Frame & Reference Podcast - 111: Brandon Cox

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Get ready for an entertaining discussion as we embark on a roller coaster ride through the cinematic universe with Cinematographer Brandon Cox. Listen in as we kick off our chat with our personal experiences of recent movie viewings including Indiana Jones, John Wick 4, and Asteroid City, discussing how we should take film critics with a pinch of salt and enjoy movies for what they are. We also dissect the different rating systems of Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Letterboxd, and their influence on viewer perception. We then transition into a debate on the shift from film to digital production and its implications on the visual aesthetics of cinema. Discover our thoughts on working with low-budget video equipment, the unique characteristics of Canon 5D versus reversal film, and the influence of CGI on the modern look of films. We also discuss our experiences with different cameras and software, citing examples from movies like Chris Nolan's Batman and Gareth Edwards' latest project. In the latter part of our discussion, we shed light on the importance of understanding and mastering lighting techniques in filmmaking. Hear about Brandon's journey from shooting music videos to high-budget films, his experiences on set with stars like Robert De Niro and Dave Bautista, and his love for action movies. We also touch upon the evolution of lighting technology, the benefits of modern LED panels, and how the use of different tools and techniques have transformed over the years. Don't miss out on our take on film restoration and preservation, the importance of archiving movies, and how streaming services have altered the movie release landscape. So, sit back, relax, and join us on this cinematic journey. (0:00:15) - Film Reviews and Recent Viewings (0:07:01) - Film vs Digital (0:15:32) - Discussion on Film Look and Cameras (0:25:12) - Success in Film School and Cinematography (0:31:41) - Lighting Techniques in Action Filmmaking (0:38:06) - Techniques for Fast and Efficient Lighting (0:44:59) - Evolution of Lighting Technology (0:55:50) - Kino Flo and Astera Tubes (1:07:46) - Experimentation and Learning in Filmmaking (1:15:19) - Discussion on Film Restoration and Technology (1:23:44) - Discussion on Preserving and Restoring Films ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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 111 with cinematographer Brandon Cox. Enjoy. have you been watching anything cool recently uh i well like theories or movie or or either well i saw i saw i saw indiana jones on uh i i just went monday and i didn't read any reviews or any and i'm like raiders lost art's like one of my favorite movies and i was like screw it i had no expectations going in and i actually really like the movie um and i i i don't I haven't read any reviews.

I don't know what people are saying, but I don't really care because I love that series. I did like the fourth one, so that's why I didn't go in with any expectations. So I went in and I was like, well, you know what, Harrison Ford's 80 years old. There's not really much anywhere else you're going to take that story, and this was pretty cool.

And they cast, they had a great cast. And James Mangold, man, he did a good job, you know. And I'm friends with Faden Papal Michael, so it's like, I was happy. I was what I wanted out of it. I was entertained. It was escapism. It was exactly what I wanted from the movie.

So that's, I was happy. I had seen, I think online, online movie critics, I mean, fuck, they satirized it and what,

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, like it was the worst then. It's definitely worse now. Like, everyone has their voices amplified so loud. And most of the time, they're being far too, like they see agendas where they don't exist or they or they think that they're a filmmaker

themselves even though they've never touched a camera or you know written a page um so but so in that regard i've seen both sides i've seen oh this is fantastic i love this and like why the fuck is it this you know i'm just like just watch a movie like i wouldn't saw asteroid city that's exactly right it's exactly and what were you saying about asteroid city i'm sorry Oh, no, you can, trust me, I fucking just ramble, so it feels, no one's here to listen to me. But the, yeah, I saw Asteroid City and same thing. I came out of that, I was like, that was really fun. Yeah, I was like for all the theater, it was great, it was fun.

It's a Wes Anderson movie. That's what you're going to get. You know what you're going to get with the Wes Anderson movie. You know, visually what it's going to look like, you know, what actors are probably going to be there, who he's going to have. You know, he's going to have the kitsy dialogue. You know, he's going to have some weird, awkward moments. It's just that's his style. That's what he does.

And I don't know what more are you going to. going to what from it's like what do you know what according to letterbox i'm an idiot as another site i've never even touched i won't even go near there because i just i can't i just can't like the two sites i just try to like stay away from her rotten tomatoes and letterbox i just don't even bother well at least with letterbox there's there is like nuanced review like sometimes things it's very rare not super rare but it's it's not as common as like um rotten tomatoes or imdb for things to get review bombed yeah a letterbox you know it's like there's mostly people who saw it and like care about curating a thoughtful thing but every once in a while

people suck but with i got i got letterbox just because i was like how many movies have i seen so i was just using it to like sing it for that i got you to log it yeah i've never written a review i'd yeah i've never reviewed but yeah i've seen that and then i um i want to go watch fleabag because of uh phoebe waller bridge and you know i want to watch her work and seeing more what she's done and and uh i really uh what was the other thing i mean there's like there's so many things i have to just catch up on me yeah i saw like guardians three and i saw um that was a gut punch yeah oh man guardians was a big gut punch man that was like uh and i've worked with batista so i was happy right at like gergore of jack's character

and um yeah because i mean i've been away it was working in columbia so i i had real i missed a bunch of the movies that had started to come out so i was like oh i got to start catching up and seeing what's going on i haven't seen john wick four yet so you know so you know john wick four is definitely simultaneously the most and least john wick like it is i mean it's clearly just the like wild west stunt spectacular you know the plot is very thin but i mean most of those most of the wick movies are but you don't right you're not going there for light he's looking t riz kicks him out and and it's three hours of that i mean it is one hour oh but it's like two to a half but uh out of nowhere like all the first three like

the first one had a kind of a different cinematography than two and three two and three felt very much like the stunt team was shooting it. Yeah. And then four feels like they were like, all right, last hurrah, let's like really, I mean, there's like, Kurosawa references and stuff in it that just on framing. And you're like, okay, this, all right, we're stepping it up just a touch. That's cool. That's beautiful.

Well, I definitely, I definitely want to see it then. I have to check it out. It was, it was on the plane when I was coming back. And I was like, eh, I don't want to watch this on the plane. Yeah. I don't wait to watch it. you here I got my roommate and I have this 130 inch screen the little projector so we try to try to do it right so yeah the uh how do you feel about the uh barbenheimer release

are you are you double featuring it or you're gonna go separately oh yeah yeah it's not like a thing i've been like reading about that so like you could you basically go see barbie and then you see upenheimer yeah i don't know I mean, it'd kind of be a pretty interesting way to watch it. You have this bubble gum, popcorny, candy, you know, toy that little girls have played with in the 80s and for how many years. And then you go see this serious sum about the guy who pretty much vetted the atom bomb could almost destroy the world.

We're going to do it the other way. We're going Oppenheimer first, lunch, pallet cleanser, Barbie, end on a higher note. That's actually a probably a better way to. do what I think. I mean, Oppenheimer looks incredible. I can't wait to see that movie. I mean, I love Chris Nolan and I love Hoita, you know, Hoyta

you know, he's incredible. What you interviewed him? Have you had a chance? No, I did run into him. So, I ran into, I don't know what movie he was prepping, but I ran into him last year at Senegier when it was

still at the Marmount No when it was in the When it was in the LA Convention Center Oh yeah I haven't been in like a few years Because of COVID

So yeah This year it was at the Paramount So and that was like I still need to write Like a recap article About that Because the no one

No one fucking was there for the gear Everyone was there To just see everyone And like hug and high five And like The gear was It was in the background People were like

Oh yeah whatever Anyway And speak Yeah. To friendship. And it was a, it was a very fun vibe, but it was hilarious that I was supposed to do, like, for Pro Video Coalition, I was supposed to write these, like, recap or do these interviews and stuff. And I was like, no one, no one wants to talk about this. Everyone wants to hang out.

So I still. I don't have to write that article. Like, I wasn't tasked with writing it, but I want to anyway. Anyway, but so he was looking at, like, uh, these little lenses. Okay. Just like tiny ones, like from Nisi or, or, um, one of the Lawa, one of those companies, you know, one of those Chinese companies. And so I saw him standing over there and I was like standing with my camera guy and I was like,

I have to go. I have to go say hi. And so I walk over and there, his like handler or whatever sees me coming and he's just like buck. And it's clear. I mean, he's not wearing his name tag like he's trying. He's probably wearing it's all black with the scar. No. Oh, he's got his scar. Yep. And his hair looks like he hasn't washed it in like a week or whatever yeah he was not trying to hide but so i i just like really quickly was like hey oh i shouldn't say the rest well so i i introduced myself and uh i was like if you want to do it i'd love to have you on the podcast and he goes sure send me an email and then he uh gives me his email and and i i'm not going to say any more than that but his email was hilarious uh i i can't give any hints but i was like

really um that's all no but uh yeah but i've gone wrong you're great i i met him a couple you actually i met him at the last in a gear i was at um i ran into kvon from um camp tech and i had seen him in a while and he was with lenis and he was with hoitah and he's like dude if you met these guys i'm like no but i know who they are and yeah brandon got guy yeah i was it hey how are you And lean, it's like, oh, yeah, great. Oh, you know, I just like, well, you guys are important. You go to you.

