Frame & Reference Podcast - 122: "Air" DP Robert Richardson, ASC

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

On this, the Season 3 Finale of Frame & Reference, I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Robert Richardson, ASC. You know Bob from his work with Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, and on Ben Affleck's new movie "Air". You're going to love this one, so I'll let you get to it and we'll be back with more F&R in February! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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, the season finale of season three of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Camille, and this week we're talking with Robert Richardson, ASC, about his work on the Ben Affleck film, Air, as well as his work with Quentin Tarantino and score. Marsezi and all kinds of stuff. If you're new to frame and reference, sorry that you showed up at this season finale. But if you're a long-time listener, you'll know the break is only about two months. Because I have work that I do every year between December and January and the holidays and all that stuff. So, you know, if you are new, you've got 121 episodes of frame and reference. You can listen to totaling over 200 hours of fantastic conversations with cinematographers and a few directors.

and stuff like that. I'm really excited for next year. We'll probably get started in around February, but I've already started recording those episodes, so you can be assured there. Fantastic. So yeah, that's about it. You know, as I've always said,

thank you so much for listening. You know, three years of this podcast, it's pretty exciting as this kind of just started as a side project. You know, four years is a hell of a milestone. And I'm glad you guys are enjoying it. You know, please do share with your friends. you know, tweet about it

or Instagram about it or TikTok about it or whatever you do about it because the more you share the better guests we can get like Bob Richardson here and, you know, the more we can do. So that's all. I know that's a bit of a long intro, kind of a season one length intro.

But I just figured, you know, for the season finale, I'd say hello. But in any case, This is a great conversation. You're going to love it. So let's dig right into this conversation with Robert Richardson, ASC. Have you been watching anything cool recently? Anything that kind of stuck out to you?

Well, yesterday I went to Killers. I want to see it. I live at L.A., and they've got it playing, at least last I checked, like somewhere in Beverly Hills. There's like a few little spots, like the couple of regals that are playing it. Well, I saw that it's playing in France in so many theaters, so I was in Paris. Oh, you mean killers of the flower moon, not the killer? No, no, yeah, I haven't seen that yet. I want to see the killers.

Gotcha. Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward to Napoleon. Yeah. I saw the trailer for Napoleon. I was like, God, Joaquin. And Ridley, I mean, Ridley has been. He has just been hitting it.

Yeah. He does not. It is not a problem for Ridley Scott. But, yeah, as a killer, I also saw Oppenheimer a while ago, El Conde. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Walkman. Yeah, great work on his part. Yeah. And an incredible film, I saw The Beast, which was so disturbing the first five, ten minutes,

and thinking, like, what am I, what are we doing here? It was amazing film. I don't know. I went, I said the deep, is it deepest breath? That one, I don't know. Yeah, well, it's, it's a wonderful story about deep diving. Oh, free breath. And Asteroid City.

You know, I just spoke to Bob Yohman a couple days ago about that. You know, it's, it's so strongly told visually that it's a remarkable film and I thought, oh, maybe this is going to feel sterile and it didn't feel sterile to me at all. I think the performance is extraordinarily strong. Yeah. How do you feel about killers of the Flower Moon? You know what?

I was supposed to see it the other day and then I ended up getting a job filming at the Magic Castle. So I took that. It was funny. Yeah. I would take that job probably too instead of a movie. It's just better for you. Yeah.

It's, you know, it's something that I actually think about a lot, because I've been there a few times filming in it, and the theatricality and the suspension of disbelief that happens at a place like the Magic Castle is definitely refreshing, because most people don't go to theater, you know, whereas Magic Castle is lived in theater in many ways. Yeah, I haven't been, I've been to Magic Castle, but not in any time recent, many, many years ago. Well, if you need an invite, you let me know. I've got them stacked. Okay, I'll do that. Got a lot of friends there. When you see something like Oppenheimer or Asteroid City that's so visually, not unique in a way, but at least unique in the releases that are out now, does that kind of spur anything?

When you watch those, do you get excited about film in the same way that someone like me would? who, you know, I shoot plenty of stuff, but nothing that, like, I can't touch that at this moment, whereas you're in a position where you can get there. You can be like, oh, I should have done that, or ooh, that's an interesting, do you learn from watching those things? I do learn, right? It, learn in a different way. Oppenheimer had no reason for me to be able to watch that movie when I think about what the subject matter was. And for Nolan to so capture that story in such a resonant way, and including the use of sound was incredible sound.

You know, I was in France seeing it, and I could barely hear the words sometimes because the track was lifting me and moving me. And I felt that had a lot to do with, but also Nolan's mind is brilliant, so he's feeding you visual imagery and you feel sometimes you're inside the brain. That type of thing is always highly instructive.

