David Lanzenberg, the Director of Photography for the show Wednesday. We discuss the pros and cons of different lighting equipment, including the unique light used for moonlight scenes in Wednesday and fixtures like the FII.LEX Phylex light and delve into the film versus digital debate, examining the commitment of emerging filmmakers to only shoot on film. Further in our conversation, we navigate the complexities of working with IMAX cameras and the different aspect ratios they offer. We also discuss the controversial RED Dragon sensor and its distinctive look. The discussion takes a practical turn as we discuss shooting handheld scenes and the intricacies of matching different cameras in post-production. Finally, we switch gears and examine the differences between shooting beauty commercials and narrative work, touching on the use of layers and multiple lighting sources. We also delve into an engaging comparison between films like Oppenheimer and Barbie, discussing how each film impacts the viewer's perception. So tune in as we unravel the behind-the-scenes technicalities of filmmaking and learn how David Lanzenberg applies these techniques in his work. (0:00:15) - Discussion on Lighting Equipment and Innovations (0:15:18) - Film and New Camera Technology (0:21:43) - Discussion on Shooting Film vs. Digital (0:31:33) - IMAX Cameras (0:38:16) - Shooting LF and Matching Cameras (0:43:45) - Lighting Techniques and Equipment in Filmmaking (0:55:44) - Contrasting Commercials With Television (1:08:15) - Discussion About Films, Lenses, and Oppenheimer (1:12:35) - Movies and Oppenheimer's Impact on Cinema (1:18:32) - Working Efficiently ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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 110 with David Lanzenberg, DP of the show Wednesday. Enjoy. The thing about those, the kinos that I like is just the, have you used the camera luts in them? No. They had, so on the back of the LED panels, you can set what camera you're using, and it won't create color outside of the gamut of that camera. Really? So you can't blow out.

You know how like on the Alexa Reds tend to, the Alexa Mini and what other reds tend to go weird? Like, it won't make those colors. And it'll also adjust the white balance so that it's. correct to that camera. So it has like, it's got Alexa, Venice, DXL, and probably one other one.

Amazing. I'm getting like a hundred TLCI out of those things. Wow. No, that's amazing. I ought to check that out because always, you know, even on Wednesday we had a bit of some firework gag. And I did struggle a little bit with the reds and the blues and all about. And I don't.

That would have been amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I do know that the sky panels, like when you, when you're in CCTV mode, they're super accurate. Yeah. For the most part, but only to what you set it to, not like color representation, like, um, spectrally. They're not amazing because those LEDs are pretty old. They nail any old sensor, but the LEDs need to be refreshed.

No, I, I, I, yeah, yeah. I think they could have done a bit of refreshing for sure, yeah. Very cool. No, that's great. Did you? I saw Ari put out an article. They said you might be the only person that I've met who actually has used the orbiter. Yeah.

Yeah. What's that? What's that thing like? Because it's enormous. It's enormous. It's big. And, you know, I think I had never, you know, You know, we needed something that was going to be for moonlight.

We had pushing through this round window on our set. And I wanted something that was sharp. And, you know, sometimes I, you know, most of the time, I don't tell my guy, listen, I want you to use this light. I want, no, no, no. I kind of have a discussion about what, you know, what the thought is, what the idea is, something sharp. And, you know, what do you think, what's out there?

And, you know, there's so many amazing lights that are being brought out. I mean, every year. And so sometimes, I mean, it was, you know, I would be on my phone again all the time, you know. So I think one thing that on that day, we were just, we had quite a few days of pre-lighting. And he had this slide. I didn't even see it in person physically. He had the slide on a on a pipe or something. And it did the job.

And then we used it for some of the things. It wasn't exactly like Nemo. strong kind of powerful I bet it did the job and then we used it also for some other floor balance for Christina Ricci it is a big line

but you know when when you're like sometimes you have the tools that you have yeah sure and you have that and it seems to work and it did a good job for it I know Ari was very excited when they find out we use that lamp they did a big thing about it

But it did okay. It is massive. I hope that they maybe, you know, as lights go forward, that they get smaller. It feels like we're going back in time and camera's only going to get bigger. You know, we're going to have to have a huge blips. You know, it's the same thing with the lights. You know, right. But it did the job. We only use it for those two instances. For bouncing for a little kick in the eye and for a moonlight. And it was decent. It was good. Yeah. And now you just use those because the game. Gaffer had it. Because like, why wouldn't you use, like, a, you know, a Fernetle or like an HMI or whatever, HMI? Yeah, I mean, you know, the HMI is, you know, I think the quality, we got the quality, which is a sharp quality out of the light. We didn't have all the oomps that we wanted, but it did what we wanted. We didn't go with an HMI just because we could not calibrate sometimes the color. We had less control over the color. And, um, And the HMA would have been good, but I think ultimately to turn things on and off, I think

there's a little bit more range to do. We didn't have the Oomst that an HMI would have given us for sure. And it was, I think it's ultimately, I think it was the Gaffer's light. So we, you know, we went with it. And, you know, and visually, it did what we wanted for the night sequences through that one window. I think it was, you know, for me it was a bit like a Joe Lico. Jolico would have been interesting also.

But again, it's the color, the color choice. We had more range with choosing what color we wanted. Yeah. Did you make it over to Sennegear? A couple, what was the last? Yeah. Yeah, no, I was there. Yeah, I was there.

They, yeah, yeah, yeah. See anything cool there that you liked? You know, the one light, it was so busy. And Ari was making a big, like, you know, marketing thing with all wind. Oh, they had that set. Yeah. I think they had that set, I know, which is, they did a good job. I thought they did a pretty good job.

It was pretty funny. They had, you know, they had this old girl playing cello, you know, for like, for hours. Hours. Hours. I was, I was so, yeah, I was so, I felt horrible for the guy. I think there was two, two young girls played the cello, but, I mean, it's the same bloodyude. I mean, she's probably, like, you know, went home and, like, threw up, you know, just sick of that song from, you know, as it painted black or whatever it was.

But the show, yeah, it was interesting, but I saw some lights and I had worked on another show right before they shut down on several with Ben Stiller, which was a great show to be on. And they had these cue lights. I had never seen those cue lights before, like really nice punchy, little Fernel's LED. It's called Q light? I think it's like a Q5. I think it's called. I have to look. I think that's what it was.

it look it up but it was really impressive because I had I used them quite a bit and I like the punch I'm kind of honestly I've been a little sick of the soft LED light vibe I think everyone is it's been 30 years of that you know Kino started it and then we just kept doing it for

I don't but it's yeah sometimes it's nice to you know a little 2K or you know a little Tweety or things like that it's kind of nice if she can if she can if oh Philex is that what it is? Yeah

F-I-I-E-S-E-E-S-E-E-S-E-E-E-S. Felix. I was, I liked it. I mean, I liked it again, you know, and you don't have like, you know, three burly guys like putting gels, you know, on the set. But they did, they, they punchee. I did a bit of skip balance with those and it had quite a bit of punch. I was happy with that. And I looked for them at the insignia and, uh, I think I looked for them, but they were it was too late already. They were like wrapping up their case. And why not that's like, I was seen them to open it up and no. That happened to me. So I was, I was there doing it. event coverage, the company that I write for Pro Video Cooperation, I'll do event coverage of

like NAB and Sinai and stuff. And that same thing happened to me when a buddy of mine was like, have you heard of this thing a hobo light? And I was like, no. And he's like, let's go. So we run over to the hobo light. And they're literally packing everything up. And I was like, wait, let's do a video real quick.

But those are, they're expensive. They're very expensive. But they're very well built and pretty surprisingly bright for how small they are. I mean, the biggest movie like, you know, the size of a couple of baseballs. That's amazing. It's called a hobo light. Yeah, like a hobo. I got to check that out.

That's funny. It's a good name. Yeah. I asked him about that and he said that it was because I guess hobos were not homeless people. They were traveling work people, which is why they had their little back. It was like tools and shit. So he was like hobo lives, they're small so you can take them. on gigs and stuff yeah that's good i'm going to check it out i mean from from what i understand

this fernel that they're coming out it's just the LEDs that are just pushing through a piece of plastic fernel like type of glass where the original fernel so they're just bouncing into you know a piece of convex mirror or a reflector inside back towards the back towards the finel piece i'm hoping that maybe someone has one of those out or they they seem quite big still those fernel at the time they do seem quite big and have a big big big ballads that follows so there's a way to to make that smaller that would be great yeah yeah the the what is it the nanlight evoke the 1200 and then that massive one of that um aperture came out with it's like a 2,600 I mean right the the fernel is is massive enormous it

enormous it needs its own yoke yeah hold the light on and then the light itself is enormous too. Yeah, no, it's phenomenal, phenomenally big. So we'll see. We'll see it like that. Oh, very cool. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, no, no. Sorry. Uh, uh, uh, my wife just got back from Toronto and, and, and quite, quite a great time. Yeah, I know, quite, quite, great, great, great, great trip. Yeah, no, but good, but good stuff. And, you know, I think Shiniguer was really I was very impressed with how busy it was. It was nice to see a lot of old chasers and people. You know what?