The speaking of Hoyta and that whole thing is I've seen, this is like an interesting thought. Today I was reading this, of course, it's a fucking Reddit thread, but like everyone arguing about the modern look of films and how everyone likes to blame CGI, and I'm like, that's not the argument you think you're taking. But a lot of people are talking about, how when we went from digital from film

now that there's a difference in look and I was wondering what your take is on that because I certainly have an opinion that I get in trouble for so basically movie shifting from film to digital different from that or yeah and also the

the look of modern film do you have an opinion on the look of modern film and maybe do you watch films and go, oh, I would have done that differently, or like, oh, when you're creating a look for a film, is there a look you're going for? Because certainly, like, when I did B unit on Detective Knight, did you know that? That was the B. On Independence. I was the second unit director, DB. But I was like just shooting it. Like, I didn't have any lights or I was just like getting pickups and I was like at a couple lights but I was like I don't know if this is gonna like I've done this myself and it doesn't come out looking good and then we saw in the theater and I was

like oh no that looks fine so clearly there's like something to do with the colorist or processing that I can't put my finger on but yeah big roundabout way of asking do you have a personal opinion on film versus digital because everyone just loves that question but also you know your looks yeah I do I mean you know starting on film I love film. That's what I learned on, you know. And then being in the, you know, when I got out of school, I went, I went right into, uh, uh, videos and I was still shooting 35. And then I watched videos lose their budgets and I watched, you know, the, which I used to call the producers camera, the Canon 5D, come in and try to like, you know, look, you don't even like me like, you just do that. I'm like, dude, let me explain something to you. Have you heard a reversal film? They're like, yeah. I said, there's like four stops of latitude. We're, like, yeah. I said, there's like four stops of latitude. Versal Dome. I said that camera has forced off latitude. That camera's a piece of shit. It's like, you need to take stills with it, and that's about it. Or if you want to do web content, it's great. But don't try to sell me on something where you don't want to pay for life. It's not going to work like that.

And then I watch the red come in and all that. Yet, has it, it's, I, look, there's a place for both of them, right? And I believe in both of them. I think wanting to be a cinematographer, I think, extremely important you learn on film because you'll understand exposure and you know all of these types of things that that technically you should already know rather than going the other way from video to digital but has the look of films changed with digital yes I I feel like right now there's this lack of not wanting to light or this lack of like everything has to be like crazy dark to the point where you can't see it which i don't think that to me and my aesthetic i'm not a fan of that i like dark and i like contrast but i also want to be able to like i don't want to be

squinting at it and looking like what well they're like oh look how dark it's cool it's like just because it's dark doesn't mean it's contrasty it's just fucking dark and you can't see anything right if you want to admit you can make a film dark but yet like look it's seven right right like seven good dark film in tone content and in cinematography but it's still lit it's legible too exactly and a and there's 18 different fucking post versions of that movie bloating out on this so whenever fincher decided to do the 4k version will do it go back to the original the criterion yeah exactly um but that film is still lit well and it it's still even though it was dark and they did you know the CCE process, the get bleached, the the ENR process, all of that stuff had to be done to it

photochemically, but it's still well lit. So I, there's this thing and I, you know, I don't want to get into like this movie, that movie or any of that. I mean, I could talk to you offline about that stuff. But yeah, sure. It's, I don't want to point any fingers or anything, but there are some films that and TV shows where I'm like, yeah, that's cool, but it, it, you're being lazy. You know, I don't know. Maybe that's just me. I mean, I'm old school like that. But I think people still just because they want to make it dark and make it, I still think, you know,

there was that whole thing, I guess, where everybody was bagging on movies that are like teal and orange and they took on that aesthetic. And then movies started to be all low contrast and nobody wanted to color anything. And that was the thing. And then now it's like some desaturation. Now it's a little more oversaturation. It's like, you know, you've got to find what works for you. I tend to always go to the movies I love, you know?

And I mean, like, I love Blade Runner, so I don't, I can't make every movie look like Blade Runner or Be as, you know, but I, I feel, even though I shoot digital, I still try to make it feel like film, if that makes sense, I, you know. Well, that was actually going to be my follow-up question because in this thread that I was reading, which Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer's will brought me there because people were discussing Oppenheimer and then, you know, complaining about other films. And they're like, oh, you know, are they saying Oppenheimer doesn't look like film? No, they're saying Oppenheimer looks amazing. Chris Nolan's amazing. Film is the best medium. No one can make it, no one can make digital look like film. And, you know, they were giving it a little, fill a little too much credit, in my opinion. Okay. But I wanted to know what your opinion was on what is the film look to you? I don't, because if you want to make digital look like film, you got to be able to, you know, articulate. I mean, so, all right, I know, I talk with Brazier every now and then, you know, online.

And, and I know his color is really real, David Cole. And David was talking to me about when he did Batman, sorry, the Batman. I was like, what was the process that you did because it just took. kind of really filmic look and he's told me well you know Greg and I found this process in London where we could take we could take what we colored and then we could spit it out a negative you'd make a print then then come back then color that then scan that print back in so you still you're besting with digital on film going back and they see he's like I mean don't get me wrong it's an incredible process very very expensive sure um but uh hold on the second

Let me get this. Oh, one second. Oh, gosh. Yeah, there we go. Sorry about that. There was a call number one. So when you're looking at, and Dune did the same thing. You did the same thing for Dune one and two.

So that is very cool. Obviously, there's money, no object there. I think, you know, and everything Dekins does seems to have a filmic look to me. Like, Deac has a way of doing stuff that looks, filmic um i just i think it's it's it's it's in the way you light it and the way you color it and you know adding a little bit of grain to it and i think what you know gregg's doing is really interesting i mean i there's that new film he did with um gareth edwards is that his name sure yeah yeah um creator yes or something to the sea yeah yeah and um i was just i was

reading they shot that in the FX3 so I and I was like I really need to do an interview about that because he said that in one podcast he was like I like the FX3 I'd like to shoot a movie with it yeah and then just my journalist brain pinged off because everyone took that clip and then have turned around and then like he shot the creator exclusively on the FX3 and I'm like I bet he used that camera I don't know if that was like so I texted i text david two days ago and he's on vacation he's coloring and out and i said i need to have a serious talk to you with you about what camera that movie was shot on because he'll tell him straight up and the moment i find out i'll text me yeah because because my that just seems i saw a trailer during

indiana jones and here's the thing about the trailer the trailer the trailer did not hold up visually in the iMac screen i don't know whether they it looks great online but when i watched it big it didn't look so good it broke up a lot so i really i i'm curious i think he used it for certain scenes but when i see that trailer man it looks like airs 65 to me it looks like i look maybe i'm wrong i don't know but it just looks like i i got to find out from that one that one's one where i'm kind of like really you use that camera okay Well, I mean, it's a great camera. I certainly Sony makes dope sensors.

Sony makes most sensors. But it's just the online contingent of Sony fanboys is loud. And the second they got a hold of the creator was shot on the FX3, it was just like it destroyed internet discourse. And then what's going to happen? Everybody's going to want to go to do exactly what he did. And then they're not going to be able to achieve it. And then it's going to be like, which sort of the whole large format thing as well. So anyway.

Oh, well, yeah, I mean the FX6 is tech, or FX3 is full frame. Yeah. It's just an A7. It's an A7 in a sturdier body. It doesn't even have, uh, I think it doesn't do true 24P and it doesn't have shutter angle. Oh, my God. It's just an A7. It's an A7.

It's an A7 in a different body. It's an A7 with a fan. Yeah, I can't. And it's, I know it's like, you know, that big. And this is going to have a phone. I mean, when you build it out, it's going to be like that big, I guess. You know, your battery needs and however you, I don't know. Steady Camops fucking thrilled.

Oh, sorry. He's like, yeah, it's great. You interviewed Warren, right? Who? Warren's software. No, not yet. So, Warren was the, you know. with co-DP on that.