When it comes for a brilliant director, it's fresh. And there's fresh material on there. I try not to look at how a film is shot. I try to stay out of that. I did that with all, I mean, with Asteroid City, it's a little more complex not to think about it because they're generally set pieces and the moves are very precise.

and you you're almost looking at set pieces or theater every time so it's a little more difficult not to think about the visuals because it doesn't for me doesn't seamlessly enter into

a story. It is part of it but you have to run parallel with both of them. I didn't find that true with Alperheim or I just same thing with Alconde and think about that and think. Sometimes I've ever I forgot I was even, I forgot it was Ed.

It's like, I'm shot this movie. Yeah. This brilliant work and I'm watching story. I start with story. And then if I like it, I come back to it and I'll watch it again. And then start to study it without the sound. Just watch the visual structure and see it still tells me the same thing when I got on my first impression. Yeah.

Well, and I imagine too, like after you've done it at such a high level, as you've said in other interviews that like maybe analyze, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe analyzing too much will take you away from what you naturally do and what you, the instincts that you've learned to trust, you know, kind of micromanaging your own process maybe makes it too obvious and then you start thinking too much about it instead of doing what you do naturally. I think that would be partially true, but every film I watch, and I watch as much as I possibly can watching films. A lot of them are going, I go backwards in time

quite often. Yeah. You know, recently I saw rules of the game again. And then I shit, okay, well, it's rules again. Let's go to the river. And I checked out the river that he did. You know, and I move in time. I'm not stuck on my daughter wrote me and said, do you have any interesting movies I could watch? Do I have any ideas? My daughter is 18.

Send her a link to your IMDB. And she said No, I didn't mean my movies No, I don't And I said Where would you like to start? She goes, just not with Citizen King I was like, all right, well

That's got a point of view But she's not saying just give me fresh movies Right I said the one you're going to You should start with City of God So I was saying it's going to be fresh for you Yeah and I gave her a list

every word of battle out jeers I mean all the way through foreign blows samurai it's like et cetera et cetera rush them you know it's like a Tokyo story but I also gave a lot of

current movies that I thought were quite good you know and she she looked back she said we watched she of God oh dude

and she goes bruh I'm like okay right glad you got you on that one can you give me a western and if you want a western there's violin or you're a Western that's good I mean what kind of Western do you want to watch you want to go back in time

you want to watch anything man wouldn't you rather slip to something else a little bit more not that way if you want a good heartfelt story I'm going to say Kevin Kozner yeah yeah

brilliant and it'll move you and you won't think you will, and then you'll find it, fuck me if you're not in that zone. Yeah. And that movie is telling somewhat of a similar story, you know, way before, but kills her the flower moon,

you know, the decimation of the native culture. Yeah. And I just watched, what was it, Woodnick Cage, Buffalo Killer, something brand new. And it's like he's a buffalo hunter. Buffalo Hunter is called it's a brutal story of killing and massacring, you know. It's, uh, he, Nick Cage is doing really well recently.

All of his films have been great. They've been great. And it's a outstanding. And he is like, if you had said that I would have mentioned that one to ever, because that's a film, you go, all right, so this person. studied under Jeterowski, clearly. They must have. El-Dopos, I mean, anyway, it feels so out there and fresh and Pagan.

Loved it. You know, it, what was I going to say about, something about Pig? Like, you said it twice, and then I was like, wait, nope, gone. So we'll just move on. One thing you'll soon learn about this podcast, even though we're on a truncated timeline, is I've got a bunch of notes here, but they are just as scattered as my thoughts. So we just get to them as we get to them. Oh, I was going to say a movie I recently saw that I know you maybe don't have an attachment to the specific film,

but I saw The Conformist again the other day because I have it on Blu-ray. And I was like, that's a film that I think if you were to show. Because nowadays, like film students, you know, The Matrix is vintage to them. But the conformist is so fresh to, you know, what was that, 1963, nine, something like that, and it looks just as modern as anything else. No, Storaro did brilliant work on that, and Bertolucci, high level at that time, and that's the one film to any cinematographer I talked to who wants to know what they should be watching.

