Frame & Reference Podcast - 123: "Oppenheimer" DP Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC FSF NSC

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

WELCOME TO SEASON 4 OF FRAME & REFERENCE! This is a big one! We've got Hoyte van Hoytema kicking off the season, here to talk about his work on Oppenheimer, as well as his general philosophy on cinematography and much more. This season's guests are already shaping up to be the best yet (and based on last year's lineup that's saying something) so be sure to subscribe to the feed and share with people you think would enjoy this so we can continue to get more amazing guests like Hoyte. Enjoy! Visit www.frameandrefpod.com for everything F&R 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 season four of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and we have got just the craziest year ahead of us. This is such a good season. We've already got, I think, eight interviews in the can, and they're all just bangers. you're really going to love this if this is your first time listening to Frame and Reference you've got three years of

just as good backlog to catch up on we've had some insane guests on the show already but you know the longer you go the better it gets so this is the season premiere and we've got Hoytivan Hoytima on the program who shot Oppenheimer as well as

a plethora of other amazing films many of them with Chris Nolan but you know you got the fighter in there you got Ad Astra all kinds of good stuff don't normally go on a lot of intro rants anymore that was season one and two

but you know it's the first episode of the season so I figured I'd check in say hello happy New Year and let you know that you are going to absolutely love this episode and the rest of this season so

great great salesmanship Ken And anyway, I'll let you get to it. This is my interview with Hoytaman Hoytima. You know, that's funny. It's normally I'd start by asking like, oh, what have you been watching? But the past 15, 20 interviews have all been, oh, we all went and saw Oppenheimer. So what have you been watching? well I've been kind of watching as much as I could everything kind of you know there's a couple of things I have not yet had a chance to watch but you know I try to kind of watch I try to kind of watch everything by the end of the year really I get all those like I picked up a subscription of variety for no reason like I read all the ASC magazines but I don't know why I fucking bothered with it.

variety because it's just all ads and then that's when I go oh I missed a movie you know because it's like the only four year consideration was you know it's funny last night I was I was watching all the

special features for the movies that you had Chris did and then also at Astra and it's funny I like turned on I think it was at Astra and the special features like the first one I clicked

the dude mentioned Oppenheimer he mentioned the trinity test because he was like oh yeah we I think it was the writer the director was like oh you know the idea that you could like nuke the atmosphere and kill everyone fascinating to me so we put that into Ad Astra

and I was like wow this really has come full circle hasn't it? Yeah well you know tenant there's mention of openheimer as well yeah Phrygia you know Dimpo Karpadia She's mentioned it to John David Washington at some point, you know. Yeah, it's an interesting thing.

It keeps coming back. And it's, I mean, it kind of is a signifier of moments in history where important inventions are being made and that, you know, potentially have some big implications on, you know, the generations after. Yeah. The other thing I noticed watching all these behind it, first of all I very much appreciate that you guys allow someone to make these like hour and a half, two hour long special features things because I'm a big physical media guy. And it's always a bummer when you get a DVD and it's just like an ad or like just the trailer in there. And you're like, what? I was hoping to learn something. You know, I spent my entire film career or like film education career, you know, watching special. features. It's interesting. I mean, sometimes you want to let people, allow people a little bit into the kitchen,

you know, how things are made. But it's, it's also, you know, just the idea or the concept that a film, it's, it's more of an event,

you know, you, you, you know, you can think with film as, you know, film speaks for itself and it sort of, you know,

it's the two hours or three hours taking in the theater, that's what counts until a certain extent, that's of course also true, but there's something nice about creating a little bit more sort of an event-like thing around the film, right? It goes together

with anticipation and sort of the marketing on forehand, you know, where you're trying to sort of prime the film or prime the audience in order to, you know, receive the film in a certain way. And then after you watch it, you know, there's so many, you know, residual side paths that you can go into.