Yeah, you need like five DPs I'd love to talk to. But I have, I don't know if you guys. I know, I know a lot of people. I'll definitely like them up your ways. It's cool. Hell yeah. That'd be an exciting one. Yeah.

No, yeah. So Orrin was co-DP? Because I saw he shot it and then it was. Yeah, Greg shot it. I guess Orrin, like, co-DP. Like, Greg's been doing that now. Like he, when he did during one,

he brought on Kate Arismondi. who was relatively, you know, kind of obscure, and he just was like, yeah, you're going to shoot my second unit. And I was like, wow, good for her, man. That's pretty good leg up on that one, you know. Yeah. I mean, it's the opposite of that. That's actually pretty cool because, you know, at a certain point, Greg is going to get, I called him Grieg for so long because I'm a fucking idiot. But Greg's going to get every job.

Yeah. But he's going to get every job. You know, he's shot some of the most beautiful. stuff on the planet. And if a script ever comes his way, he's going to get it. So the fact that he's bringing on lesser-known people to co-DP or be second unit is probably a huge leg up for those people that, you know, I'm sure he's betting, obviously. But that's a cool thing. He did, you know, when he did the Mandalorian, I mean, he basically took Baz his operator and he just was like, here, I'm going to do a couple of these and then you take over. And, you know,

cool for him. So that's good. did you start as a second unit guy or did because i was checking on your i mdb briefly and it's like there's a lot there's a lot of camera and lighting jumping around before it starts just going cinematographer cinematographer yeah i mean i i uh i basically like well hopefully you get the right brandon cox because i i've been getting some weird credits pop up lately and i was like i didn't work on that oh really yeah it's weird i'm brandon cox number three do whatever but I mean, you'd probably see my picture on there or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I started, like, as a lot of the films I worked on at AFI. And so I worked on a lot of crew people stuff, and we all crewed each other's films and whatnot. But I started in, you know, grip electric camera moves around. But when I got really extremely lucky because one of my classmates, was from Norway and he'd already been a bit established in the industry in Europe

and he came to America and he wanted to learn narrative soulmaking and he wanted to go to AFI but his main goal he really wanted to get music videos and commercials and Daniel Pearl was like his idol that was like who he emulated his style off of and he left AFI because AI is a two year

program he left AFI he went back to Europe got a lot of videos then he's like when I get an agent I want to come back and I'd love for you to work with me and yeah sure So, long story short, he comes back, he calls me, and he needs the place to stay. So he had crashed with me. He stayed with me for like a month, found a place to live.

He called me a week later, and he's like, hey, B, Cox, you want to come operate on this music video? I just got, of course, I'm right, I'm right, I'm like, oh, two weeks out of AFI, I'm like, yeah, let's go. And so I go do that, and he takes me to company three. I meet Dave Hussie. I meet Stefan Sonafeld. I started meeting all these rock star colors to, you know. are legends now. And I learned that whole deal on how to, you know,

work with the colorist, how the director works in a music video setting. And then he gets another job. I go work with him on that. He gets another job. He's like, hey, you're going to be sit with this director and you're going to shoot this stuff for me. And they just gave me a list. And through that process, I guarded enough credits as the cinematographer,

second unit guy, I would tweet two. per se and i basically uh was able to get an agent with that footage that he gave me and there you go so i know how to do everybody's job and i've done all those jobs but like when it came professionally to to like get out of school and start doing it i was really really lucky on how that happened gotcha yeah because it does feel like uh quite a sharp trajectory from i guess i didn't realize you went to a f i but i've interviewed a lot of afi people that seems like a very you know the film school discussion always seems to come up in general, not just on this podcast, but AFI people always seem to consistently have like the most postgraduate success.

And I think it's just, it must just come down to the structure of their education, right? It does because when I was there and I, he left right after I left, then he came back, the main professor. Now he just came back. I think he's like the tenure, big dude. now as is professor Bill Dill and he's ASD and all that but he is a incredible just he's probably one of the most incredible teachers I've ever had and basically would just you know it's structurally break down a scene breakdown movies breakdown lighting breakdown composition just like and

nobody I've just never had a teacher like that and you know when you you work alongside for two years with 28 other individuals that are 27 other individuals can do the same thing that you can do and you feed off with each other and you learn from each other and they're all from all over the world you know um and say you've got people from korea india china you know south america europe whatever and everybody's got a different aesthetic but you you all learn from each other the funny thing is i i don't think a f i is the greatest directing school per se but as far as cinematatier editing production design they're it's first rate you know I mean that if you look up the amount of DPs that have come out of that school um you know Matthew not lead Robert

Ellswood Janish Kaminsky Wally Fister I mean you can just you just keep going you're Rachel Gorson it's incredible yeah probably a third or more of the people I've interviewed that have Robert letters yeah anyone who has letters after their name yeah exactly But, you know, it's the way the program's structured, I mean, it's, it's very, very intensive and it's immersive in the sense that it's, it's setting you up to work in that system. And the thing I like about it is, you know, their equipment, I guess, so you would say checkout or whatever, is kind of minimal because it's trying to teach you that, like, hey, you're not always going to be able to go to your school. get stuff you have to go out and go rent stuff which is like you know when you go to these private art schools or these private schools that have all this you know they're like oh the gear we have but it's like right that's great but in the real world nobody's going to open up

the door and say hey look at all this gear we have it's not going to work like that you got to rent the shit you know right so in that sense you know afi is teaching you to engage with vendors engage with these people that's i like that's i'm at panavision was like i've had a 20-year relationship with that camera house. I had a really strong relationship with Technicolor because we were assigned to lab and that was when we're still on film. But I met so many people through that process. So AFI, yeah, they churn out people, man. They really do. Yeah, it's, it's always been fascinating here that because I think they're singular in their pro, maybe not. I'm sure there's other schools that do it that way, you know, maybe NYFA.

But, you know, your USC, UCLA style school is probably not much, that was about to be bad English. It's probably not unlike what I experienced at Arizona State, except ASU's film school started two years before I got there and had no budget. Now they've got a crazy budget. But like, when you're talking about, look at all this gear we had, they had a DVX. And they were like, y'all get to fight over that. Right, right, right.

and then at one point they got that 5d and everyone had to fight that then it was then it was like all oh we're going after you know someone got the 50 yeah exactly right oh that's all we have oh okay never one it's on the camera you know but yeah it it's uh you know they don't really have any cameras there you you you you had to go out and write your camera i mean they had i i and and how that program's changed now too is i don't know now but i don't know when i was there just how the industry changed for your thesis films i think out of everybody's i think there was i think it was like 20 some odd films or 20 or 30 films whatever it was and out of all those films um i think 20 if there were 28 i think 26 or 25 were all film and there were like two

that were digital now i'm sure like two are on film and the rest are on you know right and and so yeah i mean it just goes to shape but the only kids the cameras that the school had because it was through they had like the sony editing center or whatever whereas the sony f nine hundreds i mean in those oh really their things are just tanks you know but i the old star wars episode one camera yeah exactly exactly so i never used it but um uh you know some people did and you know they made it great and and uh yeah i shot my own 16 so that was my my most see here we're on 16 yeah so how did uh you leave an aify what got you into the track of kind of shooting you know i'm a big action fan but you you seem to have this this lexicon lexicon

you have a body of work that includes i'm using all my big words today uh of like you know lower budget blockbuster i don't know how best to describe like the the you know you've got Batista, Bruce Willis, and Adrian, not Adrian Brody, but... Oh, I wish Adrian, brother, that'd be great. No, it was for, like, what do I think? Marauder, because I had just watched... Adrian Grenier, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you got these huge stars, and then what is...

You can tell, like, it's not like a shit budget, but it's certainly a low budget. But you made it look good. Like, that film, I want to get into that film a little bit, but... I appreciate that. Well, how... We'll see. All right, so how I started after I got to AIFI, got the music videos, And then a classmate of mine from my art school

because I went to art school in Savannah College of Art and Design A classmate of mine came out. He went to AFI for directing and then he quit and then he is from India and he met who was, I think there was a producer named Barat Shah who was like one of the biggest Bollywood producers at the time. And he somehow got connected to him and he found this script about this

you know back then it was like 2006 um it was about a gay indian man living in hollywood um and it's based on a novel and um it was sort of his experience in the nightlife in hollywood or whatever we made that film on 35 it really didn't do anything but i made a feature right yeah that helped and then that propelled me and i got the collector which is a horror movie the collector horror movie and deal with marcus dunstan wait and patrick milton you know this one with the collector hold on

who was the main character the main character was a stunt man wasn't he no well how he Josh Josh Stewart was the

was the main character I don't know if Josh stuntman or not no that wasn't him I remember sorry I derailed everything I used to play

Hawkwood with a stunt man and I remember he he this would have been about that time this would have been like 2009 I will

it came around in 2000 So maybe he was the collector. He was the collector and he had a mask on, right? Yeah, what was his name? Yeah, because there, he had a looking guys. And the poster is a guy like tying up his mask, right? Yeah, in the back. Okay, yeah.