Where's it? It's to start with the forest. Yeah. You know, there's a incredible in its movement of color, and the themes in that time was utilizing the movement of light at one scene. when he's with his fiance and, you know, the lights moving up and down

and it's really beautiful. I mean, Saro is a master, obviously, extraordinary proportions. Yeah. I loved it. I think Bertilut. Well, went on to nail

so many others with Staroro. I wish something hadn't come between them. Yeah. It kind of brings up a thought that I had, which was, you know, like I said earlier, like you've said in other interviews that, you know, when you are at such a high level, you have to perform, you know, and I was wondering what that meant for you, because obviously, you know, we, after X amount of experience,

we all kind of learn how to light in the way that we like and we all, you know, learn not to get in arguments with people. But what's, what is working at a high level mean to you when you're working with, you know, your Tarantinos and your Scorsesees and even after who I think is one of the, I don't think the Affleck's made a bad movie, but we can get to that in a bit. No, I think you're absolutely right. I think that Ben is that way. He is, he, I think Air is a tremendous movie, but you can go back to the town. He, Argo, he's a remarkable director. And air for me was this short breath of fresh air. He's very, he did phenomenal. and well with it and it's an ensemble piece I do think you deserve it's one of my

favorite films this year in terms of a film and at just being objective you know I've seen it a number of times and I don't really have I'm not thinking about in terms of my work I'm thinking strictly about the ensemble cast and the direction and the writing and and the music score yeah music score and you just feel that it was made so rapid like it's a rough draft, you know, but a brilliant rough draft. It's like Neil Young delivering one of his, one song that's just never going to go to full production. And it's brilliant. And I think that working with, in that way with working with whether it's Quinton or I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I see words, see story. So I don't try to stay in the same genre. of filmmaking, I try to shift my visuals to match a story, not to not, not, not, not, not to talk about myself. Yeah.

And to talk about my skills. I, my skills can, they can do what they can do. And I'm frightened when I start every film. Some people think, oh, you're not going to, every time I start a film, I feel like I have to go back and look at my notes from a previous journal. Now I don't keep journals because it was all digital, but I used to take Polaroids. Sure.

And Polaroids gone out, which is a sad thing. You can do Polaroids, but not the quality we could do them. Yeah, and you got the one of the Fuji ones. I'll tell you what, the, I still take written notes, but this guy, the old Fuji Film X100, the little pocketable guy. Yeah. Throw that thing on 9 by 6, or 16 by 9 and great, great images out of there. I said I shouldn't take a look at that because I it's for me it's them when I were in digital

I have a and Ben had a little bit of a problem with this I said you know I'd like to get you a 65 inch monitor and I want to get a 65 inch monitor be the same one as I have I think it was 65 and it'll be the same one's going to be in the grading room because we had a grader on set was the LG yeah exactly and with the LG and then I said

I want to go 4K and you know he was like 4K why and we don't think like why would I go for okay I don't need that yeah

and then he started a seat and 4K and people don't want to go 4K is they're going to buy other equipment right you get it to go 4K so there's a reticence on crew members that have to spend more money to achieve it. But folks, these fellows are being released in 4K. Let's look at it.

Why do we want to look at something as in a diminished quality? 2K and 4K when you look at it. You hear Ben, the shot was over. Jimmy, did you miss that moment? I feel like you were soft on the eyes. And that's, you know, and Jimmy Ward is fantastic, folks. puller and and Jim and go no I don't think so it's come on over here a minute would you and they'd like oh yeah maybe it's a little soft there but yes so but it is a benefit and it does

give you a greater sense of what you're going to get because we would go to the great I would go to the grading room since it was shot in one place and you asked that question we had a grading room in the facility all was a small room we got the monitor she uh Eladie was working on In the office that you shot in? Yeah, a spare office. And right next door was Billy who was cutting. So one room, run, room, and the behind where the film would come in, get processed, handed it to her. She started to grade.

I'd slip out between, by 10 minutes, five minutes, look at something, say, that's it, that's it. Try to go that way. Look at this, put a window here, do this. I mean, we're doing basically a D.I. Right. you know, every shot as much as possible, and we're refining the lookup table because we started with a certain lookup table. It wasn't working. None of us were really happy, and we had very little time for prep, so then we're starting to shape it and sharpen it. And within a couple

days of shooting, and maybe a week or four days prior that, we were able to get it into a place that was better, and then we just kept working on it. Yeah. And it, It's, as my friend Michael Cione said about frame I know, the camera to cloud, but it applies here, is you're turning a, what used to be a linear process parallel, where you're able to grade as you shoot, you're able to edit as you shoot, and maybe tighten up the schedule a little bit. That's exactly what's Ben wanted to do, and he was editing every day. Yeah. They were, they would be getting upset.