So in that way, I mean, I think making offs are always very nice. You know, they can get very self-indulgent, of course, you know. Yeah, sure. You know, and people talking about how great they are in their selves and how great of heavy the work was, et cetera, et cetera. But just purely as, you know, you know, filmmaking is a very limited medium, you know, as old mediums are, you know, if you're, especially if you're kind of trying to talk about real life, there's so much more information that people had to let out

of the film and or couldn't touch on just because, you know, it's so rich. And especially Okunheimer, it's so rich in history. And there's so much known about him, you know, because of all this FBI transcripts and you know where it was shadowed and where it was recorded and all these hearings so there's like endless transcript about the life of that man

and of course Chris had had to make a very very difficult you know difficult choices and difficult decisions about what would make it in a movie and what would make it in a movie but it's a living living subject so so so things

live beyond a movie and in that way it's it's always nice to get some stuff yeah some well extra urea's words i would say yeah well the thing the thing i noticed is like it's you know from whatever the first i watched a way out of order but like whatever you know what did dunkirk all the way to oppenheimer i think is including an astra um it's the same crew every time like it's the same interview every time and and i don't know you know i've interviewed 120 people and I don't think I've ever necessary I mean Bob Richardson Bob Yohman come to mind mostly because they were the last two but um you know

it's it's kind of rare to constantly work with the same people and I was wondering I wanted to say it right up front shout out to Keith Davis shout out to fucking Keith Davis yeah yeah I listen Keith and I we have worked together since since you know her that I did with Spike Jones and I mean

he is downright the best focus pooper in the world but he's not only focus pooler he's also you know somebody that has to wrangle and manage a huge amount of complicated equipment as well as a crew

and as well as that he is at the epicentral of whatever happens close to the camera So, you know, you have to, you know, you have to have a gentle soul and a kind soul, and you have to be very susceptible to the chemistry around the camera, you know, and the actors have to feel good with you. And so in that way, he's kind of, you know, an indispensable sort of, you know, right arm extension for me you know he's he's he's incredible and you know any chance i i get to

shout shout shout him out i will i will do it he's he's he's extremely valuable and extremely precious and a wonderful human being yeah i love you know and i love um you know going all these adventures with him and and you know i i it doesn't limit for me it's it's not limited to keys i they're my keys like adam chambers and cow card and you know they're all wonderful you know soulful people that um have found their way and has fitted somehow their their way into that the weird little clan of people that we have and um you know i don't want to sound too much like a hippie but there's a lot of love and there's a lot of uh you know um Yeah, a lot of good chemistry in that group.

And I think also, you know, when people talk about, you know, my cinematography or, you know, oh, he's a nice guy to work with, very often, you know, they're also talking about not me as a cinematographer, but me as a group and the way that we sort of enter the scene, you know. Right. And these guys, they are helpful and, you know, total co-creators of that. of that entity. Well, and also, like, the thing that always makes me laugh is, you know, people, you know, when the 5D came out or when the LF really got, you know, everyone's talking about,

oh, depth of field is becoming fetishistically shallow. And then you got Keith pulling T2 on IMAX, you know. Yeah. And, and, you know, we are sometimes expecting supernatural, natural things from him. Now, what helps a lot, of course, also is to work with a director that really has a very big understanding of sort of the specific difficulty that all these kind of things bring along, right? You know, sometimes you need another take just because you're doing things that are very difficult. And if you work with a director that is clever enough to sort of understand the technology around the camera, You know, you can become very productive.

And in a way, nobody, you know, nobody on a film set is, you know, a shame to fuck up when it's a fuck up that is sort of resilient nature. That it's, that is difficult. So there's this very open atmosphere where, you know, Keith can easily say to Chris or to me, listen, I don't feel good about this one. And, you know, Chris will say, yeah, okay, let's do another one. And we were watching rushes every day, you know. Right.

Every day we're in the trailer. And that's like for a focus pooter, that's kind of the most, you know, the most scary situation you can imagine. It's like, you know, he gets a day after he gets very sort of very harsh representation of his specific technical work. But to have to check yourself every day to get the check, you know, apart from the. that you get very much equated, also almost on an intuitive level with the equipment. You know, there's a certain amount of pressure on you and everybody, but there's also this possibility in which you can always, you know, there's always time to fix stuff.