There's another tool that a friend of mine, grip, he grip, Richard Moll had come up with. He did, well, originally it was called the slider slider, and I think it's called something like the spider or whatever it is called now. Somebody else took over, they took it from him, and they're building them. Hudson Spider.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Slider. That was pretty impressive, I saw. impressive, I saw, and not because he's my friend or whichever, but it's very sturdy, and I was quite impressed for that piece of equipment. Totally. Yeah. There was, the two things I was excited to see was the, I finally actually got to see the, um, the light bridge reflectors. Okay.

Because everyone keeps talking about those or you'll see them in, you know, Instagram posts or whatever. But I had never gotten to like actually see them in person. And the few times I saw him at that NAB, or not NAB, but like Sinegear last year when it was in the convention center, it was just everyone was crowded around them. So I never got any like face time. But I like the idea of repeatable, thin, you know, mobile reflectors and stuff. I think those. But again, you're going to get relatively soft with those. But it pulls the light away.

It makes a little more natural. Yeah. No, it's good. Yeah. I mean, I think stuff that's modular, it's fantastic. I think that's just having a variety of lights that are small and easily. I mean, I'm a big fan of the, on severance, we had, what do we have? We use a lot of, you know, two-ford, you know, the hysteritudes that we have.

Everyone's using that with the cover wagon type, whatever it's called. It's pretty, it's nice. It's not bad, you know. I mean, it's, for what it is, it's impressive, you know, these days when these guys, I think, using you know on that said they don't we don't use not many lights you know it's very very moody and and i think most of the time that's the only lights that were used that oh there's uh the reason i was laughing is because i i've started to play at i think during the winter break that i take for this podcast i'm going to go in and find every time someone mentions

the two i have 115 episodes right now it's going to be 115 times people saying and then we ask the tubes that like they're i don't know how they beat anyone to the punch on that, but that's every single D.P. uses those tubes. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's very low profile. And now with those stocks that have been put that have been adapted for damage, it gives you that kind of a bit of, you know, it softens it up a little bit more well. And these cameras, you know, now you have like the Venice, you know, 3,200 ESA and all that. It's crazy. I mean, you really don't need a whole lot of times. But, you know, one needs to still be able to light you know for daytime you know as it's required so you know

the tube's not going to do the but so you got to you got to know your bigger high as well that that's the thing too right like all interiors that you can kind of get away with a lot and then the second you're anywhere near like a window or anywhere near outside suddenly everything is underpowered and you've got 12 stops of ND on it yeah no yeah god yeah that's amazing I mean, I do like the big lights. I mean, I think for the interiors, you know, I just do, I still like the, you know, even mixing it up, you know, having for, you know, having some big maxi brutes, you know, if you're pushing a bit of that hard, beautiful tungsten light coming into the, coming into a room. That's always really nice with a bit of, a bit of jail, you know, sticking that stuff, I hope doesn't ever go really away because that quality and still haven't seen it in some of the lights. And also, well, Maxi roots are amazing.

There was a light that I've yet to work with, and it's very temperamental light, but it was called the wendy light. And there was this gaffir that you heard about it. You remember the thing? It was like in math. And I think they were like quite a bunch of them, about 60. I forgot what it was, but it was a wall of them. Yeah.

And they were like, you know, an impossible light to work with, but certainly did. I'm curious to see what the quality of it does. and see how that looks and yeah yeah so all good stuff still amazing stuff that's coming out but I think there's still some great stuff also that you know one can work right we certainly are in in a time where it feels like uh you know we especially when digital cinematography started everyone was like working towards like oh it needs to be better it needs to be more like film I've argued for years that the film look that everyone's chasing it is not a real thing and it's just what we

used to say when digital looked like absolute shit yeah we wanted it to look like the nice thing not necessarily celluloid um no yeah no i completely agree but i still think it's great i you know i hear a lot of up-and-coming deep users that are the crazy thing i hear a lot of up-and-coming deeps that will strictly that's part of their deal they only shoot from Yeah. And I'm, and I heard that. And I was like, really? they did that's this that's their stick they said that i will only use film i mean i don't know if it's real or not but i was really impressed by people who can really put their foot down and do that i was like you know i remember when i went from camera assistant to dp on music videos and

why not i remember that for like a year and a half i ate lots of lentils and i didn't say i only shoot 35 you know right it was kind of you know and one you know so it was interesting but the whole thing with chasing the film look that went on i remember many years and all these different out you know the the grade oh this is the 218 grain or this is the fruji but i mean it is pretty sharp that stuff and i'm happy that the new cameras like he haven't worked to that yet but the airy 35 now they're instead of this 4k stuff like this is like a this is like an arms race you know who has the most cave you know now we're going back to like okay let's just go back where things were fine there's no need to necessarily unless it's like you know

Lawrence of their area, you know, then sure, you know, big skies and big beautiful landscape. But I'm also, I like, I'm curious to know more about the 35, just to chip and bring back those dances as well. A buddy of mine ran some tests on it. And he, the dynamic range on it is stupid. I mean, you basically can't, you can't clip it. It's perfect. It's amazing. He was able to recover. I think he was five stops under and or over and he could just bring it right back and it was fine. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, five or six, obviously more on the highlights because that's how Ari rolls. But he said that the grain, the textures, he like tested them all. And then he was like, eh, right. If for the first time in Ari's history, it feels a little gimmicky. Oh, he, he was like,

I don't really see where I would use it necessarily. But I guess if you've got a real, you know, hands-on production you know like where the editor's going to really mess with it how bizarre yeah but otherwise

the sensor is fantastic the sensor is fantastic wow and they yeah yeah 15 six I think it was 16 to 17 stops

and then also they fixed all of that like earlier when I was saying the like the red that kind of goes magenta like break the break light thing right would always run into

they fixed all that oh yeah yeah huh yeah I should have had that Yeah, no. Good. Yeah. That's amazing. No, it's good stuff. Um, that's crazy. You know, you're talking about 15 stops. When you say, oh, you know, this thing, you know, the latitude is crazy. It reminds me of the music video it is. And I'm just like, oh, you know, I'm all in my day.

I feel like an old man now saying all this shit. But basically, it's like, I remember this one music video. I remember that finally it was on film, 16 mil. I'd been trying for so many years. I've been quite a few years prior to be. bleach bypass a spot you know and i was really and and and my director the director was philip endelman i've done a lot of music videos with with lennie cravitz and this one was a band called elephant and we're shooting in new york at the chelsea hotel uh where my mother used to live but anyway we had a 16-mile camera we had this girl that was stunning i think she's like now like the some maybelene spot i don't know what hell she does but anyway she's pretty much not wearing much. It's just very top and very risque kind of thing. And it's black and white.

And there was a program that Kodak came out with where you could just take a still and sell the idea to whoever the label and say, here, this is what it's going to look like. Will you authorize us to shoot bleach bypass? So when you do bleach bypass, you have like a stop and a half, two stops one way or the other. That's it. And it was kind of a very nervous. of a sort of feeling and you don't know if there's anything in there until later that evening when you call, you know, when you get your one light, dude calling you, it's like, everything's fine, you know. But that was funny to, you know, for that, you really, you know, that's the one thing I do miss a little bit is like, you know, I do sleep better now because of digital. But I do

miss the days of, you know, you really are taking a little bit of a chance and there's other places now you take chances but but certainly uh this was an interesting uh that brought me back to that moment where they said sure shoot that lead bypass and it looked great and it's fantastic yeah either black it's either black or white there's nothing else i actually just watched that music video like oh you did this before yeah yeah oh i was going through your website and i was like oh yeah it's fun that was fun that was like you know oh and then during the music video we machine, you know, we had, you know, it was the early days of the, there was, uh, it was light panel had made, um, their light at the time was what they were the early ones to come out with LEDs that, and the, the diodes are like, you know, massive, you know, they're like ridiculously huge, but they had a ring light. And we had a ring light on the, on the bloody camera. And, um, I remember we're in this room shooting and, and the girl is just, she's on the bed and she's, whatever. And I looked to my right and there's a cop. is a guy fully dressed like New York cop eating something.