I don't have all the footage. We said, well, did you finish the other scene? just we finish everything we come on like oh this one scene caused me a little more problem i can't it's like and it would be that and i said you know we still have another day we're gonna bella we still haven't got the side of the deal we got we're gonna wait and hang back uh they were they were great but and you know but the nice thing is he could walk into the room with alady and uh say alie can you can you do this can you change that or billy could do that and say I, you know, Ben was mentioning like a little lower, a little dark, a little brighter, a little

this, a little more conscious, a little less, and she would alter the scene for that. It was a tremendous benefit to everybody. Yeah, I mean, I've seen before that you're not a Luddite as or, you know, interchangeably using film, digital, whatever, and obviously the D.I. has made it so that you don't necessarily need to flag off what you see. It's like, well, I know I can take that down. But I did see in a separate interview that Quentin will not let you. you use the

die that's a true story what's uh how do you how do you you know on a on a movie like air shot it in 23 days you know assumed that you know the the windows are helping you out a little bit

the uh you know the die windows um how is it working in a situation where you're not allowed to lean on post as much as maybe you'd like I go back you know and I just go back and I do it I mean I have that conversation every once and a while in each film I go, Quinn, if I don't have to cut that wall because it's too bright and sometimes you just know you're not going to, and he's not going to

let me, I've already told the guys start cutting it. Right. That could save us 45 minutes if I can just change it. Yeah. No, Bob, I want the original. Hateful was the worst. Really? It was all snow. No, not just that, but it was all chemical to chemical. I'm sure. Emical and then printing. There was no DIY for release. You know, every once in a while I'll cheat.

And I'm not, this is no secret to Quentin. Right. He'll close his eyes periodically that he didn't see it, but he'll let me know the next time he sees me. that he did notice that something was slightly different than the dailies. But that never, but that never happens. We don't need to talk about that's,

you know, sometimes you just, just a slight, slight vignette. Right. Well, you know, I used to kind of be,

I feel like, especially nowadays that film is coming back as like a popular medium, photographically, not even just for film. I feel like, for movies, I feel like people kind of get very, very, I don't know if nostalgic's the right word, but they'll get real sticky about like, oh, no, this is the untouched negative.

It's like Brissau tweaked as negatives, you know, Ansel Adams tweaked as negatives. Like, it's not, when you go to the print, it's still touched. It's not just this magic you click a button. That's more like digital, actually, if you just take the picture and it's done, you know? No, you're absolutely right. When you look at still photographers, of course they're dodging. Yeah. in all different ways and we pretend that films didn't do this well still photography did it forever

and you know we get stuck with ycm or rgb and it's like two points here a point there you can't barely you know now you can sometimes fight for a quarter or half but essentially you're not getting anywhere you can push and pull but in the long run everything goes digital yeah yeah so no matter what you're doing you're going digital it's going to be released digitally in more theaters then you're going to see that one chemical I don't know how many chemical prints well obviously he did a di I mean at different formats he had to have a DI put Oppenheimer out yeah it was played with from the very beginning to see like the texture in the look of the

film which I I I do as well but I'm not I'm not an advocate only of. Yeah. Well, and I was actually able to see, I actually have a little story for you at the end of this, I think you'll like, but I was able to see Oppenheimer in the 70 IMAX at Universal,

which I guess is like the vert, like that's where he ced it. So I got to see that and I got to see the regular, you know. 35. Well, just, no, the digital one. Like we saw the digital one and then I saw the IMAX one. And it, it, it, I will say it was really shocking how much cleaner IMAX acquisition was than the 70

millimeter acquisition. Like when it flipped over to the first IMAX scene, I was like, oh, God, suddenly it felt like, you know, digital, like Alexa 65 or something like that, you know. Well, that makes sense. You know, I saw it in a 70 millimeter. Yeah. I see it in a, I saw it in 70. It was, I could tell when they shift to different places.

but I wasn't paying a lot of attention to it. Yeah, well, the IMAX was like, yeah. See, I didn't have that. That would have been fantastic to have gone through because I always had this concept that you should be able to flip between, you know, formats. I did have that note talking about, because I let, all right, so we'll just go there then.

Because it is kind of a funny idea that no one, when you're talking, you kind of talk about the reticence of moving to digital. We're using digital tools, but the idea of changing formats, even within a film, you know, oh, we'll go black and white, we'll go hand-tinted, we'll go 133, we'll go 185, you know, all in one film. That idea, it seems to be relatively fresh, but I've heard you talk about it over the years. Yeah, I mean, for some time, and I've done it a couple times, well, obviously, huge amount in Natural Born Killers and U-turn, but on KIPK, we made the shift for.

from basically 133 for marching to 185 to 240 with Washington for JFK. And a little bit of that with Horse Whisper we started smaller and enlarged on the trip to Montana. But that's nothing. I mean, I think that we should be able to do so much more with this because people were, I sit there and I watch the news and I'm watching all this material from the war right now.

And it's all this. Right. So somebody is defined for us. The social world is defined for us how we look at things. Right. Wait a minute. We not notice that when you turn it sideways, you're actually getting more than news in there.

Context? What's that? I mean, like, I don't just, one person here, I get to see as much of what's taking place around you, and you're swinging your camera from here to there, which that would probably be in your shot if you had added over here. Right.