And it's, it's, you know, it feels like a very sort of fluid and, and, yeah, hands-on process, you know. You can redo it or you can fix it and there's these chances to fix stuff. And yeah, it's nice. Yeah, I mean, well, and I mean, you guys have been working, not just you and Keith, but your whole crew apparently been working together for at least eight, 10 years, whatever it is. So it must be a nice kind of shorthand. I did want to ask, I did want to ask about Daileys, actually, but we'll stick with the crew thing,

which is when you're prepping these films, is there, because you're, you guys have worked together for so long, is there kind of a routine that you go through? Like, does it start with, you know, references and then look development and tests and then something, or is every film kind of different, or is it somewhere in between? Yeah, I mean, you could say that there's some sort of routine. It's not a written routine that we walk by, but say we have like 12 weeks prep, you know, we don't start with putting up photos and having long discussions about looks, et cetera, et cetera. We each one of us, we slowly sort of step into that monster of the film itself, you know,

and we do that slowly also because the material itself has to sort of tell you what you're going to do and how you're going to do it right so so you start prep you start testing and and and whenever you discover something that you want to investigate a little bit deeper you start you start testing that a little bit more excessively and of course every film has this you know this numerous amount of puzzles you know or this this this this uh assignments that you know when you start a film like that you don't know you don't know what you're going to do and you don't know how you're going to do them and you're you know you kind of you know you kind of know you kind of know that you yeah that you have to figure out or that you have to start building things in

order to be able to do them i always started dialogue with denser socket penovision who is also wanted to talk about him yeah who is one of those lens gores that can you know build specific options optics or adept optics that really, you know, can do things that normal off the shelf lenses can do. You know, we talk a lot with Andrew Jackson or Scott Fisher, you know. Scott Fisher is a special effect supervisor that has always access to a gigantic workshop where he can build things or contraptions or, you know, Andrew Jackson, our visual effects supervisor, that has always this, you know, a strong intent to do as much as possible in camera, you know. So I don't know if you, you know, I always compare him a little bit to, no, he's like, he's like, to me, it's like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, he, he, he, he, you know, he is, he, he, he is, you know, he is, you know, he, he's, you know, he.

he gets into sort of working with computers and sort of as CGI options in order to do visual effects, he will resort, we'll see if we can get things in camera, you know, which then means, you know, he and Scott are building like the

weirdest machines in order to obtain certain official effects elements, etc., etc. Right. You know, I love talking to that department a lot and, you know, I always loves to be in the middle of like the mechanics of it you know and I also it's something I love

in in making photography for this film so so where you start wrapping I mean there's a lot of details that you get into you know that you know and without necessary knowing the look of a film you kind of know the feel you you kind of know the approach of how you want to do things and then and then you let those things kind of you know instruct you on how to take your next steps, you know? Yeah. Do you guys, so you don't have photos, but do you guys kind of talk about, I guess a better question would be, what don't you have to talk about anymore?

Like, what are the things that come very easily when you do each of these films? We do have photos and we do watch films, you know. We do watch films, but it's not, it's not like, where we get into a production, we don't have like a lookbook, like this is where the film is going to be. And, you know, this is going to be blue and this is going to be blue. going to be green or etc etc i mean we still have some sort of a yeah relatively open open open relation to to to whatever comes into our direction at that time but um i guess i guess you know i always like to say that the best prep for these these films that we're doing is very much the

previous films that we've been we've been doing together you know uh chris and i worked four films together and the first film that we did together, I, you know, I had a lot of references and I had a lot of photos and those photos there, the main function of those materials is not necessarily this is the way I wanted to look or it's also very much as like, I thought about to see it could have been something like this and then, you know, Chris can look at it and he can respond to it and I can see his response and I can sort of, adapt my mind a little bit to death. So, so, so, so those, those images and those films, they're very much, you know, a way for,

you know, people to get to know each other, you know, to get to sort of gauge each other's taste and, uh, and philosophy and mentality towards certain things, you know. So, so, uh, I guess we have done four films together, you, you, you kind of, you know, you kind of, you know, you're kind of like, you know, at times you're like, like, like, you know, husband and wife, you know, you, you understand what the other party likes and not likes and you understand how you can surprise the other party or not and, you know, you have to rely a little bit more on your intuition and on the fact that there is a lot of things that you know of each other that you don't have to speak of. So, you know, the, uh, the, uh, I. I noticed, obviously, in all this behind-the-scenes stuff, you've always got that Lyca. And this is kind of a two-pronged thought, which one, I've mentioned this a bunch of times on this podcast, but Tim Ives really got me into photo books. Like, I asked him if he had any references for, I think it was Halston, and he walked over and pulled a stack like this and just started doing reading rainbow on me. But I was wondering, A, what are you photogram?