And I'm looking at the guy holding the camera, and this is not a big room. And I look bad, and the director is already looking at me, and we're like, what's going up? And we shoot it. And then, you know, reload the camera. And we talked to the cop, and he's like, the cop was like, I don't know if this is the right direction, you know? He's like giving me.

And I was like, oh, my God, this kind of, like, telling it. Like, he's not really into it. And then he left. And that was that. You know, it was pretty funny, you know, so you got to love. He probably did a, he probably did a couple episodes of SVU and thought he, you know, knew what was up. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, it's these moments that you're kind of like random, you know, we're shooting a girl that's not wearing, oh, hold on, and somehow there's a cop there in a room,

who clearly was not part of the production. It's pretty funny stuff. It is weird how like, I was, I was shooting the spec ad in the arts district and, and this clearly, homeless man was walking towards us not like not like he was going to do anything he was just walking um but we had the steady cam guy there and as he got close he goes crossing and then moves out of the what he knew he knew the then go he was like oh yeah crossing like man that must have he must have been a pa back in the day and never made it oh boy that's hysterical at least he you know he he made himself he made himself an extra that day. So that's fantastic.

Yeah, he wasn't bothering him. You was just grabbing a beer somewhere. But to your point, I did want to bring up to your point about like younger DPs only shooting film and stuff. But I don't know if it's true or not. I just heard this. And I was, I was kind of taken back by that. I was like, wow. I think it's, I don't know how logistically how many people can actually do that.

But I do think there is a very, you know, millennials and certainly Gen Z have come up in an age of, of things being absolutely ephemeral. Is that the right word? It's just, everything's, you know, there's no physical anything. Right. And especially with streaming, you know, one day you can watch something the next day you can't. And all right. So I think shooting digitally doesn't feel real to a lot of people. So by shooting film, I think on one side, it is a little bit of ego. Ooh, I did the real thing. You guys are doing, you know, but on the other hand, I do think there is kind of this feeling of like, oh, I did a real thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not ego. It's like this is tangible,

which there's not a lot of tangibility in the world right now. No. And no, and that's a good point. I do, I do think, you know, I think that that is quite possible. I mean, I think I was impressed by the, the assurance to say, for me, it was more like the assurance to say, nope, not going to shoot digital. This is who I'm going to be. And I was like, wow, that's, that's, that's, that's, That's pretty ballsy. I was impressed with that, you know, you know, this business, there's not a, there's a lot of, a lot of everything, you definitely don't hear about, you know, you do hear people who can say, I'll put my foot down, but they're at a certain level in their career that you can do that. So for younger, you know, DPs or artists to say what they really truly believe in is, I thought it was quite, I was impressed by that. Not that I, you know, I don't know if I would have done that or if I could have done. I mean, she was on the other foot. But. You know, might need to have a side job to pull that off. You know, no, no, no, daddy and mommy. But yeah, exactly.

But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, I'm impressed. And, you know, if, if, if they can do that, I mean, that sure, I haven't watched and I should, a show like, euphoria, but that was like, I knew some of the production that worked on that and shot on film and I hear that, you know, I think some of the producers were, you know, the younger producers who had not really worked with film. They were shocked by how many lines were needed. Right. they were like kind of you know they had budgeted one way and and things went the other but

all that movies at night too so they really got a they really and it's all party lights a lot of times too so it's not even like the power of tungsten it's gel to shit um wow I got to check it out I mean it's a good-looking show yeah I got to check it out and didn't they shoot positive film I'm pretty sure they make so they shall reversal instead of color negative yeah yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I actually got a sticker from them. They got Ectchrome 100.

Oh yeah. You know what? That's so funny you pulled out of my wife just when she was shooting some stills in Toronto. She just pulled exactly those, that Ectochrome 100 out of her camera. Take it to the lab just now. Yeah. It's great film. You know, I took some of that film.

This is something I've done before in the past where, which I do actually more and more for every show. It's basically, you know, creating its own staff. And one of the shows I did with the ectochrome, they just brought it back out. There was a little show called A Chilling Adventure with Sabrina, something for Netflix that we did. It was that kind of Sabrina, the teenage witch, you know, are much darker.

But the director and I wanted to always, you know, do something a bit original to it as far as the look. And we discussed a lot. He wanted to, you know, can we shoot ectochrome? And I was like, well, there's not, you know, first, obviously, we can't shoot ectochrome because no one's going to love to shoot film for a show like this.

But eventually what I did is take a lot of stills with that hundred hectares. A lot with the color swatches from the clothing. You know, the clothing have been picked, the fabrics anyway. We had an amazing, I got a name,

an amazing production costume designer. And this was in Vancouver, so it had a bit of that gray sky at the time of a shooting. So we had these swatches and I would take a lot of pictures of these colored swatches as well as the sets that were being finished.

And then with the stills, I was able to send it to the colorist in LA and build a lot for it. That was basically similar to the ectacrole and kind of tweaking a little bit and with tests that we kind of brought it back to where we wanted. But I mean, it wasn't like we tried to make it look like film or the film look in the grain. It was really that that color, that the way the light reacted or the way, you know, the, I can't say film, but the way the chip would react to the, colors and the density the density yeah the the way with some dancing you had slightly washed out and that was kind of like building our own film stock and that's what we did a lot with with the hundred actor chrome there's an actually I have an F2 yeah it's not within this is it yeah it's a good yeah it's a great one

the never it's a camera yeah it's also a weapon you know you can yeah I dropped to I've dropped it a couple times. I had to get the weights level, though. Oh, yeah. When I did drop it, it like unseated the prism viewfinder and it, yeah, broke the little tab so it doesn't, like, I can't use the meter at all. But yeah, still, still works fine. Five six. Yeah, five, six, Kenny.

That's a five, six would be there. The actually, the, so I got a GFX 50. The Fujifilm medium format camera. Okay. Okay. And I have a Nikon adapter for it. And I put the Nikor 50 millimeter pancake on it. And I've shot film with that thing because that would be like my travel camera.

Yeah. My travel film camera. Great. But now that I have, you know, it's on a medium format sensor that's 50 megapixels. That lens is so fucking sharp. It is outstandingly sharp. I tried all my other lenses. They're not that. All my other nightclub lenses are not that sharp. That pancake is a marvel of optical engineering. And it's like 1.4, 1.8. Was it, but this was for 35. There was a medium format of the glass that you had. I was just going to keep bringing out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bring it out show and tell. Bring it. Um, bring it. Um, bring it. So the sensor on this one is ever so slightly bigger than super, uh, than full frame 35. Full frame. 35.

Yeah. So this is, uh, this is actually the size of a, uh, Alexa 65. Got it. Oh, per. Yes. Uh, LF? No, no, no, bigger than that. Okay. Uh, that's big, that good. Super 35 is, it's, it's, I thought it was smaller than the 65, but anyway, yeah. Anyway, anyway, anyhow that you, but the lens you have is, is retrofitted to fit on that, on that camera. Yeah. So it's got a little, so this 1.8, yeah. And it's just a little, oh, wow. Uh, one point. Or pancake. But it's a 35 millimeter length.

50. But I mean the, it's... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the edges are completely sharp, or do they... Completely. Really? Wow. I think because it's so thin, it projects a lot wider than it should.

Because like the 50, the normal 50, NyQuare 50 doesn't cover. That's what... And the 35 does. Yeah. And... Yeah. Yeah.

but yeah yeah interesting i love this camera this is great yeah i'm gonna check that yeah no my uh yeah the cameras yeah where's i you know i i i lost and bought and lost cameras all terrible with cameras but one of my favorite cameras that i really that i learned a lot when i first came to la was the uh the little light cut c l sure yeah with the 45 on there it's a tiny little camera Painting the ass to focus. I don't know if it's a range finder, whatever it is, there's like a tiny little square and you think. You've got to really line it up.

It's really, this is not photojournalism whatsoever. Right. And, but a lot of fun. So, yeah, no, good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. Now I feel like an idiot because I'm like, I'm pretty sure it's just smaller than the 65 sensor.

But anyway, that's not what I'm focusing on. I did want to bring up the whole, the film look thing because, yeah, Obviously, a lot of people I've noticed when they want to shoot film, they don't want to shoot 35, like for a music video or whatever. They want to shoot 16 because they want to, you know, elucidate the fact that they're shooting films. So they want all that thick grain. They want, you know, the more apparent gateway, you know, the lower dynamic range. But then something like Oppenheimer comes out and it's almost exclusively shot on IMAX or 70. I feel like there has to be 35 shots in there.