And it's frustrating. It's like, why don't, and also, if you're shooting with all of our new cameras, let's just pull that social out of the wider because we've got enough information in there for people watching on their phones and YouTube. Yeah, that's, man. In the sort of lower tier environment,

that I work in. I cannot stand when someone, when the client goes, all right, so we're just going to film this normally. And also can you frame for vertical as well? And I'm like, so you mean just frame for vertical? Because there's no, like, we're just going to crop out of the, the widescreens. It's like, if you want it to look good vertically, every composition is going to be like that, you know, where you get, so it's stupid. Incredibly. I know, not a commercial up in Toronto, but we, we shot a vertical, all the social. See, that's fine. I figured just mount like a smaller, even a phone, just mount a smaller camera onto the normal camera.

Well, if they're doing every shot, in this particular case, they weren't doing every shot, they were doing specific shots, so they were being designed by Chris to be a shot that looks like it coming from film, and so we had a head that flipped in, so you went upside down, I mean, a vertical with it, and they just, they punched in on the anamorphic lensing. they get to the 16 by 9 or 9 by 16 I did I did want to ask this is just completely jumping topics I did want to going back to the idea of

oh wait before you go there yeah yeah yeah remember the film that was and I just I'm blanking on the title it was you know took place very crazy film American but with central Chinese character, I think.

Really weird last year. Everything everywhere. There was that section where they started popping very, very fast. That's everything that I want to do in a whole movie. I'm sitting in the second row and this is coming up and I'm going, and I can see it happening in front of me in my heads of all over. Motherfucker, yeah. That's the idea.

That's the idea. Yeah. Come on. It's like, let's do it. You know, it's funny is I got to interview Larkin Seiple, the DP of that movie. And I had been invited to what I thought was a press screening, but was just like the PR people like me, I guess. So they were like, do you just want to come to this? And it was at the IMAX theater. It was like, I think it's the only place that's ever been shown in IMAX over at Universal. So we watched the movie. It hadn't come out yet. So we do this interview. And he, and I are like he's just like on his phone chilling and uh we're having a great chat and uh i think at one point we're like yeah you know hope it does well but then i i wasn't able to release it for a while so the movie like destroys right is getting all kinds of awards and and then my podcast comes out where i have to be like okay we recorded this in april yes we're not ignorant today we were then that's that's so true i can see that one happening it was good he's a great guy um but i i did want to ask blonde was a beautifully shot movie

which one blonde oh yeah yeah yeah yeah that didn't get enough of what it should have gotten yeah i mean it's a it's a it's a tough watch you know it's a tough watch but it's it's a it's a much it's a very good film i think that underrated and a comeback yeah um what i was i guess oh the jumping back over to air, you know, I mentioned the 23-day schedule, how, you obviously shooting digital probably helps because you're able to on that 65-inch monitor to see what you're shooting. But what are some things that helped you be that mobile and work quickly, you know, obviously, you know, it's such a naturally shot film and, you know, in my dumb head. You could just be like, yeah, we put a bunch of lights outside and just shot it. Yeah, well, the reason is that I had the A crew. Ben, the whole idea of the new model was, let's just get the best. And the best came with my group, you know, Ian Kincaid, Chris Entrella, Jimmy Ward, Colin. It's like, these guys are like literally the best in their fields, in my opinion.

And because they were treated with a level of respect from Ben from the very beginning, like salaries and such and such. and like, you're okay, said, yeah, I'm getting more than my rate. You know, and rates have always stayed sort of in the same place. And so they were all positive. And, you know, as you know, crews care about food. The food was very good. Yeah. And once you keep a crew there, they were in the game. They didn't leave. Ben didn't leave. It was like a team that was in the Michael Jordan zone. You know, when he's popping his tongue on the long side, and threes are dropping and like raindrops, it's like, motherfucker, you go.

And that crew was there. And always ahead. On to the next setup, we knew where we're going. And I think that's the one reason we could really, well, it's not, it's one reason we could fly, you know, we could fly at a very rapid pace. And Ben could shift his point of view. And Ben also had the monitor and said, well, can I really see there? I want to see more.

And he was extraordinarily specific. So, and it wasn't something you would have to deal with later. So, oh, that's how we did it. Yeah. Was your lighting package? a very, you know, specific or large or small, minimal? You know, the primary letting package was LEDs. Yeah.