Is that just for you or is that for like a different reference? and then also are you a photobook person? I'm a photo book person. I like looking at photo books, you know, for a variety of reasons. I love using that Leica very much, you know, I very often use it as a viewfinder or as a, you know, a contrast viewing glass if you were, you know. as well as a notepads.

It's like you're seeing things and you just want to quickly, you know, hold it up and show Chris or show your act. Oh, so it's a digital LICA. It's a digital LICA. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. I guess I naturally thought it was filmed.

Yeah, Lika had built these cameras that look like analog Likas, but what I like, what I like with at LICA very much is that, is that you can, you know, you can, you know, set this camera up and approximate, you know, to a certain extent how, you know, the sensitivity of your film and, you know, and, you know, to a certain extent, a little bit, an indication of how things are looking in terms of contrast and so on. Right. So it's a little bit of a sketchbook for me.

and uh i i you know um um uh it's also you know uh fund a document yeah but but but if you look for is that my images uh you know i i very often i just erase erase my memory cards you know after after they're full and and don't don't load them up they're literally like like a sketchbook and I'm sure. I'm using it in a very not-precious way. And also, for me, it's also very often, you know, when I use it as a sketchbook, I don't really use it as a precise framing device, for instance, you know. It's a lot of out-of-focused pictures and a lot of, it's more sort of a, yes,

my small sort of guilty OCD. deep pleasure just to sort of, you know, it's almost as good as what I, what I love doing is like squinting as a, as a, right. I only said a very often sort of squint and you try to sort of make charcoal drawings in your head, you know, bright light, you know, you try to work a little holistic and you try to just sort of judge your set in terms of lights and darkness by just squinting your eyes and that's that's that's a little bit how that like a word for me you know it it allows me to you know it allows me just to make very quick and rough and and and and sort of uh overall judgments about you know yeah well and you you just mentioned like not being too

precious about stuff i did see in one of these uh behind the scenes features that you were taught i think it might have been for oppenheimer where you were talking about not being too not making it too pretty not making it too you know uh what was it i wrote it down who cares doesn't matter that make but i recognize very much for yeah what what you're aiming at and that is that you know when i watch a film i mean there's nothing more disturbing for me than to really become aware of the director of photographer's OCD you know it's like it's like you know you have to create images and you have to sort of put them up on the screen and and and and I just like where you can do that with a certain flare and a sort of ease without

losing you know sort of the sort of the word of holistic view about what the film has to mean and what it has to do and how it has to come across emotionally but so often I see images that are that are that are that are almost they almost feel like they're done by the cleaning cleaning lady, you know. The, you know, framing is all about, you know, cleaning everything up, putting everything neatly in the right place, you know, getting your light levels exactly right. And by doing that, you know, you create some sort of an order and you make things more neat and to a certain extent you make things more palatable.

But as you do that, you also sort of, you know, you start to suck. life out of it and one thing and one definition of the film is that over good film or good photography is that it has to have life in it, you know, it has to have a soul in it. And I think so

about that, about cinematography, but you could say the same phrase about music. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the way that you have perfect synthesized music, you know, you can you know, fusion jazz that is made by

extremely capable musicians and you know the technique has become so important and you listen to it and you listen to it in a certain way you know

you have to listen to those pieces in a very intellectual way and you have to know music and you know exactly what people are doing where else you know I'm much more sort of a you know punk band person you know yeah well it brings up i don't want to draw too much attention to it because you uh

i think you and the creator had the same problem where everyone really focused on the gear a lot but uh a lot of attention was drawn to you know shooting iMac shooting 70 and all this and i was wondering kind of how imax is inherently a very beautiful you know um instrument was was kind of the punk rock idea there that you're going to use the prettiest thing in kind of a non-precious way or like how do you kind of square that pretty tasteful