So I used to play hockey with that stuntman. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, he did, well, he did a gnarly fall for us, a stair fall, which was freaky. And then also that was where I met Zoe Bell, the famous Tarantino. know she did a fall she did like a few times which is really freaky but anyway i don't want to get off the course so from that from getting that that got me more into features and so i i was floating around and trying to get another feature and um my agents got me a hold of this

project uh with this director scott man and he had this film called bus 657 and it was through Randall Emmett and George Furlow, the EFO people. And they said, hey, you know, check this out. And by the way, Robert De Niro is going to be in this movie. And we're trying to get Dave Batista and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. This is around 2014. And I really was, you know, looking for something to, you know, go to another level. Get Mayo, that's good.

Yeah, exactly. And at the time I went and did a deep dive on these Emmett Furle. of movies and not to sort of, uh, you know, poo-poo on the other ones. I just didn't really think the look of those songs at that, what was gone, you know, previous before I did one. I just just, they felt very, you know, they did a good job, but I just felt that they could the, the, the, you saw how you could include, you saw how you could make it, uh, elevate it. Exactly. So I, I immediately was like, all right, well, we're going to shoot anamorphic. We're going to make it look like a bigger movie. And, uh, we're going to do

something with it. So I brought all of that. There was a lot of fights of not wanting to shoot anamorphic. But why for? I don't. They just, they basically wanted to take the same camera package, producers. Oh, okay.

And say, oh, yeah, here, just use this. I'm like, well, no, I don't want to use that. I don't shoot those lenses. I don't want to shoot that camera. And no, I don't do that. And it was a fight. And Scott and I fought on it, fought the producers hard on it when we want.

and ever since that film I felt that that was going to be my sort of staple for those that level type of movie I'm going to bring you know you're not giving a lot of time to make that movie right out of the norms and you got to get what you can when you you know because sometimes okay

we're going to have this actor for two days and you've got to rearrange your schedule just to shoot their stuff and then all that sort of thing but to answer your question with those with those films yeah i mean i wanted to bring something to it visually that could be you know all of the things i love like lethal weapon two and tony scott movies you know movies from the 80s and 90s that i love and just sort of give it a spin

and my sort of take on it and do what i do what i love you know so that's why i tried to bring action was always in my like dna i always loved action so being able to shoot action movies it's like wow you know it's kind of it's such a pleasure and an honor to be able to do that because they're fun i mean i don't get to do what uh you know it's a extraction too is done but you know that that's sam hardgroves working on fucking all cylinders and and in kicking some butt man yeah well and i mean it's it's you know like it's the dream because in in college they're like you're not going to make an act don't make a fucking action film make a right a drama that you can film stop right you know and then you go off and do it but so what i kind of wanted to get

into with this was you know the films look you know higher budget than they are what are you doing which is you know anyone can do that but given the fact that you guys don't have a lot of time i'm very interested in how you're able to light these scenes and what your lighting techniques are to raise the bar on that production value in the time allotted. How you're able to work so efficiently? It's funny. I was very similar conversation like a week or so ago with a friend of mine was asking me this.

Yeah, most of these movies, like, okay, so bus 657, I think that was 19 days. And it was 17 principal two, I think it was like two stunt. days or you know pick up days whatever and then from from there the day we're just decreasing and so i very quickly learned that i have to learn how to shoot with two cameras multiple cameras and i have to learn how to light fast and good good enough that i can get by and make these things work um because there's no time to tweet there's no time to be precious over anything um just because you don't don't have the time you're just you're on it's running gun the whole time so what i did was as i you know for 10 years from 2000 well it was like 2000 when did i get out of

school 2004 2014 2012 whatever all i did was movie videos and a few features in there but in that time I'm basically taking the speed of which I had to work on a music video and bring it to that. So I learned I can, I have this ability to walk under a set, look at it, and immediately like Rain Man can know exactly where I'm going to put the lights, the cameras, and then I can do a really quick turnaround because I try to do this light to space, not the face. So actors fall within the space and the lights and, you know, if. they're out of out of light and the like that's fine because don't get me wrong it's not like i'm not going to have any lights on set i do but i try to do it in a way that it works and it's good i can't make it great because i i just need more time you know and maybe it's great i don't know i'm doing it to a point that it works aesthetically for the movie it looks good and we can move

quickly and so I've got to be able to light that thing really fast and when I need to turn around if we finish once that when I need to turn around I'm talking like 10 minutes 12 minutes I've had to turn around not 45 minutes you know and you just you won't you won't finish and so I've been able to you know use larger sources and or you know give myself like hey just give me a little more time just like this and then once we go we're going to go so So at the beginning, you know, we'll have like pre-calls or we'll get in and be like, I'll be up in an hour and 30 and we'll go. So it's, and then obviously when you need to come in and on close-ups and whatnot,

I'll bring some other sources in to help out and just to fill out the scene. But that's been more, that's been my general approach pretty much for the last, you know, eight years on all of these movies is that. And as I've been able to get budgets increased and. time I've been able to at least finesse lighting a little more and slow down. So I've appreciated that because I've noticed when I get a little more time, just a little more breathing room, my work elevates to a different level. And I'm trying.

You don't say. Trying to get that all the time. So that's the goal. But yeah, to answer your question, that's been sort of the running gun, run with your fucking pants off and light and go. shoot, chew, chew, shoot, shoot. So what is your lighting package? I'm just using Marauders as an example

because that's when we initially scheduled a couple months ago. I immediately watched that. That was like the first one that was available for free. So I was just like boom. So use it like when they're in like the bank, for instance, that all looks very unnatural, but it still looks not lit in a pedestrian sense.

But like it's, I could tell, okay, you've lit that. But like so what for using that as an example, like what were your lighting setups for, in bank maybe which which which which bank robberies at the very last one yeah let's go with the first one because that one looks pretty good the second one which was like in the wooded sort of bank and then the third one was where the robbers were um uh they they've met resistance from chris maloney yeah either one i can go to either actually that first one and now that i'm thinking about it that last one too actually are both okay pretty good so the first one was in

it was interesting it was like the lobby of a building and everything was gold yeah everything was golden right so i remember i was i shot some park hands into the ceiling and then there was a big door interest and i think i had a few nine lights out the window and i papered the window so i i was just using that that push that way and then using all that golden light bouncing up the ceiling and that was really it and if i needed to come in with the special i i we walked around a uh four by bounce and i think i had a one k or two k and made a like a book light out of it and my gaffer on that who i just he just finished a movie with me russell faust who's incredible he normally worked with uh won me um his last names that gave me right now but he shoots for joe carthaghan he's a really talented dp he

um he also russ just finished the movie with um uh dante spaddi and Barry Levinton so Russ is like an incredible gaffer and I shot that in Cincinnati but that was the sort of approach on that bank robbery scene so we did it that way and then the the next one the bigger one there's the gigantic large windows in the back of that that was an old bus terminal or train terminal i think it was and it was actually used as a bank and rain man where when um no no shit. Tom Cruise goes and trying to find out who the who owns the trust of his of his family right because he was sort of duped out of his inheritance from his dad right and so that's like a really you know historical building in downtown Cincinnati and so we turned it into a bank and I had these

large windows and I think I had two lifts back there and I had I think it was an 18k going through that way and then maybe 218s, I can't remember. I remember there was one. I don't remember if there's another. And then there was two levels to that place. So I could actually put lights up there and then shine them down. And I think Russ also took a couple 4Ks and 9Ks and banged them into the feeling again just to get a base ambience of everything.