They're rapid to move with it in the first place. And a lot of the LEDs were up top and in the nighttime we shifted. But there was some work through windows, not a great deal. I'm when it did. I tried to work as natural as possible. And Ben was working at a speed that allowed me to work as natural as possible, which is extremely helpful. I mean, if you happen to be sitting with a dialogue sequence

and some of these were long dialogue sequences, you certainly couldn't get into that. But I tried to keep the set cool so actors wouldn't normally I'd be working with, well, normally on any filming it would have been tungsten units. Now we're able to work off of the floor. In some cases, no generator at all or one generator for the whole plan.

helped. So that was a reason as well as it did. Yeah, I know you've talked about the importance of meters before, but one of my favorite purchases I ever made was getting that sikonic color meter just so I can get the X, Y coordinates from like light

coming through the window and just plop up like I have the Keno flow LED panels and they match exactly. And they have camera lots in the lights. Have you seen that? No. The keynote flows. You can tell it what camera you're shooting on it. It won't project the color that is outside the gamut of

whatever camera. That's great. Do they make software updates? Mm-hmm. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. And if you call Kino, I'm sure they'll speed up there. I think the last update was like two years ago. But they do have, yeah, firmware updates and everything.

I'm a big Kino Fent. They don't pay me. I just like their stuff. But what, what, you know, obviously we had mentioned you work. with some of the best. What, Affleck's kind of a newer, direct, newer, relatively speaking to, your Scorsese's or whoever, what kind of sensibilities does Ben bring

to, you know, directing and how does that help you as a DP? You know, is there, did that shorthand develop quickly? Does, you know, is his inherent style something that kind of matches with yours, or did you have to have a lot of conversations about that? No, we match pretty much. The times we don't match is his

operating. I mean that a little bit as a joke He carries his own camera He had a red initially Oh no kidding Yeah he would just We had we had two cameras working Most every shot

And but they would be working Primarily in the same axis Ben would Try to slip in between us sometime But like You know you're playing on You're out of the basketball court There's a little bit of defensive play here, making sure that he can't get in there,

because this is going to be a handheld with the red. And so he would take these sort of the oddest angles possible and would go, ooh, maybe there wasn't such a good idea of that defensive bow. You know, he'd be shooting with the light. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. He probably stole that from Fincher. He just snuck into his bedroom.

He was like, that's going to be mine. Thank you. No, but then he bought the Alexa. Oh, he bought one? Yeah. Wow. Like an LF? No, he bought the 35.

Oh, gee, wow. How was working with that? Oh, did you shoot on the 35 for air? Yeah. Oh, all right, you're the first person I've met. Well, no, maybe one other person. The first person I've met who actually is shot with that. What is your experience like using that versus the traditional R.E. Mini?

It's my go-to camera. Yeah. I shot with it. We were in the prototype stage. Electro was in the prototype stage. So we went to look at it and viewed it. At that time, Chiba was shooting with Bruno with Alejandro. So they had some experience in the DIT I knew very well,

had done a lot of testing with it. And we all talked a little bit, different people at different times, not altogether. And I learned some things and I did test with it. And then I decided this is it. this is it because when air came it came so fast I couldn't put an anamorphic package together there was any back that everything was gone because you normally go with Panavision right yeah go with Panavision for lensing and airy primarily for cameras

you know but unless it's a film shoot there's Pan Amision all the way right and with Dan Sasaki have a very strong relationship with everybody then Jim and et cetera but I was like, Ben, this is going to be an opportunity because we're going to be able to use prime lenses that nobody is using because they don't want them.

You can go out and buy these lenses right now. You can get the old super speeds on eBay and they're going to cover. It's like, I'll go back to those the super speeds, nice super speeds. Yeah, please give them to me. So that really then becomes camera assistance who don't want to work with it

because if gearing doesn't work. Right. And so it's things like that that are a little disturbing. But overall, yeah, it was a great experience with a camera. And I did it went right from there to Equalizer the week after. And I got Equalizer on it. That's a fun film. That's a really good one.

I loved Equalizer, right? Yeah. I was unsure, I don't know. I don't know Antoine, you know, I don't know. Yeah. No, that was when I was able to sneak away. Luckily, I live very close to a theater, so whenever I do get a chance.

And I was like, go see Denzel. Because how do you feel with Denzel? The most amazing actor, just he's such a pleasure. And he's a force of nature. Force of nature. The speak, you mentioned operating. I saw on a behind-the-scenes clip,

you had like a, was it, like a wireless head on a pedestal or a tripod or something that you were able to operate with? Or what was that thing? Yeah, it was a remote head. I know the name so well, the Matrix. And it's just I use a pan. I believe in panning. I don't, I will use joysticks.

I don't do the wheels well, so I stay off of wheels. but I've had these pan bars constantly made because for me, it keeps me very much in tune with the way I wouldn't normally operate so you can have a monitor. So if you have to do it 360, you can walk around. Right.