medium with a more not basic in a derogatory way but just you know it's a very simple film like Oppenheimer versus like interstellar which is fantastical you know. Yeah I mean for starters I think the most basic sort of

musical instrument you can you can find is kind of the iMex camera right because effectively it's a black canvas kind of machine it's a it's a box with a motor and a hole

and a piece of glass you know and then there's this you know film strip that runs through the gate that is emulsion so so the way that you generate an image is

extremely simple in comparison to, for instance, a digital signal. The digital signal is the technology behind it becomes very complex, but also it means that there are a lot of steps in between light, you know,

the wave of light and when we see it afterwards, after a digital projection, there's a lot of stuff that happens to it. Where else you know, a film camera You know, you project on that emulsion, you develop that emulsion, and then you shoot light through it, and you kind of get a very, a very direct, pure, or the most direct, purest way of, you know, the most straightest parts from objects to seeing it later on the screen. and that way it's it is a very beautiful format and it's a very sort of uh precious format

but it's is by all means uh is by no means is it is very sort of complex format you know what I mean so would that would that mean that like in your guys's head something like 16 which is much more has has a very distinct aesthetic with does that artifice? You know, it's kind of the same mechanism, but does the artifice of, let's say, 16, take away from that simplicity in your guys' mind? Because since I match is so clean. I mean, because of 16, because of the sheer size of the negatives, you start to become very aware of the emotion itself. Okay. The grain is much bigger. So there's a much, there's a much bigger sort of

visual obstacle to go through you know you get very aware of of what you're shooting on because it's 16mm but already when you jump to 35 millimeter but then if you jump to

IMX 65 millimeter you know that instantaneously sort of disappears right you you you you stay with a relatively grailess image.

I mean, it still has a lot of texture. And, you know, every frame you see, you know, has, of course, grain in it. And what we then perceive as a human being or a human eye, it's very hard to define. Or we don't, we don't really know yet. But there's definitely still a lot of texture to it. But I think, I think very much about, you know, the lower your resolution gets in a way, the more sort of the more it creates

a sort of a definition of your look you know what you're your look becomes very much subjective to the limitations of that specific stock or you know a specific resolution amount

and I think that with IMAX that cap is just that bars is so high you know right would you if given the option would you shoot like an Alexa 2000,

just a sensor that's an 8 by 10 digital sensor would that solve the same problem? Or is that emotion simplicity really the goal there? Well, it's not the emotion simplicity alone. I mean, one thing that I love shooting on film is that idea, you know? Sure. That in a way, your resolution is endless.

Yeah. And it's endless in a way that, you know, the way that digital cameras generate an image and film cameras generate an image is very different. You know, a digital image, you effectively, you're exposing on a grid, and that grid is unchanged every single frame in 24 frames per second exposure. That grid will remain exactly that.

where else where you expose on film, the grid that you expose on will reposition or will be different, will be totally different in shape or, you know, geometry than the previous frame. So you're effectively, you're exposing every single frame on a total new grid. And so you create something that, you know, I call it, you know, and it's probably the wrong word. always call it temporal resolution. No, that's the right word. You have resolution that is that written. You can say this is 2K, this is 4K, this is 6K,

and that defines very much about how much pixels you have. And those pixels are every single frame in the same place. Whereas we film, you can say, okay, we have this amount of silver halites, and they're all in that position. So per frame, you can define a little bit your resolution. But if you create a moving image and you project that image on the consecutive frame, on a grid that is very different with those silver highlights slightly in different positions, you know, even though you might have a slightly bigger cap on your, or you might have a slightly rougher grid pattern, you still have a medium that has the ability to draw or to show details that are not able. digital technology. And I think that kind of depth perception and that kind of red addition, that's something

that, you know, it's very hard to sort of put your finger on. But I think, you know, people respond very much in an emotional way to that because it's so similar in a way to, you know, our eyes work and our mind works, you know. Yeah. Yeah, so in that way, for me, it's not always about just sort of making bigger sensors, bigger frames and getting more and more and more information. It's also how you draw that information. Well, and something that I saw you guys mention a lot in these special features things and something that I've said a million times on this podcast is emotionally correct, oftentimes Trump's technically correct. you know having the perfect something is not always better than having the thing that makes you feel