And then from there, there were little rooms offset that I could just push lights here and there. and then he would I just remember bouncing a lot of light for that show and then I would walk we would walk around in Image 80 got nobody using those anymore but there was no LEDs back right so there was no sky panels

there was no tubes you know dude the tubes Gino flow man that's what yeah that was it bro no there was no there's no stairs man you wanted something blue you had to go go get a fucking Joe put it on there and watch your stop just go you're not aware you know so it was uh you know still using a lot of tungster and you know flows and hMI so that was I remember dancing around a keynote flow and

dancing around in mid-80 and always softening it for that scene so it always having a bad I always have like soft key light hard back and it just sort of rolled with that whole thing yeah so any any sort of shot we would be with uh if a guy was shooting the gun I'd I'd you know I'd keep from one side and back edge from the other whereas that it's that it worked aesthetically for the shot but I remember that that specifically yeah yeah the uh I feel like younger you know students or younger filmmakers would be amazed at how

fucking big those image 80s were like they look ridiculous looking back on them now they look ridiculous no they look yeah they're heavy all those things were ahead there's just big like you know I mean it's a you know it's a big array of what four foot kinos but i think it's like 12 of them or something yeah yeah it's yeah had to like yeah you had to make them by color and like yeah like yeah like what tungsten daylight tungsten daylight or you can do it all daylight or all tungsten it's like do they have no idea how how how what we had to do back in it's like now they're like oh you want to 2,800 yeah

there it is yeah they have the the ease of all that where it was we're like oh we have to switch all the tubes. Hold on. It's going to take 10 minutes. Oh, we're going to take all the tubes out, put it the daylight tubes. Oh, yeah, that was fun time. I had a now instead of an image aiding, not that I ever owned one, but I got the uh, Intellitech mega light cloth. It's like a four and a half by three and a half foot blanket. Oh, I call it, but by color blanket. So it folds into a one by one square. You can chuck in your backpack. You know, you can put it in a briefcase if you're not really the ballast, but I mean like sir I mean I and I didn't really start using LEDs until um

uh escape plan two which I did in 2017 it was one of my gaff different gaffer I worked with was like listen man you really need to try using these sky panels and I had a bad experience with LEDs like you know I got the wrong ones and they flickered and I was like oh they used to be dog shit yeah it'd be awful and then so I was very against LEDs and And then it took another Gaffer to really convince me when I saw what a sky panel could do. And then what, not a Thera, but there was another. Quasar. Quasar.

That was it. And the quasars, we had a bunch of quasars. You know, we had them on the dimmer and the iPad. And it was just his early doings with these lights. But it was really, really fun to, like, get into your brain. you're like okay these lights can do that now how else can you use these lights and now you know also to answer the question earlier you know LEDs are are huge part of my lighting gear now you know it's like i try to carry a 360 uh you know at least four 60s uh two or three 30s

s 30s they're all um airy sky panel for everybody and then obviously tubes you know it's there And then I'll do a small tungsten package of, you know, a couple, 2Ks, some 1Ks, smaller units. And then HMI, so 1.8, some 4Ks, maybe 9K. If I need an 18K, I'll take it. But I try to just try to kind of stick it in that. And then that's really it, you know. And they know the aperture makes all these little one-by-ones. And, you know, all those, I love those things.

Those things are, MCs are incredible. Those lights are amazing. Yeah, the MCs are dope. The Aperture, same thing with their sound division, deity. Their apps, their apps are great. Yeah. Like the light, you know, you just control, the one that's cool about like the MCs or some of their blankets are like, you can take a photo of a color and it'll just make that color.

Then it goes. I mean, it's so intuitive, I'm smart. I had a friend that worked at Aperture. He's since left, but when I was doing a movie last year in Puerto Rico, which hasn't come out yet it's in post right now it'll be out i don't know either either the end of this year or getting in next year um i'll what i know i'll let you know but um he sent me there i think it was there uh it was very similar to what you have that like blanket like it's like i don't know it's like two by or four by four i don't know how big it is but it uh it unfolds out

and you can put it in a frame or you can you know tape it on a wall or however you want is it blue no it's it's it's just it's it's a black back with white front and it's got LED and then it have a little brain and you can put in a little box and you can hold it around or put it on the stand and it's it's a DMXable and uh i think it's called the it's called the it's the uh what's it called i it'll come to me the ad of the ammaram the amram The Amaran. Oh, it's the Amaran. Oh, it's the Amaran 2, FX22 or something.

Yeah. I used the hell out of that light. And it was so versatile and so quick and fast. And it's powerful. Like, there are lights. You're really highly powered. But just, again, I don't want to get off the tangent. No, this is the Tangent podcast.

So go for it. You know, like, you know what I'm saying? Just the power of these lights, it's incredible, you know. Yeah. And I also use the deluxe lights, which, look like nine lights but they're LED and they're they're powerful but the great thing about all these lights is you can plug them into the wall you know i mean if you told me you can do that you know 10 15 years ago you know gaffers would look at you you're crazy there's no way and now it's just

that's the thing you know it's it's it's really amazing and it's also it they're they're facts you know and that's the other thing always needing the time like i'm always talking about having time time you got a light a big light and you could just massively cover you know an area quickly and you got a light that you don't have to run miles of cable for you know why not it's great so yeah yeah i've been trying to like always change it up and and give these movies a look but that that basic package is what i listed off is like that's become the sort of staple for me right now at at sinnegear aperture and nanlux slash nanlight depending on which distribution you get it from release aperture has a 2,400 watt LED that basically it's more

powerful than an m18 I it was so far they they banged it into the side of a building and I was probably standing 60 yards away getting a solid key and I was just like what the fuck I mean it's enormous it's not like something of the average person would buy but they had that in like a 16 and then nanlux has like a 1200 that's uh oh yeah yeah like an m8 or something like that yeah i was using uh the movie i i just completed my um my demo board op had some lights that she brought and um well i was using the nan lux the nan light forza for yeah forza those things were great i never used even used those. It was funny. My gaffer rust was just, I don't know about those. I was like,

no, no, dude, they make some good stuff. Well, you'll be surprised. And by, and by the time, he was like, man, I think I'm going to probably purchase a couple of those Dan lights. Now he's like a complete convert now. So it is, it's cool because, you know, you get to, I love always being introduced to a new life from somebody because you're always very hesitant. But then when you using it in an application that you know you you were like well i know another light i could use to do that but when you use a different one or one you haven't used it's like oh wow i'm going to try that you know next time you know so it's always it's always fun in that sense to uh learn a new you know learn a new tool for the for the tool bag or you know for say yeah it's man LEDs are

incredible you know the change change the game tremendous and uh i i i always love you know i was bummed i was on my last week when sin a year was going on and i was seeing all the updates and i was like damn it oh man i want to see all this new stuff but at the same time i had to finish my movie so yeah who's out the cream source cream source makes really good lights too man those guys are good dream source lights are so yeah they're heavy but they're they're beautiful lights Punching. The, what was I going to say? Oh, the one that I was going to suggest.

So the tool that I added to my toolkit that changed my game completely, which is going to sound so dumb, is just, it's dependent on LEDs, but it's dependent on certain LEDs. And that is the ability to meter an X, Y coordinate from a light. So like, you know, you get a sun coming in, you just meter it, type those numbers into the back of the LED fixture, and it's the exact same light, you know.

It's not even like, oh, it's close enough, you know, you meter it and you get, oh, 5,600 or whatever, and you type 5,600 in the back of the light, that might not be real. That might, you know, and you don't even know if the lights giving off that number, you put these little numbers in, and it's exactly the same instantly. So good. That's so scary. It's, you know, it's, these lights are so intuitive now. And just by doing that, what you said, it's, uh,

It's, you're getting, you're getting the same color quality. Yeah, so, you know, light will come from outside where it's like it's bouncing off the grass. It's bouncing off buildings. And so there's like a little bit of color pollution. Yeah, yeah. And that's what the X, Y coordinates fix because it's not directly on the Planckian curve. It's, you know, somewhere just adjacent. That's absolutely crazy.

You know, that's insane. Wow. Yeah, that was a big one for me. And I got those Kino Flow. The Keno, have you used the Kino Flow? LEDs? No, I haven't. I haven't. So they were way too late to the game, but they were spending their time

wisely because I've gotten 100 TLCI off of their lights. Really? They're perfect. I mean, they're literally perfect. And they have, they're not as punchy as a sky panel, but the quality is far higher. Like, I can send you the scans I did. I'd love to see it. I did. You know, close coming back with something, man, because

I was having, I've had, I've had, many conversations with gaffers filmmakers about i remember keynote flows and then we you know would talk about how i would use keel flows um funny enough to bring up keno flows all right so on marauders there's a scene where the cops pull up and the two dudes that are trying to uh rob the the money that they that the robbers hid in that one abandoned warehouse they come outside it's raining the guys like put your hands up then and there's that whole thing and that was that was like the way i stayed that was i couldn't get a balloon light i couldn't get any light in the air like big enough so i looked at russ and i said well we got four four bank kina flows right and he said yeah i said

well just just get some pipe and hanging on the edge of the of the lift and just put it about so high and we got a soft box. Right. It's like, as ridiculous as that sounds, I think that's going to work. And then the key grip was a little like, oh, I was like, dude, it's four, four bank inel flows. It's not going to pull the lift down, man. Are you kidding me?