It's like you would do it if you're in any situation. And you can pick your speed up and slow it down, but I find that the pan bar is my best way of operating with it. And the headsets allows me, and we've been working a substantial amount, like with equalizer and emancipation, same system, but a lot with like 50-footer techno or whatever it might be with the head on it,

and you work with a crew so you can create long tracking shots. If you do it properly, you can extend 50 feet one way, slide it back, come over, and then keep tracking out. You didn't suddenly have 100 feet of track over uneven terrain, which on Equalizer was absolutely a demand that had to be met. It's not going to be a flat street for you. And drone work can't work on dirt.

You know, if you're trying to utilize a drone, not going to follow. Yeah. The city can often do it as well. It's too rough a terrain. Right. So is the roadhead just like a Trinity head or is it just a regular?

Basically, it's a company that bought, it's like the space cam used to be, but it's not the space cam anymore. It's a matrix. And so it's the, I think it's the highest level of heads so far developed by far. You might want to look up and see if I have the exact name correctly, but I'll, I'll put it in the show notes if it's a different one. I know we're a little tight on time, so I want to be cognizant of that. But, uh, I'll, I'll, uh, I'm going to have to have you back when you got a little more time because I got a whole bunch of like I want to talk about tell you I run ski trips every year I love tell you ride I was going to be like have you been to brown dog pizza um but uh going back to all the directors you worked with is there something that um kind of unites them in their work that makes them uh the best at what they do and and maybe is there something that each one of them uh bring to the table that's different that makes them unique to the work that you guys do oh you're probably earlier as before for me, but I started with Oliver. Right. He's a writer. The majority of the people I work with have very strong scripts. And Oller's a word man. Quinn's a word man.

Marty is a wordman as well. As you can see in the last, he credited. He's very strong in his script. He won't begin to visualize it until he has it in the place that he likes in terms of the writing. John Sales was the same for me. So a lot of these people are, come from the word first, from the story. And that unites them, as far as I'm concerned,

and that that is how I approach anything I do visually is to read the story. Don't think about the story in a visual way. Stay off of it. I just don't. I know it's, we ought to go, Oh, I know, I stay away from it. I'll read it two, three times, you know.

And then then put your mind to it and start to think how, what comes to your mind. But find out what the director wants first. The director's been sitting with it for, like, with Quentin, he may have been sitting with parts of the script for four years. Right. Or two years. He sees something. So do you want to try to intrude upon his four years of wisdom?

Right. For three weeks or two weeks, I went into, I think it was a Patriot games. And I was asked, so how would you like to shoot it? I remember saying, I have no clue. I wouldn't tell you how to shoot it. I can tell you, I love the story, I love this part, but, you know, what are you thinking? What's on your head? I want to work from where you stem and not, I don't want to be the bulldozer coming through

your particular concepts. If you ask me to do that, then I'll take that time and do that. It doesn't mean I don't have thoughts on what I feel it should feel like, but I don't want to move in any direction that is opposed to what you have already placed within your head as something you want. I can try to enlarge it or just maximize the vision you have. Yeah. Well, it's, that is kind of fun. You hear that from every DP. When you're in film school, you'll hear it, you know, like, oh, focus on the director and stuff. But then every, this happened to me, maybe not every young. At least me and my friends, we were all like, oh, we're going to be, you know, we're going

to be the next so-and-so, and that's going to be our voice and our vision. And then you get to the real world and you're like, oh, no, it's really just, I'm a translator. I'm a translator and a plumber. To a certain extent, we are translators. And in Salma, it works to the benefit. But if you look at 1900, when you compare the work that Serraro did in 1900 to what he did on conformist, one you can see is both of their minds working at one level. And the same thing happened with Last Emperor. You can see these two people.

And by that point, you could feel them also starting to clash. I remember reading an interview somewhere which said, I create every move. Okay. He does the lighting. That's sweet.

And I don't know if Starraro operates. I don't think he does operate as much as other DPs operate like Roger and Chibo and but that to me is that's telling yeah

well wasn't lighting cameraman didn't that used to be a credit well there certainly is I mean there are sometimes you'll see a cinema tower being listed but then you know this lighting by and somebody else is doing the lighting

for the cinematographer or more involved with a cinematographer than they're all vital obviously but I I love lighting it's like that

Marty was the first time that I'd gone into a show where I sort of expected what I'd gone through more or less with Oliver which to give ideas and if they got thrown out

they got thrown out but and I tried to do that with Marty and I almost got thrown out. Oh, yeah, because he's very specific about what he's getting, huh? He wasn't angry. I put some notes together and I asked people if I should send him to him

and they were like 14 pages and notes and about shots and things and were all my mind and they had told me, yeah, I don't be up to that. Oh, shit. He did not even look at my notes. Bear Rader. He was not into that. Yeah.