the way that you want for instance the audience to feel or the way that you want absolutely and and i think good things that connect emotionally they have to somehow feel effortless as well and again i come back to music right you can you can you can you know you can be a great bass player or drummer or anything like that and you can have the biggest ability of doing the most complex pieces of music and so on but um you know you really really surpass the the you know a good music musician when you when you actually can play the simplest things in the simplest way you know and really really connect with with your audience but very often it does mean that you you know you need to

be good in a way technically you know you need to know you need to know a thing or two in order to sort of dare to go simpler but but for me I mean

you know in my own career I think every film I allow myself to be a little simpler or sort of just to let go of old hangups and and and dare to, you know, dare to be a little less

altruclusive with the language, you know, every, every time, you know? Yeah. I mean, that was something that I noticed in, again, I'm just referencing behind the scenes should I watch a bunch. But even just watching Oppenheimer, it feels very simple. You know, it's like the whole chef thing of like you get good ingredients and season them simply and you just step away. Yeah.

Was your guys' lighting package and everything very complicated? Because I feel like everything was just, you know, well, we'll put an 18K out the window call today. And it still looks incredibly natural. Well, sometimes, you know, it depends very much on the assignment. I mean, I have no problems lighting with a light bulb, you know, if it calls for it. And some locations you come and you want a lot of soft light coming from the window. you know, an 18 or 218K is bounced in a frame. I mean, we have a truck with us and we always have possibilities to do that if needed.

But I do think that, you know, you never enter a location with a precise image in your head. You know, you always want to sort of understand and feel the place you're shooting, you know. you very rarely want to work against what that place is given you that you had than chosen before, you know, you want to go with it. You want to sort of be in tune with it. Now, of course, you have these situations where, you know, either you screw the shop, up a shot the day before and you have to now redo that shot and now it's raining, but, you know, it's a close-up, so maybe you can create a little bit of sunshine and so on.

So you always end up, you know, maneuvering or cheating yourself through those kind of situations. You always have to be ready for it. But I'm not the kind of cinematographer that comes to a place and says, it has been like this in my head. Now we bring in all the equipment and it's going to be exactly like it has been in my head. Not at all. I'm much more like, you know, this is kind of how it was in my head. this is kind of nice too. So maybe we can use a little bit of that.

Maybe we can incorporate a little bit of that. You know, I'm much more sort of mellow and, yeah, I hope reactive or perceptive a little bit towards what is around and all that sort of in surface of, yeah, the story. The story, but also that believe that you kind of, your your artistic viewpoint is very important but but it cannot become something that's self-indulgent or that is sort of um the main masturbatory yeah yeah it's it's uh it's funny because you see so many films that get all these like amazing cinematography awards my

argument is it's always the production designer that actually floated the TV. But it's usually the ones that, again, are just like kind of presented simply that people seem to really gravitate towards. And then you get these super polished ones that look like there are Super Bowl commercials that are still really cool. But people don't seem to connect with as much. Not always. Obviously, this is a hyper generalization. But I mean, listen, I think that when you give somebody an award, I think mostly you give somebody in an award emotionally, right? You just decide, I like this better than that. And a lot of people that vote for these awards, you know, they haven't gone to film school or they haven't sort of, they don't really know what cinematography

entails or what visual effects entails, you know, in a very technical way. That's a kind of our job. Right. But that's the way it is. I mean, and I think that people make those judgments in motion. and and and that's kind of right in many ways as well you know it's it's that's kind of also how you want your cinematical to be read you know the last thing you want is like somebody's going to give you big price because they know how difficult it was yet the film you you show this kind of sucks yeah so so so um you know Of course, there's different awards, like, you know, ASC award. That means a little more.

Well, it means more because you get, I think, or more, I think there, your colleagues, they're very aware of what you have been doing and they, and I think you very much get judged on the technicality and, and, et cetera. But for instance, then, the Academy Awards is a different thing. And then a lot of different kind of audiences watch it. So I think the biggest problem is not necessarily that you, well, the, or the biggest issue is the awards are always called for cinematography. But, you know, you effectively, you get awarded, not awarded for very specific aspects of cinematography, you know. Right. When I was talking to Bob Richardson, he mentioned that Tarantino doesn't let him use the D.I. at all, like, you know, where a lot of us would just be like, oh, I'll put a window there. I don't going to flag that off. The wall can be hot. And I'll just bring it down. He's like, no. Is that kind of the same thing with you guys? Because, you know, a similar kind of film only approach. Are you guys purely photochemical or are you allowed to use the D.I.