There has to be. I think there is. You know, I mean, the cameras, I've never worked with IMAX. But, you know, the IMAs cameras have very, very loud cameras. Yeah. They have to be blimped. One of the things, I don't know, I didn't see the aspect ratio change at all. It's so booked.

I try to watch it on IMAX, but the bloody thing is booked for the next two weeks. You can't get any seats. So I had to go watch the regular 35 screening, which was fine. Yeah. But I remember when Nolan did Dunkirk, you know, as you remember, the aspect ratio kept changing and I was always very curious and I realized obviously it was because of the IMAX was just 35 and that's where I really noticed a difference and he kept that which I kind of liked that they changed throughout that it was I don't know if it might

have bothered some but it was interesting but those cameras allowed so I don't know I think your instinct is right I don't know how you can put an IMAX camera right there because those things They're not quiet, and you have to blame the hell out of them. I was able to get one seat at the city walk IMAX. Oh, wow. And it's next week on a Monday at 10 a.m. And that's the only one where I could get a seat that wasn't in the first four rows before it, you know, before it's completely gone. But we did go and see it at the Century City.

Yeah. In just regular, like, digital IMAX. Yeah, yeah. And I think at one point I started to recognize that the shifting, shifting, but I do know that they shot a lot of, not 1570, but like the Vista vision, whatever, 70 millimeter, 65, you know, and I think they did that for dialogue scenes, but I still in my head, I'm like, logistically, I feel like, unless they just said fuck it and they just went straight, like, we're never shooting 35. But point being, Gorgeous film. But I'm wondering if that movie, with all the excitement that all the, that everyone's had about it, will push people away from this idea that the film look needs to be halation and gate weave and thick grain. Yeah. I think to what you were saying about the colors and the tonality. Yeah. I think so. I hope so. I mean, I'm also texture and I'm also that. But I think the pendulum is so hard with some of the lenses as well, where it's just become like, you know, the blooming or the bouquet, this. that the time of the day. So I think there has to be, I think it swings back the other way at times. I mean, I'm old for it. It's, you know, it's the conversation if the director calls

me and he's like, listen, this is what I want and I'll be curious to hear his point. But definitely it has to go back. But I will say, I think there's something interesting that's happening with these digital cameras I find. I look at them more and more, but like, you know, film stock as well. You know, you have your Alexa tone and definitely they get tricked out, quite a bit, whether before posed, before we start, and we do stuff like, you know, building lots and whatnot. But definitely each camera I find, they have truly their own identity.

One thing, I have enjoyed working with, also with the, I know it might be controversial with some people, but I do like sometimes the, some of the senses that the Monstro has come up with or the Red has come up with. And it has had its own thing where it does, for me, it has very, very much a different kind of quality.

To me, a lot of texture in the sense that it wasn't, it didn't try to be perfect, but it tried to be its own thing, which was interesting. I did a few shows where I remember watching the image and going, this is reminding me of this film, weirdly enough of the way it's coming up. Not to say that I'd fall on one sort for every project that I do it,

it's just that one camera and only that, one camera. I think every job is different. Yeah. Sorry. I find that the like I really liked the dragon sensor. And I know that that's pretty controversial because it was kind of very textured. But I thought, you know, you watch house of cards and stuff. Yeah. It's great. You know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the time there was, you know, this was like the beginning. And I don't know how many other shows were I think it's still going to mention. I mean, I show with the dragon. I mean, I show with the dragon. on a movie called The Age of Adeline, and that was with originally, originally, which kind of looked like House of Cards. It kind of looked like House of Cards. I mean, we tried to tweak. We had an amazing colorist, Stefan Nakamura, out of Company Street. Oh, he does all Fincher's shit.

Maybe that's why it looked like it. Well, maybe. Now, maybe he doesn't look like too much like House of Cards. I mean, I think what, you know, I think he did, maybe he did. I don't know, but I remember that. I know he did Fight Club or he did seven. He did seven. Yeah.

I think he did that. I loved amazing, amazing colors. But I remember the whole thing back then. It was still, this was like 2014. There was still options for directors coming in to say, well, no, I'd rather shoot film because of that and these choices. And this was a young director. I worked with Lee Krieger.

And this was the second project working with him. And he was like, I'm, we're shooting film. This is a, you know, $25 million movie with Blake lively and Harrison Ford. Vancouver. Vancouver was slow and we ended up with an absolutely fantastic, absolutely amazing crew. And but this was with Lakeshore who were very nice, but they were very adamant about shooting with the red. And we had never worked with red and we ended up with these dragon cameras that we made it work with everything that, you know, was happening. But I remember one day in the middle of our shoot, the DIT comes over, Dames comes over inside. There's a couple of things that happened on

I'm not sure. That's really funny. But anyway, one of the things that happened was James comes down. He's like, ah, we have a small issue, but everything's fine. Even if he's like, what do you mean? He's like, well, Red called and there's something about, there's something about the glass inside, the shelter, well, apparently it's upside down. It's the, it's inside out. It's the wrong. I was a bit, this was the insincy of Red and I was like, I can't believe, like, what? We've already shot half the movie. And this is like, I mean, I didn't. Like the OLPF was backwards? I think so, yeah.

And that was the dragon and true story. But everyone was, you know, I didn't see, you know, you work with the parameters that you have. You know, so sometimes, you know, you do the best. Yeah. On Wednesday, did I see you were shooting, you shot LF for everything, but then for the hand, for thing, you shot on a covoto? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we need, I needed something that was small enough. I knew I was going to need to be at kind of like, quote-unquote, eye level,

as you're saying, for some of the running stuff, or for some of the more, you know, close and close up and close and close and wide. This was not a long lens kind of thing. And I'm a bit of a one-trick pony, and I do steal people's ideas. And really, I think that, hey, you got to look at what they've done for, what they did for ants or whenever ant man. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, no, they took a commoto and they took the little Zeeland.

is and that's how they used it on a stick and so I can't take any credit for any of that because they did it but it worked out great and basically yeah it was a little commoto we had that's a great counter by the way but that with some of that stuff like that for night spaces it's 35 35 gate as well you know it doesn't have the you know it doesn't have you know 18 stops or whatever you know 15 stops but you know you got to you know you got to flex your lighting muscles if you need to at times and if hopefully you don't have to but that camera was amazing to shoot victa the hand yeah yeah how uh how was that matching the lf to the commoto in post was that like kind of a struggle or did it actually come out pretty easy you know i think it's a great question i mean one of

we did send footage to our colorist in l.a to make sure um that it was going to be okay he didn't seem to be two-face he seemed to be okay and then also this thing was um what i was you know when you see like you know drone footage most of the time it's not even the same camera that's you know so but there's a certain dj i inspire yeah there's not yeah exactly but but i mean there's sort of i think there's a there's a bit of a there's a sort of a license not a license but uh you're it's kind of its own world when you're following thing you're not really it's kind of like the thin camera it's not so far to the right that you're like oh my god this is like you know fisher price camera you know right like you know if you remember that camera but you know you can

you know it's still within the range but it's still believable and but it's the world of you know following saying that I treated I started it that way thinking to you know when you look at, you know, whether be the, you know, not the photosonics, but if you think of the phantom cameras, that's, that's a brutal sometimes. I think they've come out with some really good ones daily, but, you know, the latitude on those cameras wasn't great. The color science wasn't kind of okay, but, you know, when you were matching it to, say, the Alexa, you're like, oh, or at the time, anyway, you know, suddenly you're seeing, clearly, I was seeing a different. I mean, it's, you really needed to crush a lot of the blacks and, you know,

to match it to the phantom if the scene was really like a match card or things like that. So I thought there was a little bit of license and but yeah, but they worked out great. I really like the other. It's just a simple camera.

You know, it's like playing guitar with like two strings, you know, it does what they wanted to, you know. And, you know, you know, so that worked out great.

Yeah. We had a little stick. We had a little stick, a little remote. The wheels are remote. So you could operate the camera from this, I don't know,

this, in thing or whatever it was run into and the operator had his own wheels and so we had the a b camera operator with hold the stick we'd push them on the dolly and we tried every possible thing from uh because we knew we were going to be following thing quite a bit and we wanted something that was small and compact enough and we tried everything from uh you know putting a periscope to a stabilized head to everything and at the end the simplest thing and that works the most efficient one was just a stick with a little gimbled head

and a remote head over there and that was the best and right no fuss yeah yeah versus yeah I can imagine like trying to set up every time there's a shot of thing you got to set up one of the was a skater cam you know like on a dolly and try to do that

whole now for every single shot of him yeah no yeah bring out the ATK you know it's like yeah you know those those skaters go we need a lot of like yeah exactly So the simpler things sometimes are the better ones, ultimately is my, my feeling. If it takes more than five minutes to talk about it, then. Well, that, that actually brings up so I was going to touch on earlier when we were talking about euphoria and stuff.