It doesn't weigh anything. Right. So we put it up there. We had the rain machine because, you know, there's rain in that. We made the rain. We made a raid that an entire move. Which was a lot of one. Raid is cinematic.

I know. And this is what I thought, Stephen, the director, I mean, he said, He comes to me two days before we were about to shoot. We were going to only make it rain to like a couple scenes. He's like, all right, so listen, Bcox, it's going to rain the entire movie. I'm like, okay, it's going to look cool. It's just going to suck to shoot in, but I'm down. Let's go.

They did it in seven that I was like, always like, what's seven, you know? Right. But so we did it and it, I mean, I like the way it looks, so it worked out. But then again, you know, it's like there's that big homage to Kino flow. It's always coming back. Yeah. Well, they, so the cool thing about them is they're, no matter what fixture you get from them, it's all the same LEDs and all the same drivers. So you never have to worry about like differences in in quality or anything.

It's just all about like workflow, you know, but on, at least on my diva lights, uh, well, they're all the same. So what I just fucking said that. There's a camera luts built in. So you can tell the light, ooh, I'm shooting Venice. I'm shooting, uh, DXL. I'm shooting Alexa, and it won't create a color that is outside the color gamut of your camera. And it'll also shift, it'll shift the white balance so that it is what the camera's expected. So if you put, you know, tungsten, whatever, it shifts the light to the camera's spec

so that it looks exactly correct versus, I guess, the other way around trying to match the camera to the light. Sure, sure. So it's almost recognizing the color sides of the camera of how it perceive, you know, like a jet to shift or a green shift or a tungsten day. That's, that's intuitive. Well, yeah, look, man. I mean, I know they took their time and they were a little late to the game, but maybe they're going to get their rise again. I just want them to sponsor the podcast.

Yes, I want Kenos Flow to sponsor the podcast. I used many Enofoers back in the day. It's my favorite. And Estera, I got run down by the Astera guy at NAB a couple years ago, and he's like, hey, man, I'm a big fan. And I was like, of what? And he goes, your podcast, I've read all your articles, and he started listing off things I had written.

And I was like, fuck, he actually did read. Yeah, Astera, uh, stare guys are cool. There's, yeah, I don't want, here. Stara is funny. Mike Apper on the, on the last one with the movie I just completed, uh, Land of Grace. Yeah, he, he was like, uh, are you sure you're not getting kickback from Estera? I said, no, why?

He's like, because we got fucking 80 of them here, man. And like, well, you know, I got a light. a city street man this is what it calls for a mixed color temperature what we're trying to do and he's like i just like the way you do it you know we're just you know we'll put one in storefronts and you know try to incorporate it into the into the film and and so it doesn't look like we're making a music video but it just looks like it's you know we're in a thermal country you just wanted to try to give it that mixed color temperature man on fire city a god type feel so it works but yeah that was yeah that's actually incredible life

Well, and every, every single DP uses, every single DP I've interviewed on this fucking podcast uses the astaire tubes. So, uh, they're incredible. It'll be, you can make a light any color you want in a matter of a second. It's if you can think of it. It's there. The fact that it has that intuitive, uh, you know, the Rothko or Lee lighting or, you know, you can just, oh, it's this. And I'm, I've got like three, like I have like three forested colors that I own. always use. I know the numbers now

because I've been using them so much. Like, make it a, making a 60, make it a 130, make it that I'm like, surprise me. That's my new thing. That's my new thing. Yeah, just surprise. You're going to be like, eh, a little less, a little less.

What, uh, this is a good question. See, I got to get them to sponsor the podcast because then I can just make this one of the, I change the final questions up every season. So, but anyway, what, uh, what do you use the Astero's for? Because I think this would actually be valuable for like younger film. makers who because tube lights are pretty accessible

you know Amaran makes one and the aperture makes one what do you use those for and what don't

you use those for? Like tube lights depending of where the location is I mean it's funny I'll use it sometimes

I'll use them sometimes as key lights like I'll have a guy on this like we were for example we were doing a lot

of stuff where I was in Columbia South American. And there's a, it's a military movie. And so I had these pretty big areas of jungle that I had to like, pretty thick, dense jungle. And I was lucky enough I could get a lift back there and then at a hill and I had like a 120s and I had a 360 and atmosphere and all this. But it was good and it would push, you know, from the side or it had some way off in the back of the jungle to push behind them but it would fall off in certain areas so i'd have i'd have an electrician holding uh like two tubes gang together at about 20 or 30 percent probably like four or five foot away from

subject and i'm the camera this is subject i'm the camera and then he would be off to the left or right i never put it behind me because that looks ridiculous so and i would have them and you know they would be walking right there i would you know that's that's a case where i would use or if I was in some sort of, I don't know, we'd say like a warehouse or we were outside at a market, I would have them, our department would rig up some sort of contraption that looks like a fluorescent like housing,

but we would put a stair in that. And we'd chain those and then we would have all those, like maybe we'd make one flicker and we'd make one like off ugly green and one kind of like in the blue spectrum and one white. Or if I wanted to switch it up. used it also as background stuff because the nanomartha gauvies sort of lights in the background and out of focus it looks beautiful and the one or when real the more does sort of thing so i'd use it in that sense

but then there's been cases where all set up a shot i'll just say bring me a tube here and bring me one over here so we'll key with that we're back light with that it like i i found ways to use like the weirdest ways possible that i you know gaffer look at me and what is what are you doing dad and i'm just like well just It works fast, you know. So I try, I try to use it incorporated into the set, but I also try to use the stairs as a key to light the whole thing. You know, so it's, I've always been, anybody that knows me, I've always been a little crazy, like mad scientists that just,

I'm not afraid to try stuff. I've never been afraid to try stuff. I've never been afraid to like go dark or, you know, go be edgy or wow you're shooting anamorphics like that what are you doing you know so i i'm just i look how you're going to learn right how you're going to learn if you don't and that's if you take that approach and find you know obviously find places where you won't get yourself in trouble by doing it but also just don't be don't be state because if you're just safe in this business it's like you're not going to go anywhere you're not going to push yourself you're always going to rely on

your crutch of like oh this is what i want to do so i've just tried to always you know do things in a different way and um i think it's worked you know for me i think it's worked pretty well so having those lights and using those lights the way i have been um yeah i mean i i i just go for it i'll send you a couple things and i'll send you some stills i'll be like all right over here i had a stare at here over there i had that so you can at least see what what i'm talking about Yeah, that actually brings up two things. The first one so we can get off tubes is I actually did one where I put like a clamp at the end of a boom pole. Yeah.

And then and then with like a three foot photographic umbrella. So I've got a mobile key. I just have someone Hollywooding. So if you've got like a walk and talk, you just got this one guy with a three foot softwalk face. And then they make these, I forget what it's called like a wind sock. You can stick the Asara into it. Oh, the information. inflatable jammy yeah yeah you in or i don't think it's like made out of mus or some kind of like

you know they grid they have them like different ones um but yeah i've had guys sticking on a c-stam you know clamp it or like a boom pole and you'll you'll walk it's it's almost like the filippe rouselow of the 80s with his uh he was big with um gem balls you know or or uh chinese labels yeah yeah char balls you know so that this is like our renaissance of the uh the stare at tube you know well i actually stole the idea from cronan with uh because there's this behind the scenes still of brad pit on fight club when they're doing when he's on the moving sidewalk in the airport yeah and there's there's literally just a guy with a with a keynote flow tube above his head and it and it shook me to my core because i was i was in college well i was in

college and i was like wait like i was like a freshman and i was like wait a minute Because in my head, if you had to do a big, long scene, you had to light the whole scene. For whatever reason, it didn't occur to me that the light could just move. No one would know that the light was just moving with you. And I was like, that makes that make so much easier. Yeah. Oh, and, you know, the balls of like, he shoot at that, that location, obviously, but they're using a lot of the, the, the pictures that were already there, rather than enhancing that.

Yeah, I think Claudia Miranda Gaff's Fight Club, I think. It's probably fucking Reagan. Jesus. Yeah, Tim M. Finchers put some great people out. There's a, I remember a specific scene where they're sitting on the corner and the houses in the background. They're like, oh, it wasn't this fun? We should do it again.