Yeah, I mean, we are. Well, no, we are purely photochemical. for, you know, not just self-indulgent, you know, reasons, but we are also purely photochemical that when you expose an IMAX brain and which captures, you know, the world in front of the camera and with a certain resolution and a certain depth, the moment you go digital, the moment that you go into the eye, you have to scan it and when you scan it you lose a huge amount of your original resolution and you know an iMex frame arguably i mean can can carry 12k to 18k resolution so imagine

scanning a film how much of that resolution you just have to throw away or else if photochemical and you make a contact print of it you capture you capture most of that quality and that is one of the reasons that we choose to go the analog way because it's It's again, it's the shortest and the purest way of, you know, the travel from your subject and from your shooting to the screen. And that's kind of the reason that we're always so fanatic and about doing things in camera, you know. And for a lot of people that sounds very self-indulgent and sort of like, oh, you know, they're film snobs or pure. But it has for us, it has a lot to do with quality and preserving quality and seeing through that, you know, the details you capture on one end that you as a viewer will never be able to know how important or how not important we are, but to nurture them and to bring them all the way to the back end to the screen, you know? Yeah. So how are you guys without the assistance of like the DIY essentially?

in what ways are you able to stay nimble on set? Are you simplifying anything? Are you, is it just the fact that you guys work together for so long that everyone knows what you need to do? Or what are some of those techniques that you're using to get such a high quality result, not necessarily just with the film, but in the movie, at a fast enough clip to keep with the schedule? Well, I mean, coming back to what we earlier talked about, it's like, you know, how much do you allow your own OCD to take over, you know? If you're in a room and a sun comes in,

you can, of course, to a certain extent, filter the sun out, but if you're in the exterior, your backlight really starts burning out, you know, is it something you can accept? Is it, you know, can you shoot it and can you accept the way that your dynamic contrast is a little more than you maybe would envision?

or are you now going to wrangle everything in place in order to get it exactly where you need it to be? So, you know, I think while working, you know, working for me is, it feels very often much more like, you know, like, you know, like setting up a charcoal sketch of a painting rather than, you know, filling out all the blanks. and shadings and so on, you know, you work very holistically, but then suddenly you also understand, you know, the advantage of analog technology, which is, it's, it's, it's a, it's a medium that is so much, it's so generous towards bigger lighting dynamics, for instance, or darkness, brightness, you know, it's, is very truthful and loyal to, you know, the way your eyes perceive things and and and and because we know it so well now and because we have worked so about it it it almost becomes like a you know like a second nature you know you can look at it

you can look at something you can squint you can you can understand how this how this turns out when you start to you know you start to master a little bit of trickery how to you know how to to squeeze it back into a place where it's slightly acceptable and not. But if you become a total sort of detail, fucking, you know, kind of control, micromancy control freak, you know, the eye is of course great. Right, right. And whatever you didn't get, you know, you put a power window on it and you get it and you get it back into your, but then there's this risk, of course.

In the end, you know, you'll get your film exactly the way you envisioned it. And my God, maybe it's lifeless, you know. So, so, so, so, so, you know, it's an interesting past and maneuver, you know. I very often, when I, when I assert sort of full control over things, I very often look at stuff that I see back and I just don't feel it or I just don't like it. You know, it's a very interesting thing. And I think, you know, you sometimes you have to, where I feel I always have to be a little bit humble towards the subject, you know. Yeah.