But I was looking at some of the behind-the-scenes shots from Wednesday, and the lighting setups do seem pretty simple. It's very simple, yeah. What was, what was kind of the approach to generally? because it's it is a stylized film but it's not like overly you know on the tim burton scale it feels kind of in the middle yeah yeah thanks i am for the middle uh no kidding but i mean no i think it is with everything else yeah i mean tim was done tim burns amazing cell real uh with some amazing dps but i think you know this was this you know the story of wednesday we didn't go too too dark in that sense but at the same time it's still a kid's story you know for many kids um but the lining sequences

were simple uh we didn't try to recreate a new wheel we didn't try to re-engineer anything uh we built a lot of negative you know we didn't crush the blocks necessarily so much so in in post or on the dIT or anything like that it was all done in camera but the best thing i found and this was not many times I've ever had that experience is having one camera, and that's it. We shot the whole thing with one camera, meaning one crew. We had a B camera crew that was sitting in the camera truck, but most of the time it was just one camera. So you really are focusing on your frame, you're focusing on your lighting and all that,

and you really can take the time, I think, you know, and I don't say that, I'm not saying that every show should be like that, but for that show, I think it was perfect. And, you know, Tim, the producers would come up to me and say, tell Team 10, you know, can we push under the camera and I would go to Tim's ad. I think we can put it under the camera. I was like, let's try it. And then he was like, nah, it's, it's taking away my attention. Oh, I mean, the actually, you know what?

One thing that the other day I watched a series of unfortunate events. Oh, yeah. And I was. We'd remind me. It was a good one. I remember, yeah. It was lemony's thinking. Jim Carrey was in it and

what's his face not Darius who shot it I was just looking it up I'm such an idiot I know I've seen it because I started I've got a few hundred uh

ASC magazines and so I was like trying to find the one that had that in it and I was doing a whole bunch of research on it let's see here was it Darius oh this is this is great for great for listeners just yeah i know i know this series of fortunate events i

know i've seen it and i like that that was a little while ago it's not me sent them yeah that was 2006 2006 yeah um but one thing come on but just the oh for heaven's sake this is bad anyway yeah manuel lubeski emmanuel lubesky yeah um and one thing that i thought that lighting style that he has where there's it it's a pretty obvious key but it just works every time because it's so massive um i'm not saying you did that in wednesday but but when i saw him and he's thinking i was like because i had seen wednesday when it came out right i didn't rewatch it but uh they gave me similar vibes and i was like it's it's hilarious that like a man can set that speaking of bleach bypass yeah he was really set in the tongue with the bleach bypass in that film

They, like, developed, they had just developed a new, like, E&R thing at E-film, I guess. Amazing. That's a great look at film. I got to watch it again, but, I mean, I know I liked it. I did, but yeah, it is a high key. I mean, that seems to be, that's, Tim, Tim was into that when we were filming it, and definitely, we even pushed it a little bit more in post after, definitely more of a high key. I know it's weird.

You like, all right, you like, what I'm spitting on myself now. I don't, but basically it is weird sometimes, you know, I think the other opra of the EP that came in, lovely guys, Stephson Cheers, and we did the remaining episode episode. I remember on his first week, when he arrived, we had already been shooting. And I remember, I think he kind of made a comment, like, where? He was like throwing his ads in the air or something. And they were, where is the light coming from? Right. And I was kind of like, you know, it's interesting.

I mean, I think, you know, there are times, yeah, it has to be motivated, but there are times that, you know, you have to look at it. I think sometimes you look at the frame, you look at the lighting, and just kind of feel like, is the feeling right for what I'm in the frame? And, you know, there is all the logical explanations. Well, no, hang on, the lighting. Nah, nah, nah, no, then it's, yes, but ultimately, I think it does it, does the scene, it's almost like going back to a bit of photography,

Does the frame feel good? Does the character feel good? Is it too much, is the background too? It was the other thing. It was really happy not to be shooting everything. I know some shows, I'd been watching shows. I was shooting everything wide open. Bloody hell.

So to be able to appreciate the sets and to see the scope and to shoot on wind lenses. And that was, that's nice. I'm. But, yeah, the Ikey, for sure. Yeah. My, first of all, one thing that I've said almost every episode of this podcast and also in all the articles I write is I'm trying to get people away from technically correct because feeling correct is always better. Yeah.

You know, my favorite quote was like, where's the light coming from? And the answer is it's the same place the music's coming from. Yeah. It's good. I'll use that. It feels good, you know. And if everyone looks at it and goes, that looks good. their second question is wait, where is it? It doesn't matter. The audience is the same thing with

like, ooh, like you were saying, oh, it's 5218 film grain. No audience member knows which fucking film grain we're using. It doesn't matter. Use the Da Vinci one. It's fine. It's fine. Exactly. No, exactly. No, it has, it has to feel correct with what's happening in front. And if, if it, you know, you'll, you'll notice right away, oh my God, this is, you know, this is, this is too hard. you talk. This is over the too punchy or any of that. But definitely, no, it has to feel right. And it doesn't apply just for lighting.

I think it applies for everything. I was going to say, how were you treating those kind of key lights? Were they just doing massive 12 eyes and putting up 360 through it? Or were you kind of, was there a one solution? Was there one solution? Not necessarily. There was all kinds that think, you know, for the exteriors, we used big rag. with lots of negative.

And what was exciting in Europe is that those, they have these, instead of condors, they use manitutes or something of the light, which is like a big, like a grade all, really large platform with the guys at the bottom driving the vehicle and he controls everything from the bottom. So you don't have anyone up in the basket. And this thing goes up to 100 feet up in the air.

You can put any kind of weight on there. So for an 80-foot condor, you have these things that move around so fast. So we had, like, you know, a lot of negative on the show for daytime where, you know, I would have a 20-by or a 25-by negative on the top, like a tent, literally. And then another 25- or 30-foot negative dropping back with another 20 behind-camera at times just for, you know, one person looking at the camera. You know, I was just, you know, I mean... It looks really good, though.

It looks great. And if she can, you know, if you're 80, if you have the time, you know, which not always, that's not always the case, but having those tools that move fast was very good. A condor would have never met. So that was really interesting to see. And I've been trying ever since to see if they, you know, here in L.A. if they have that good it's you know condo it takes forever and yeah sometimes um but but as far as the light itself what we use um you know i think it was a variety over there you know for space

sometimes we use uh light mats uh i do like the light mats because they were quite even at last for for some soft life again here i go soft like um we had uh we had tubes i think for any kind of hard light we We stuck to the classics. There was nothing, you know, I was in Romania, which, you know, people care a lot about the work they did, but it's not like, you know, the latest and the greatest of, you know, that has arrived, you know, it's very, and so we had very basic equipment at times. And the gaffer had, you know, that was an anomaly.

He had that one life that did fine. Great. But, you know, we had tubes. We did a lot of DAPron, you know, tubes with DAPron, sometimes on the desk for a little kiss on the eye here and there um very basic stuff nothing more to that it was just placing the light really more than anything else yeah i mean but that's always great to hear right because it could for certainly for newer films especially shot like in atlanta or here or whatever um it feels like you're kind of chasing the dragon where

everyone has these new crazy things yeah and it's like wait will i ever be able to catch up to that It's like, yeah. I don't feel like Wednesday could be shot with a few tubes and a, the world's only orbiter. Yeah, exactly. The world's on. No, I mean, there was a few tubes, a few lights. I mean, there were basic lights. Yeah, nothing, nothing fancy.