They hear. Oh, yeah. No, that's outside of Sal. Sal's. That's out of the mirror. So I've always seen the like the movie and then you back away and you see like there's a quino flowing right over here and it's like

you're like oh now it's that and it's just about it's a back light this way or whatever. And you know I just love that. You just kind of like well these guys use the same lights where are you? Oh okay that's pretty cool. That's how simple that was. So you know. That is kind of part

of my line of questioning with you and with most people is like trying to not I know everyone wants kind of like exact lighting plots for every film you know which is informative in in many ways but I think it's just more important to realize that like a lot of those things happen and and for you to just like you were saying try stuff out like see what works for you because I think if you just cut I think it's important to copy people when you're learning yeah because you don't know what you don't know but then if you're trying to get gigs you know and you're like oh I'm I need this exact

lighting plot from Deakin's website and then you try to execute it's not going to work the same it's not the same you know no it's not it's not the same and that that's that's a that's something I think this is sort of on the same lines I remember when I was at AFI

Janice Kaminsky came and was showing us his tests for Amistad and they were all on film and he brought him to our class and we they had the projectus loaded up and we watched them and I love his test because

they aren't like a chip chart and a girl with fabric and I don't get anything out of tests like that I just that's and that works for other people he basically had a set of

like an old colonial type I think it was he was actually doing it universal And it looked like a thing out of Amistad. And he had, you know, the typical Speerberg-Yanush stuff, he had the hard back, like, soft key. And he would be on the slate, the slates were that's where you had to pay attention

because he would say like, you know, Dior number one soft, classic soft this, da-da-da, push one stop, push two-stop, two-eight, whatever. All his information was on that slate. So he would see, like, okay, this is plus one stop, this plus three stop, this. and you would see these just I mean they were just gorgeous tests and you got so much out of that and I remember we were all hit what stock are you using I think he was using like 200 tungsten XR 200 tungsten I can't remember what the other stock was I do miss the XR stocks yeah yeah and and I remember like well should I use that stop because everybody wanted to do what he did but

but I learned very quickly that like he's like well yeah you could try that but what I'm doing may not work for you and you know I'm just doing this because I know how that stock works I like that stock this is how I like this is what I want but it may not work for you and then that was where I quickly learned that like okay I can aesthetically you know light like these guys or grab things from them but what they're doing may not be what I want and so that's what I had to learn that like okay you have to figure out what you want to grab from this and then go. To answer your question about, you know, using the lighting plots from Deacons or this or sort of that thing, it's like, yeah, take that, learn from those things,

but don't do, try to do exactly what they do. It's not going to really work for what you, because you don't do what he does. You know, you're not going to, he's not going to do what you do. So it's like you have to find that blend yourself. So I'm still constantly, if you look, if you're constantly a student of this craft, then I think you'll be successful. If you walk around thinking you're the master of this thing you're not going to last a long time right at all well and i've always said like if you if you steal from one person that's stealing if you steal from three people now you're now you're an original yeah if you if you you weave at least three people's uh sort of main ideas because everyone has their own thing and then someone's going to look at you and be like

you know what their thing is and it's whatever they've pulled from you you know um but you definitely don't want to take you know there's a lot of like YouTubers or whatever like this is how you you filmed exactly like Fincher and I'm like I don't think that's a good idea I I love those things those things make me let you want to learn how to light online this is how you do it's like sure buddy I'm gonna keep going tell me your let's too I did want to know uh those dude the let's be anyway um I I I'll I'll keep going I can go I I all right so quick story quick story I'm sorry oh yeah yeah um I saw one of those things they're like make the joker Lut and And Jill Buckano was...

I know exactly what you're talking about. Jill McDonough went to my colorist and she colored Joker. So I said her, I was like, Jill, you have to see this. It's like, this is the way you did it, right? And she's like, ah, ah, that's funny. You know, it's pretty, that makes me laugh. I think it's funny. Yeah, I actually got a hold of her through a friend who was on the podcast.

And she agreed to do the podcast. She's going to be my first colorist, but, which will just, I can't have any more after her. It's going to have to be Sonnenfeld and maybe no one else. But I'll get to Dave. I'll get you David to come on, man. That'd be sick. I'd love to have a, I did a lens month that everyone really likes. So colorist month would be fucking cool. But she's obviously Jill Bognanovic, so she's busy as shit. But I did want to jump me back a little bit to the point about trying things out and always testing. It did feel like throughout the 90s, in early 2000s to like 2010 maybe that music videos were where you would do those

experiments because that was and music videos now don't have a budget rarely have an artist that you know it's it that um creative playground seems to have passed um do you see anything else in in the kind of creative space feels icky to say But anyway, anything of the sort of that mimics that area? Or does everyone just kind of have to do it themselves and work with what they've got? Now, yeah, I mean, I was very fortunate enough to have that experimenting time in my music video days. Well, and you could add those music videos to your reel and be like, check this shit out. Because music videos used to be huge.

Yeah, they used to be big. I mean, I was on the tail end of when they were still big. and then I watched them just completely go, you know. Yeah, you, you know, if you can have time to like test things now, it's good, which you hardly ever do. I, I mean, now I try to just, you know, get a little bit of like, all right, I want to try this and see, see what happens on a scene. And I've been, I've been lucky lately.

to do it and sometimes it works you know and sometimes you're like me that kind of work but whatever but most of the time i've been very fortunate and something works so that's been my sort of little test pattern now is just trying things on set which you know i'll talk about it extensively with the gaff all right we're going to try this we're going to try this we're going to try this what's where we're leading up to it and then um it ends up working and it works it works out great and when it kind of works you know if i see it right off the bat off the first or second time i'm not yet that that's not just stop that we're not going to do that i'll just i don't try to keep pushing you'll know you'll know within minutes or once you put the camera up and you're

looking at it and just like yeah that that doesn't that didn't work we're going to run up all right we tried it's not going to work what's just do this i always have a backup plan for it ready to go is like after I would be like if that doesn't work we'll just go to this but just be ready okay so there you the safety setup I think everyone probably has a safety set up

like the I played drums and there's always like you know someone will always do like a pocket lick that they just have for me for whatever reason it was always the disco beat that like if I was just bored it would just kick into disco beats or like

these two licks from Queens of the Stone Age I feel like Everyone has, you know, that one-up thing. I was like, I can use this. Yeah, go back to that. Big light here, scratch here, go, you know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it's, it's, yeah, I mean, it's harder now because, you know, I don't really do videos anymore.

Um, I would, I would love to, I would love to do one. I haven't done one in a while. The last one I did was in 2019. I did one for a group called asking Alexandra. It was like a seven-minute-long zombie-inspired. It was pretty cool. It was fun. It was longer, you know, because it had a lot of narrative to it.

So actually, this just reminded me of something. And I know I got to let you go here soon. But I can go as long as you want, man. I have no time. Fair enough. Yeah. But so, again, this is a different Oppenheimer thread that I saw it on the Internet, where this guy was actually was a YouTube video

where this again just like I feel like a lot of these creators do enough research to say things that are correct but then get themselves in trouble by trying to ad lib right and so this guy was saying that like

oh this is again giving Nolan a little too much credit when it comes to film this whole thing was shot on 65 film it's never happened before and I found out that Adele shot a music video in 65 millimeter iMacs black and white like 10 years ago yeah that's right um it's funny i was like that came up somewhere recently yeah and i know i love these guys where they find these things these guys or whatever but i don't know where that came up like i was reading about that

not too long ago and i yeah it was a black and white video it was gorgeous and it was shot five and I was like wow you know that that's amazing I think there was something else too that did that I can't remember where else but but yeah I mean you know hey they

looking up who shot because I think I think I know who shot it the Udell video yeah I think that would I would be very curious to know who it is actually is it oh my God

was that one it was no someone like you someone like you yeah yeah yeah so I was like it was one of the big ones yeah I mean that was the big one I'd wrongly oh come on this is taking two on

someone like you Adele song who was the cinematographer of the video it was funny thing I was watching that the Beatles Get Back documentary, the one that... Oh, yeah.

He was just to Peter Jackson. Probably was going to say Phil Jackson. I was thinking about the Bulls. Think about air? Yeah, yeah. Think about air and the last dance and all that. But, yeah, there was a whole bit because they're trying to get the record done

and they're making this documentary and they're like, oh, well, maybe we're going to take all this footage and make a feature out of it. He's like, well, if we're, shot it on 16 and I don't know if the quality is going to be good if they blow it up which is like this is hilarious this is like 1969 right they're talking about whether like well maybe if we shot at 35 it'd look good there's like a whole discussion like the Beatles talking about film socks and like

blowing things up and I was like oh my god this is amazing but little did they know now you know they took that 16 footage scanned it a 4k blew it up and it looks gorgeous you know there's funny you know I still haven't seen a hard day's night, which I know makes me a bad filmmaker. Well, I favorite year, so don't feel bad. But I will say, you've got to be in the mood to see something like that. It's an acquired sort of quote. Yeah. But I will say that, like, I am loving in the past, like, five, ten years, the number of company, you know, criterion, obviously leading the way Arrow, even just CBS did a few, where they will find the original.

camera negatives, scan them pristine as shit, and re-release it on Blu-ray. Because it's fascinating. Like, the one that I always tell people is the re-release of the Twilight Zone on Blu-ray. They went in, re-scanned all of the negatives, and it looks like it was... Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like it was shot yesterday. Correct.