No, he went north quentin. I mean, if, If they want some help, they're going to ask you. Marty will say, well, we can't do that in here. We're in the Riviera. I can't get that high because I know I developed this for our studio concepts good. It's like, I don't know. Have you seen New York, New York recently?

Not recently now. Do I have more? Might have it on Blu-ray. I got all the criterion's over here. So brilliant. It's just so brilliant. And you can see it's a studio movie. yeah that's what he would have worked

I don't think he's that happy with the movie for whatever reason but brilliantly shot I think it was Laslo remarkable yeah I did want to ask because there's you know obviously people think of Marty and specifically him as being kind of this you know people think of Marty as being like

speaking of criteria and I've got all of his like foreign film box sets you know and all that is there anyone that you see kind of up and coming that it seems to be cut from the same cloth of seeing cinema as something as suppose important and relevant as Scorsese sees it? No, unless you consider Paul Thomas Anderson, somebody who's up and coming. Sure. He's younger.

I think Paul is that in our generation of people, not my generation, but he's Definitely one of the most brilliant directors at this time. There are a number of other people I've seen, but not enough to be able to say, I can't go, well, there's a new Costa Gavis. Do I know many cinematographers or even directors that are current? How'd you like Z? What?

No, I mean I'm talking to like, oh, sure, yeah. I was like, I saw that. Yeah, you know, it's like, what's Z? How about, did you see Battle La Jiers? A punta clero. Who's that? Right. That, to me, is disappointing because the argument is always the same for us.

Have you read Moby Dick? Yeah, of course. So cinema is not an art to you. it's just it's just a cape is that how we start now today right in this country I mean in the United States of America that seems to be a little

a touch more where it goes than it does here in France when I look at France it's amazing how many films they're doing and they're not about this subject matter at all they're extraordinarily personal films and so many get made here but

and tremendous And it's a number of theaters, too. I just don't know all the directors here. So, right to say. I mean, Alahat, clearly that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, and it's also, too, I think we got to wait for some people's body of work to get fleshed out. You know, there's a lot more people making movies. You know, there's always so many that can come out. But before you go, I did want to share a fun story with you very quick, which is you inadvertently had a hand in probably the best movie-going experience I ever had. And that was for the road show of hateful eight. I went to the theater near me, which was a landmark,

which unfortunately is closed now. And I was just by myself and it was the whole road show thing. And I sit down next to these two older women and at the half-time but at the at the at the intermission. The interlude, yeah. We were talking

and I had just gotten back into being a, you know, film and trying to get work again and, uh, I'm talking to these ladies and like, hey, um, they're like, what have you seen? I was like, you know, I haven't really watched a lot. I just saw that new Star Wars and one of the ladies goes, oh, she worked on Star Wars. And I was like, oh, really? Like, uh, what did you? She goes, no, the old one. And I was like, what? And she goes, yeah, I was a PA. And I was like, oh, that's so cool. And then I look her up and she was a PA and then she was a production manager on the next two, on, on Empire and Jedi. And I'm telling you, these women were so invested in Tateful 8. And every gunshot was

and it made me so happy. I was like, that's film there. That's still going to the theater after you worked on Star Wars and being still so invested in what's happening on screen. And it made me very happy and made me know I was doing the right thing. Marshall McLuhan years ago talked about how television was going to become our home theater. You're moving. The experience of being with people and movies is no longer going to exist far in the future. He was right, but I think

I have gone to when I went to Oppenheimer in Paris, it was a sold-out show and a giant, giant, and it was in 70, and it was sold out for, and you think that experience is because

I'm watching with so many people, too. I went to flowers in it was a beautiful private viewing experience, more or less. Seeds that went back, came up, and there's only four in one row, four in the other, and four in the other were six, six, and six, whatever it was, but there are only four people in the movie. Yet I still loved it.

I hung in there, and I, I loved it because I'm looking at a 40-foot screen. Right. Which I'd prefer to be looking at a larger screen with more people to see. Because I became more critical of the film than I probably would have if I were experiencing the energy of others. Yeah. Well, it's like going to a concert. You know, you don't want to go to a concert with 10 people. You want to go to a concert with 200 people, you know, the shared energy.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, why would you want to sit there and be the 10 people that are looking out and thinking it was 10,000? But if you were to give me a private show at one point with my morning jacket, I would have done that. Sure, yes. With 10 people. Yeah. You would be a KCRW or K. I'll sit there and watch them in the living room.

Yeah. I'll go with Wilco and listen to the new album with 10 people. Feel free. Play. Yeah, the tiny desk thing. We went and saw real blood last night. I'm getting the light, as we say, in comedy. So I got to let you go.

But thanks so much for spending the time with you, man. That was a great conversation, and I'd love to have you back as soon as you're able. I'd love to do it. Frame and Reference is an Albaugh 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.