I mean, I think one of the things that we had that was, to me, that I had never worked with, was an HMI mold beam. I've always worked with tungsten mold beams and there happens to be a 20KHMI mobile that we used in the library. There's like some weird secret library that takes place. Originally, like I said earlier, I'm like a one-trick pony and got no original thoughts. But there was, I took the idea of, I remember, Roger Deacons had done the 2049 Blade Runner, the sequence where you have the water shimmers, you know, pushing it, which is a beautiful, beautiful. pieces of photography, I thought. And we tried, we tried something like that on a different scale, obviously. And I think the same was like, no, no. There's not going to know. Were you like doing the, because I think for that one, he shot through a Plexic, yeah, saying, were you doing that or bouncing

it off? Because I, no, no, a mirror hand in the bottom. The bouncing is interesting for the floor, for sure, for the walls. Bouncing could be cool. But I mean, what we did literally, we had a 20k HMI moldy hung at the very top on chain orders of the stage. And we had the other department build us a little, you know, plexiglass pool that was only eight feet. And I think we had been, we had been inquired with, with the blade runner crew. And I, because they shot in Hungary. And I knew that some of the grips and the gaffer that worked on it,

the Hungarian gaffer, Christian Palook, amazing gaffer, by the way. And he told us, no, his, I think his box that they shot through was like 20 feet by 20. Oh, yeah. So I could, I could not, yeah, no, production would have not been too happy or put me on a fierce flight back to earlier, I think. It is funny how, because I'm on Deacons's forums as well, you know, it's fun to read. Yeah. And it is funny how he has this reputation of being so simple. He's like, no, just, you know, just one bounce and we're good.

And then you'll look at his lighting plans and you're like, bro, you have 700 lights in here. What are you, it was simple. It's like, yeah, but it's like a simple lineup of 700 lights. And you're like, I guess. A lot of space light. About a space light. Yeah. Amazing.

Amazing. I did want to ask about the difference kind of between your more modern work and the kind of work you were doing, I assume you still do it. But for like beauty commercials and stuff. feel like those are two, these days a lot of education about lighting seems to come from photographers, you know, mostly. And that can be a lot of like beauty lighting style. So I was wondering if you could juxtapose your, you know, makeup and beauty commercial work versus kind of your television and narrative work. Yeah, it's amazing. You really are asking good questions. I mean, the part of the beauty work that I did, and it was a great learning curve of both

and a really great, wonderful learning process of how to photograph a woman's fate or a body. It started off with the music videos I did on Lenny Krabbits, where, you know, they were younger, younger ladies, younger girls. But following forward from there, I think, and onwards with commercials, you'll see these are commercials and commercial, lighting, commercial beauty lighting,

you know, there's, there's, it cannot, it doesn't feel right. Obviously, to do anything like that, obviously with the, the amount of light that sometimes I was bringing just to shoot a face, many different ways to do it, obviously,

and many different things. I know, you know, but I think a lot of layers was something I remember doing with commercials, with, with, with, with beauty products and whatnot, where basically we, you know, sometimes I have, 212 vials and then in front of that I mean 212 bites and then in front of that I had

that was if I had the space I'm in and in front of that I had another I had a 140 that was towards the end I remember I had a 140 breezy breezy were quite hot at the time and a parabolic soft box the parabolic oh yeah like kind of bro about half fag kind of thing very deep and they had different they had different materials inside whether it be a silver lining or white shiny or soft balances inside. And then at times, I even, sometimes I even had another light. So it was just like, you know, it just pushed. And these ladies, there were models.

They didn't really need it, but definitely I could see the different shimmers and different quality very subtly in the faces. And this was also a beauty product, cream type stuff that was being sold. But there was a lot of learning of what looks, what feels good, but doesn't look good at the time. And it kind of, after that, doing narrative, obviously doesn't make sense. You know, you cannot bring two tall pies and a breezy

every time you look at a woman's face. I mean, that's a completely ludicrous. You know, I know, the Maryland-Roe era of cinematography. No, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, but I mean, it's just, yeah, it's two different worlds, too entire different worlds. But I will tell you one thing I remember where my first movie I do called Celestine Justy with Lee Krieger we had

was with Rashida Jones she was the lead also the executive producer with Andy Sandberg and Rashida was producing the movie she was busy even after you know not only she had to remember her line when she went home but she had

also to deal with you know managing but film as well and and we were doing a scene with a kickage to Shida and Sand and Andy and it's a pretty intense scene at a bar. There's no one else there. It's just a bar and I learned very quickly that you have to be very careful how he photographs a person at times and you have to be very aware of their chin, a woman that, their chin, the chin,

the nose. And I, since, and I remember, I think we, I think I didn't do a good job. And I got a Now, you know, the director and I got a not very good email from for a Shita, right. How can you guys, you know, it was a French over. So, you know, over the backs. Then she was both profile. And this was not very pretty at the under the chin. There's things you have to be careful for. And I think ever since then, I've always been very careful for that instance, simple thing.

But then, you know, you moving forward from there, you know, working with someone like Blake lively, who is you know in front of the camera she she she's she the camera likes a very rammer so easy to photograph easy to photograph and very simple but but so that was moving forward and very using at the time using a little bit of haze I remember that was a thing unless so now um is everything ever since COVID has become very controversial um oh sure yeah You know, I mean, it's just fine. Either way, you know, I mean, I think that the Hays thing is good if you want. I mean, you got to be able to cut a, you know, I've always said, you know, you can't just stick to one thing.

You got to be able to do multiple hair, different styles of haircuts, sort of thing. You know, you can't just do one haircut. So if you've got Hays grade, if you don't, then so be it. He has to figure it around. But the Hays will help definitely with the skin, especially. if you build a lot or if you build or if you crush your blacks a little bit but you keep your highlights and you play around you will not feel the haze so much so it won't be these horrible shafts i mean not horrible but you won't be like you know excalibur bloody hell doing it but it's a it's a mixture between

your tea uh the contrast everything your early levels and the moment the haze starts to dissipate then everything starts to change so you really need some good people work in the hands and then you change lens and then everything changes again but it helps with the skin And that's something I remember trying at one point very much. I did some season of the morning show here in L.A., which was really nice to be in L.A. And yeah, it's good. I think it has its own audience.

I mean, definitely, I've always, everyone on the show is really lovely. I never quite understood the topic of it all because I never cared much for rich people's problems. You know, that was the thing. But, you know, sometimes you're there. You know, you're doing a job and you're doing it, and people are lovely and very kind, and else you go. But the haze would have been something that would have helped, I think. And I think only once I was able to put haze on a set with Reese Witherspoon, and it was fine.

But, you know, nowadays, the other thing is people, which is that's another thing, with younger depots who do not know how to photograph ladies at times. I'm not saying that I surely do because, but somehow, and I've encountered this with other DPs who are we all DP to me and suddenly they're not being very judicial with how to photograph a face they've never been taught and then suddenly everything's getting shakes and poked and everybody looks like you know not a very good version of themselves and it just looks like a cartoon and that's the I feel kind of I wish I wish that wasn't the case so much because it's the same program right so you know I the yeah well I was gonna say well two things the one thing that I was told because I was when I was in college I was in that same boat both as a photographer and when I was shooting was I would get notes back from women and and they were like you we need to reshoot this and in my head I was like no you look great yeah and they're like I even if I'll speak for this imaginary one

But it's like, yeah, I know I do, but you didn't highlight that. And I remember there was one, she wasn't older, but there was one like adult woman that I was filming. And she pulled me aside because she had worked in film. She wasn't just an actress. And she goes, listen, you just need to do your buddy a favor. Yeah. And I was, and I've taken that to heart my whole life. Anyone, it doesn't matter.

Women, men, doesn't matter. Anytime I'm filming someone, I'm always, I have to turn on the what I would consider, what I think younger DPs who don't know how to do this. need to maybe call it is your douchebag brain you have to look at someone you have to look at someone who's objectively pretty and go i can make you prettier you know and kind of think like that and you'll jump that hurdle uh yeah thinking obviously i don't know how better to explain it it's just like do your buddy a favor just make them look the best version of them not that they need it but that they right they want it yeah you know it's like and they're not going to ask you some of might but But, no, it's true.

It makes everyone happy, especially to producers. It's very, very well to produce. But it's very true. I think definitely, again, it's looking at, you know, the frame, the image. But, I mean, it's, yeah, actors, yeah. I mean, I did that. That was not a great email that I got saying, you know, what the hell were you thinking? And even though, you know, she was stressed.

She probably didn't get much sleep that night. It was the wrong angle for the camera to be. Yeah. And, yeah, and one had to take that in consideration. you know, for Roshina Jones and we, and, but, you know, they couldn't fire us because the movie was only $800,000. So there was, oh, yeah, it tells me up. But, you know, that was a good learning curve. But I do, you know, faces are interesting. I think it's, it's so much fun to, to light of face, to find what is that, you know, whether lighting or framing or whatever, get to have that.

I always find it always, it's a new, it's a new experience every time. And I think for Wednesday, one of the things even with Tim Burton was something that he was like very, he had met her many times and, you know, being amazing, you know, visual sense that he has. We always were trying. There was, there was a moment where we wanted the camera to be a little higher, a little higher. And there was that nice sweet spot with, with Gena Rtega that just kind of. You know, it just made her that more graphic kind of, not too dimensional, but there was a graphic kind of feel to her with, you know, the big head, the big eyes.