And then it's the best because film, man, I mean, it's the best archival material you can used to for that that's why Scorsese is so die hard on preserving films it it you keep the negs restored in a you know in a place where they you know it's probably probably climate controlled and all that stuff you can pop that thing out scan it clean it up and they do they look gorgeous they're absolutely gorgeous and that and that's like that's what that's a great that's a see that's a great example where technology and the past come together to make something magic and yeah you know like I love when they restore old movies too you know like I know they re-released jaws a few years ago they re-scaned

yeah it's pristine it looks gorgeous man I just rewatched gentlemen prefer blondes yeah and that was a criterion uh rescan and same thing I mean like you obviously the the what do you call it the Paramount style lighting that very you know gives it away but like it's still it it's crazy how clean it looks everyone's memory of all these films is like a shit telecine that they saw on a terrible tv on and scan and then and then you get it back and like you know high depth and also re-scanning technicolor has just got to be the most bonkers because it's not like it's not like a projection that they scan they scanned they scanned like all three negatives and you know have to sink them and shit and that's just so much work but it's yeah i don't know

how well i yeah i don't know that whole process is great and then you know speaking of that other company you're talking about arrow arrow is like they're getting up there with criteria and man they're just i like the films that they're picking you know i like what they're doing i got their robocop oh yeah man they're true romance they just did this huge like it hasn't come out it's I'm kind of like a my two of my friends are uh steel book junkies that I like he sent me a whole bunch of steel books of like all my favorite movies of all these he had them all overseas I think you can't get any of this stuff and they just put the stuff they put in these box sets is incredible yeah and um and I I still love physical media that's just

you know I like to say oh I got to send you photos of my shelf well I don't know that's that good at least do um but they uh you know like the arrows is going after it i mean they really i love that i love the whole you know archiving of movies and because you can't remember man once it's out of the theater it's like it lives it has its other life and if you don't get the transfer right and if it's not done properly then people are always going to be like people like us the peers like well that version doesn't look right or this you know it's like seven like i said there's like five or six different versions of seven foot and so i think fincher said not too long i think a tribeca he said i'm remastering seven fourk i'm going to go back to the nag we're going to do it right

stephen nakamura that's a colorist yes yes who is a who is a great great human being know him well he's great great guy um he he was great and i think that uh i'm excited to see what what he does i i hope he you know i hope he goes back to the original look the pure look or doesn't go to the uh the cyan the cyan anyway i don't know we'll see what happens that just pined off so many things that wants for me one perfect example of a bummer is there was this tv show called seven days that they used to do reruns on spike and it was just this great somewhat campy sci-fi show and I wanted DVD of it for years and years and years it played when I was in the 90s

and I never and then like two years ago randomly CBS goes oh yeah we released that on DVD now I was like what and I like took a photo and I tagged all the actors in it and all the actors liked it and followed me back on Instagram they're like I you're the only person to buy that fucking thing

and uh but it's a it's a it's a tell it's a TV scan so you still get like the you know the little encoding bars in the top and bottom and the whole thing. It's directly from, they didn't re-scan shit. Oh, my gosh. I mean, they probably just found some tapes and, you know, I'll ask, I'll ask

my guru guy in my little forum, I'll see if he may, he may have something. He'll be like, oh, yeah, I've got the archives. I, you never know. Okay. That would be great, because that show was really fun. It had Jonathan La Pagli in it. who now hosts Australian Survivor.

That's hilarious. But he played in a... Well, I'll let you... The podcast doesn't need to be me explaining the plots in seven days. But it was that. And then, oh, the physical media thing. So the other issue with, you know, it gets new life on physical media is one, you get the bonus of like, oh, movies like Fight Club, for instance, or mall rats comes to might or any of these films that kind of didn't do well theatrically. right at least historically yeah but the weird thing now is streamers are just really taking the hack

to like hack that whatever taking this aside to things Disney put out a movie I just read this today Disney put out a movie called like crater and it they released it like three four weeks ago and they've already removed it wow it didn't do well on like Disney plus it was made for Disney plus right and it was like a kid's movie and you'll never see it again and we're never going to see it again they'll never put it out on physical media but though i did read that bob iger really wants to get the physical media going back at disney good i need to bring back the vault the old yeah they would bring me the vault and they need to hire some of these arrow people or criteria on people to take care of these their movies because let's just be honest man they're

their restoration stuff's not the they don't have the greatest people and that's no notch to them i just think there's such a large corporation that like they don't think to hire like the best you know you're right you've got a massive catalog now of 20th century fox and touchstone and god knows what up you know all the star wars Lucasfilm now yeah Lucasfilm you've acquired important titles then they need to be they need to look the way they need to look. So yeah, I mean, I just, I hope that whatever they do, I hope they do it right, you know, and that's all I ever want to see is like a proper, properly done version of a film, you know.

Well, and like you were saying, there's so many versions. Like I was, Men in Black is one of my favorite films of all time, like top, top four letterbox. Yeah. And, yeah, there's no, no, there is a 4K Blu-ray. But I had to go on like blu-ray.com and look at the reviews and go, okay, this skew is the one that actually has the good transfer because this one, like Terminator 2 and I think total recall, the 4K Blurays, unfortunately for Schwarzenegger, look like shit. You can't just buy the 4K assuming it's going to look better because sometimes the, the same thing with the Matrix. The Matrix has a hundred different color passes. Oh, God.

They did one where it was like all weird green and. then there was like yeah i i don't know what happens with those movies like i know i know i got a terminator to download off of apple and it was they added more cyan into it which did it look real waxy because that was yeah okay version you know because that was Cameron was more on the blues and the you know more of like almost a desaturated feel of that movie yeah you just can't just all of a sudden just go, oh, this is that modern color to this. It just doesn't work, you know. It needs to be preservation, not like.

Not, you know, super new. Yeah, no, polish. Yeah, it's like, oh, this looks cool. Sound of music would look a lot better if it had teal shadows. Exactly, the whole way. Yeah, this add modern, you know, modern colorists do to this stuff and make it not even look anything the way it looked like back then. These shots should be warped stabilized.

Mm-hmm. Gosh. God, we, you know, it's, I think that stuff's important. Yeah, same. You know,

you're gonna, the movie's gonna live in a physical form or wherever digital. It's got to be, at least it's got to look the way it looked like when it was put out. Well, and luckily, like, Blu-ray,

but even 4K Blu-ray, like it doesn't need to be you know the jump from VHS to DVD was obviously huge probably the jump from and then the jump from DVD to Blu-ray was huge again but Blu-ray to 4K you know we're now hitting diminishing returns and I feel like if we can at least find a way to make sure that those discs don't degrade appreciably over let's say a hundred years which I know it's like that's not very environmentally friendly but for Blurays we just for Blu-rays, we'll get the special plastic. I think we'll be in good shape.

We don't need to invent a new, you know, Laser Disc 2 to like make this happen. Like if they start coming out, the next thing, it's like, oh, we're going to have 8K Blurays. I'm just like, shut up. Yeah. I don't want to re-get a whole new catalog of movies, man. I'm fine with

the way they are now. It's like, please, no more. That's the other nice thing about 4K Blue Rays. They're not region locked. Yeah. Regular Lurays are, which kind of sucks but yeah whatever 4k ones or not which is good but yeah um well i'm gonna let you go because uh i didn't eat so but but uh yeah i'll definitely keep in touch obviously and then uh i'd love to have you back on when when the next film comes out and then we can talk about that

in specificity versus just the shooting all those shooting the shit's kind of fun i don't get i have like the ship pods no i love shoot to ship pods it's good i have land of grace which i finished um year two which is the werewolf movie i did with stephen which i'm finding out whether or not when that's supposed to you know there's a whole distribution thing they want to get in the scene right is all that um i've got to color that movie so it's either going to come out the end of this year or beginning next year and then i have a horror movie i have to color and then i have a drama i have to go so have four movies in post that i'm just waiting to just finish them well with the with the strike at least they're in post yeah yeah so take your time on them

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