But then just that slight, the body wasn't so cartoonish, but it had a vibe that it was just like, that fit for the show. Right. And like you said, you were shooting wider too, so that probably accentuated it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, the wider lenses were great. So that way, that's why we use the signatures. They had a great. they had a great range in the white end and at the end we only we we stepped we we kept to like four lenses at the end it was like the 21 to 29 it was a 30 something and there was a 49 and the 49 in large format that was the longest chance we used on the first four episodes i i find myself because i have a c 500 r2 so in frame yeah yeah and uh amazing camera i feel like more people should think about using it uh just so i'll be in to ban more

as an owner operator. But I find, yeah, like the 28, the, like, it's the classic, you know, photographic Trinity, the 28, the 35 of the 50 is kind of like all you really need. Yeah. And then maybe like a 65 for like inserts, but yeah, I'm having 8 and 5. Still. Yeah. You know, you know, you need the, you know, it depends on every show, but I think it's, I like

the idea of, you know, only having four lenses and that is, that is your, it's, it's, it's, it's It's just because you have these tools, that doesn't necessarily, I'm producing as you can hear that, but just because you have, you don't mean you have to use them. Yeah. It's really being very,

and you're creating a dialogue, creating a Bible, sort of, I think. You know, for this moment, this is the right lens. For this moment, this is the right lens. But if, you know,

I'm saying this, it doesn't mean that I believe that that's the only rule. I think, you know, it's meant to be broken, but I do, everyone does it differently and definitely, but I do appreciate having four lenses,

is like forego to that way for sure well and also restriction creates creativity yeah you know if you have infinite options you're going to make something bland yeah but like yeah plenty of what was it maybe not the godfather but like there's a whole list i think uh what's his name bashi nithamanski the editor put together a list of all these films that only shot on like one lens maybe it was the godfather but it's like 28 really popular 50 sometimes 35 but it's like Sometimes movies just shot on one good-looking lens. What? Army of the Dead.

Did you think of that? No, I haven't. Was it the Zach Snyder show? Yeah. So my buddy who started Zero Optic, Alex Nelson, he made the lens for him. It's the Canon Dream Lens, but he didn't, he hadn't finished it. So there's no aperture in it. Oh.

So he was at 0.95 the whole time. Not as a create, well, I mean, it was a creative choice, but like, he had to. There was no, there was no changing it. Oh my God. What lens? What was a millimeter on that lens? What was that? Oh, no, that was a 50.

A 50. So he shot, it was on the monstro. Yeah. So it's full frame on the 50, 0.95 all the time, with no app. Yeah, yeah. That poor ACE, too. You need, you need to do, dude, right? Yeah, he, where's the Oscar for focus pulling?

Exactly. Exactly. no focus pulling is amazing yeah uh i know we're we're kind of coming up on time but i did want to because i we talked about oppenheimer then we talked about beauty lighting so i have to ask did you see barbie no no i have it my son's side it's he went with his mom yeah it's fantastic you got really it's so good it's really fun it's fucking hilarious is it okay cool i'm gonna have to check it up then that's amazing i said abby openheimer left me like Yeah. That's how I went, my son fell asleep because it was late. I did. I actually nodded off a couple times enough, which is why I'm glad to go. But it was like 10 o'clock at night and I had a few cocktails before. But. Oh, there you go. The thing too with Oppenheimer is, is the pacing is relentless. I think I picked up on the fact that the score doesn't drop out until that scene where he and his girlfriend are like, you know, they're nude in the room. I think that.

That's the first, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like an hour and a half into the movie. And that's the first time the score cut, it cuts out. That's amazing. And it's just, it's just like that, I think that drive is also exhausting if it's late at night. Like, you have to see Oppenheimer earlier in the day. It's, it's, yeah, was it three hours long? About three, no, three, ten, yeah. Three, ten.

Well, I mean, I definitely, yeah, I really appreciate it. I know there's a few things I miss. I'm going to have to see it again just because it is done. But what an amazing film. What an amazing film. film. And I thought it was very much within the times right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the end for me, I mean, it's not like a, you know, definitely not a cliffanger, but it definitely, but it's not, it's like the end is not like a mass, you know,

it's not like, oh, and then it's not like, you know, gone with the wind or anything like that, but the end does leave you wandering. And that was, that was very impressed with that. So, I saw someone to ask in the theater, Marvel has, for all the amazing films they've made, they've really ruined us all. Someone stands up and goes, is there an after-credit scene? And at Alfenhire, and later, I wish someone had this quick clip in the theater, but I saw later some, I guess someone else had asked it online and someone went, you're living it, buddy.

Yeah. We are the after-credit scene. Oh, man. Yeah, we've been, yeah, Marvel has been a number on it. For sure. For sure, for sure, for sure. But, no, but good stuff. Good stuff.

I'd like to see the IMA. You're going to see the IMAX. I think the IMAX thing, I think, Robes to be able to see. I think it's worth saying it's second time. For sure. I will say, you know, this whole,

the whole Barbenheimer thing, I think it's amazing that everyone has built a weird double header that was made out of spite. I confirmed this with not an executive at WB, but someone who works near it that I know. That they released Barbie at the same time was Av and I were to get back at Nolan because he left WB to go.

And so they're like, oh, we'll show him because Barbie's going to do numbers. And little did they know it was going to make everyone sell. But I just love that we as an entire global culture, especially in the U.S., decided that this was like a holiday. Yeah. That we're all going to go to the movies and have a good time watching two completely different films. And good ones. Amazing. And because there's so much shit out there.

And I honestly, there should be more movies like that. And it's like, that is the reason when shit is going on, like shit's been going on in the world lately, to go see a film, even though you're being reminded in Openheim of it, to be able to step away and to feel that, that's amazing. That is truly, that's what I think movies are all about for sure. Well, and at the Century City, there's a funny bit and Barbie about Century City, which, uh, but it's a great theater. the AMC there's great um but everyone everyone in that mall have you been to that mall oh no dude it's it's the nice it's a ridiculous mall like it should be in beverly hills but it's in century city the westfield westfield yeah yeah it's it's absurdly nice like it's it makes how sense but um everyone that everyone was wandering around the wall the mall wearing pink like people are

dressing up to go see movies and no Oppenheimer dress ups unfortunately but no no no no no no no skinny man with hats walking around no short ties yeah no that's amazing now the pig i did see a lot of people wearing pink as well and uh i just asked my son was this with this with this it's not for a movie is and he's like no yeah well it's just i again it's i i when people were saying oh abenheimer's going to save cinema i was like well maybe in the sense that we're going to take more time and like allow thoughtful stories to be made and let auteur's kind of of do their thing and that film wasn't that expensive all things considered you know it wasn't no well it was the new indiana jumps 300 million dollars and i think upenheimer was like 80 or

120 years you know but yeah maybe it was less than 50 well they shot it you shot in 54 days or something which is the main yeah crazy right like yeah let let let them cook as they say but uh but i was like oppenheimer's not going to save cinema up and ivers going to save the art barbie's going to save the cinema. It sold 400 bajillion tickets and everyone is stoked on it. And it's a great film and it's fun. And I'm hoping to interview Rodrigo

about it because going, this is what I was going to say about the beauty lighting thing. The whole thing in Barbie world is lit very product. You know, it's lit like Barbies. And I'm fascinated to know what the conversations were between Barbie World and the real world because it's not super different, but it is very different.

All right. No, I'm going to check out. I'm sure he did an amazing job. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's interesting lighting it like a, yeah, a product, a shiny product. Yeah, I haven't seen a movie where they literally were like, we're going to make it look like plastic boxes and like the whole, we're going to make it look steak. Yeah. Maybe small soldiers. Small soldiers running around. Yeah. No, but that's the fun. That's, that's the fun. But I'm happy. I'm happy they're both doing really. well this movie. I think that's like funny. I've never seen so many people in movie theater in four years now. Yeah. So it's refreshing. Yeah. Even Avatar was in and out. Everyone loved

yeah. Like it was a quick thing. I didn't I didn't see it but uh, but yeah, was it worth all the was it was a billion dollars or something whatever it was. No. But, uh, that's the thing though is that had again, that was a spectacle. That was 3D. You needed to see that movie in a giant 3D theater. It's not going to work on Blu-ray in the same way. I mean, it's gorgeous, but it's not, you know, the 3D was technically incredibly impressive. Yeah. Look, I mean, there were times where I could, I was just like, I don't know if this is a person in makeup or if this is digital. Like, it was, it was very, very, very well done.

So if all that money, you went to the VFX teams, I get it. So we'll see what the next six. It was like, there's, I think there's seven total, yeah. So I think there might be five more. I'll be 80 by the time the seventh one camera also that's very good no but good but good on Cameron yeah yeah that's one uh no very very cool but um no it's interesting but i'm happy i'm again i'm like repeating myself but now i'm happy these two of it that they're doing well um i'm trying to think of what else uh is there anything else i know there i saw some

There were some interesting films that were before with a, it's very small movies that were coming out called, there was Kostage, which was interesting with the same actress that I'd see a couple of months ago, no, more than a couple of months ago. Anyway, other films out there. Yeah. The titles. So, yeah. Sure. I'm getting watched a lot more criterion. The criteria stringed.

Nice. But I saw one on, I saw one called the portable door that I, I, I, had. I guess it came out in Australia, and it's on Amazon, I think, but I guess we're not promoting streamers right now. But it's got Christoph Waltz in it and Sam Neal. And it's very similar to kind of lemony Snicket or Wednesday kind of vibe to it. But it came out like last year or this year, never heard of it. I guess it came out in Australia for like five seconds and then went straight to streaming. But that was a good one.

That was a good one. Okay. The portable door. Yeah. To check that out. Yeah. It's fun. It's somewhere between a kids movie and, you know, dark kids movie.

I like, I'm like, only second. It's interesting. Yeah. Well, I did, I did want to ask, uh, because I forgot to. We got a little sidetracked and then I'll let you go. But, uh, when you were talking about like working quickly with those European condors, um, On Wednesday, what were some of the tricks to, because I know any television show, you're on a tight schedule, plus you shot the first four episodes and someone else shot the first

eight? No, the first, to the first four, um, episode, or sorry, the next four, I haven't been the next four, 12 episodes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, the two episodes, yeah, the eight episodes total. So we shot them out of order. So Tim and I did the first block, so one and two. and we started in August and by mid-October

the next director with the other DP went on to shoot episode one two three four five and six and so they shot them out of order and then when we came back in end of October

beginning of November we went on we started shooting episodes four and five four three and four sorry It was it Yeah Question being What were some of the things Speak about the Eurocondors

That helped you guys work quickly Beyond just like being simple But also the communication between teams How did you keep the look consistent Between each other? Well, you know As far as the what made things move faster I think the crew moves very fast

I mean first we had There was like the grapes It was more the European system So they don't cut the light. It's the electricians that do that. So it's not like in America. It's more of an English hybrid system. But the grids solely touch the cameras, mainly cameras.

So any kind of camera support or trains, platforms, anything to do with calls, whatever. And the sting that I found really amazing and how quick they, first of all, there's 12 grips, 12. 12 set grips. I've never had that many grips on instead, and electricians, by the way, it was insane. But they, you know, they, they don't have the latest, greatest gadgets, which was fine, but they do make up with how fast they were, being that many of them. I've never seen a hundred and thirty feet of track laid so quickly in a muddy forest. And it didn't take more than

25 minutes. I mean, these guys were super fast and I have to give them for that, you know, they did a really good job. But then, you know, with cranes and things like that, it's a little bit more complicated and we we try to keep things very simple in that

in that aspect. Also, the other thing is while using one camera, some producers would say well, no, we need two cameras to, you know, one wired or one tight or whatever the hell, you know, but we were very super careful about not careful but we're very economical in our coverage but also in our storytelling we're very specific and is this warrant a close-up do we need to go to close-up like

you know some of the shows that like you got to give you the close-up he's like he's going to the fucking bathroom like why do you need right the guy saying you know what I mean it's just things like that's just like it's very redundant in television at times and it's kind of a very formulaic but here we were able to move faster with our selling the street story where this seat was important, they needed stuff, so much intense that you need to spend the energy and the time to work on that. So we're very diligent

and I will say Tim, Tim was very, his time management is extraordinary. You wouldn't think of it because he comes like very eccentric and you would think like he doesn't look at his water and anything like that, but I mean he is very exceptionally great with time.

And even to the point where there was one time that you would think that's not being wise with your time. But there was one time where we had an hour and a half less than our day. We still had a page scene, a new page, one page seemed to do. And he was like, you know what, the way we're coming back the next day to this location, you know, any other most directives I know would probably have been like, we got to knock it out, we got to do it, blah, blah, blah, because we got to make same thing with ADs, they would be like, hey, got to be on the second

production report, bullshit this and not. But, you know, if they say pimper, Nobody says no to Tim, for one, but Tim, you know, which is quite extraordinary. But he goes, you know what, let's rehearse the scene, and we're going to sleep on it. Oh. I thought you're, I thought you were just going to say there to skip it. Rehearsing, it's a great idea. We're going to rehearse it, and we're going to sleep on it. And tomorrow, you know, if something comes up tonight and we'll do it, we'll knock it out tomorrow, morning.

The lighting doesn't change, but there's nothing much. different within the area that we're shooting everything's pretty much similar and everything's in place we're coming back we're here for you know how many minutes and i really really appreciated that because it just kind of you know sometimes you undo the work by um he was very adamant about not doing any overtime there were days obviously it was a half hour or 40 minutes but generally we're within our time schedule but he didn't want to work more than you know and 11 i think we were on 11 hour or a pen hour. I can't remember. And it was, we were, it was COVID time. So they had the French hour, the French lunch thing going. But he said, you know, David, if we go, you know,

he wasn't telling me specifically, but he would tell me, you know, the thing is, if you do more than a certain amount of hours, you actually aren't doing all the work you've done. Totally. And I thought that was really wise. And ever since then, I'm like, you know, obviously, you know, Like I said, nobody says no to the tin, so it's easy to go along the routes. So that was one of the things is having definitely a director who knows what he wants and that there's not like an army of producers who all want to be directing and therefore they will have their say. This is like you're following one person.

And that was extremely refreshing and you move faster because it's one vision. It's not diluted by, you know, 20 different people and so forth. But I think moving fast, so that was that, trying to think of, it was something I thought that I've lost track, anyway. Keeping the look consistent between teams. Keeping the look consistent between teams, I think, you know, we had a great crew with the same crew that basically, you know, it's like me jumping off one horse and going to another. It's the same thing for the crew that he kept going with Stephenson, who I think, you know,

he had less time. and they didn't give him the same amount of time to him and his directors. So I think considering, you know, we had 40 days to shoot two episodes with Tim Bird and we had also a third camera that would do clean up. So anything that was not, you know,

whether it be inserts or sometimes photographing a thing, at times there was a different unit altogether. But Stefan, under the conditions that he had much less time to do when he was asked to try to keep a look as coordinate

as much as possible I think we did a pretty good job but it's not easy but it was the gaffer the key grip the operator they all try to keep

and the showrunners also they try to keep the field but I know that you know when the main director when Tim leaves I think

you know sometimes there can be a vacuum in the direction at times even because it's such a big show to carry and therefore oops something

binging but anyway it's it was it was it was it's I think it's not easy

and I've been I've been on the other side as well where I had to copy or I had to assimilate the look of another DP and that's now very easy and it's not always

very gratifying either because it's not the way something you would do the way you would do it so yeah not a good I mean

there's certainly like I found, I did second unit on this one movie and it was the first time that I had worked on a large film and I was like, and I found that second unit was fantastic because I just, I didn't have to think that hard. I just, yeah. They would show me clips from what the other guy shot and I just went, oh, yeah, okay. Just make it look at the, that's the other side of things where you do, you know, you're just

like, oh, just copy, easy. Yeah, second unit's great. you don't have you know all the pressure of of that but but stephen was not second unit that was right yeah he was he had he had he was like definitely first unit with all the pressures that kind of came back from after tim was gone there was no producer really necessarily all the time on set and suddenly when we were gone suddenly all everyone kind of right it's like a it's like a current you know comes right back yeah all the uh all the the toys come to life when the the parents are gone yeah exactly yeah but it was it was fun it was good and i think you know

thumbs up thumbs up on him i know i know it wasn't easy he he had much less time to do it which he had more stuff to do too that's crazy yeah well um i thanks so much for for spending the extra time with me i'm gonna i'm gonna let you go i'm sure you want to hang out with your wife and shit but uh i would uh whenever we get we get back to work um i'd love to have you back on and and chat about whatever that is because I had a lot of time flew by absolutely well thank you yeah no thank you for having me and definitely yeah keeping me in mind frame and reference is an owlbot 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 dot com slash frame and ref pod we really appreciate your support and as always thanks for listening Thank you.