Like, you know, a lot of cinematographers or a thing of cinematography is that, you know, in order for four years, subject to make it to the world, it has to go through that filter of the cinematographer that will very precisely present that vision to you. Somehow, you know, I have gotten a little bit more humble towards the subject and also allowing things or, you know, actors or sets to speak for themselves, you know, and then my job is very often it can, it can even be as banal as that you just registrate greatness that other people

have put in front of your camera. Yeah. Later you will get credit for it as a great cinematography, but it's, but it's, it's, you know,

you know, more and more restraint in a way and, and, and, you know, I think your filters, you're kind of the, you know,

if you imagine you as a cinematator, as a filtration device of reality, it becomes more and more holistic and you become more and more sort of tolerant towards, you know, discrepancies and unevennesses. And that's one thing that I also love with an analog process afterwards. You know, you end up with a film that is not all squeezed into that sort of framework that you do it's sort of it's wilder it's it it it moves around more and you know technically you and sometimes say ooh that's a little that sticks out a little bit or that's a little bit less or that's a little bit more and these light levels they jump a little bit but when I watch a film

and especially after a while when like a year later when I watch it film I I really start a lot of those things and I always think they're very beautiful yeah well it's like you're saying Like if you micromanage everything, I agree with you that I think it can become lifeless because life is messy. And if the image is perfect, it can be, it can remove distraction, you know, like you focus in on something. But at the same time, the overall approach can be very clinical, you know, and no one wants to be in a clinic. Yeah, well, clinical, clinical, that means every time when you watch your film, you know, you are, you are, you are. you know, you're watching your result that is, that is created by a person that is maybe much more analing yourself. Right.

And yeah, what's the purpose in that, you know? And what's the fun in that? I did, you brought up like, you know, respecting the subject and stuff. And it occurred to me in this film that you were working with four actors who are actually directors. You know, you got Kenneth Branagh and Damon to a degree. You got R.D.J. to a degree. I wrote them down, but my notes are all this. I can't read whatever this is. What's, oh, yeah, yeah, Benny. Did they kind of teach you anything when you were working or how is that dynamic? You know, obviously, I assume they kind of raised each other's game a little bit. Did that kind of wash its way onto you?

You know, I mean, people come to one of Chris's sets and they come with a certain humility and, and, and, I mean, the main thing that I noticed from these guys is mostly curiosity, you know. They're just all very curious how we're doing things on set. And everybody runs their sets in different ways and everybody has their own hangups. But, you know, like Matt, I mean, he can come to the camera and he can look at lenses and say, oh, you know, why are you doing that and why and how are you thinking here? and always with a lot of love and admiration, you know, and, and, you know, good filmmakers, they're curious filmmakers, you know, they're people that understand that whatever they do and the way they do is not the only way, you know, so they're, you know, they're always very curious to go, you know, I always love looking at different cinematographers, you know, doing things that I would, that I, that I, that, that, that, that, that, that, the, you know, doing things that I usually do and and see how different approaches there are

and how different ways, you know, things can be done. And I think I always feel that with actors that, you know, that are filmmakers as well, as well as that, you know, actors that are directors themselves, you know, they, you know, And, you know, they understand very much that mechanical wide shots and tight shots and, you know, but sometimes it can also a little bit work against them, you know, if you're, again, if you're too cleverer of an actor and you, you know, you know seamlessly how to tune your performance for tight shots and for wide shots, sometimes you want that actor or that actress that is totally unaware, you know, and we're just.

on the side sort of picking it up and cherry picking it right but you know curiosity is always very very sort of found emotion on one of Chris's sets you know

Ben Affleck or sorry Ben Affleck Brad Pitt's a big cinematography nerd didn't he? Yeah I mean he's a he's a filmmaker he you know but I remember from me he's you know he defour

film. He watches films, he produces films, he wants to understand filmmaking, you know, and for people like him, a film set is this playground where all these people are coming up with all these ideas and things and create something on the screen that is then turning out magic. And I think he very much understands the mechanics of it and is in love with the mechanics of it, you know? Like I said, I always feel very much. from the actors, I feel that curiosity and just at will to sort of, I mean, everybody wants to do a good

job, but also, you know, everybody is just curious what you're doing, you know? The, uh, something that I didn't realize that you had shot, uh, I should have started this sentence at the beginning. Uh, I'm a giant Spike Jones fan. Oh yeah.

And I didn't, I mean, because in my head, when I was younger, uh, when I was starting to get into, you know, the idea of becoming a cinematographer or filmmaker in general. you know, Spike Jones had this weird thing where he was somehow able to make an Oscar winning film and jackass, you know, and like skateboard films and stuff. And that was just unheard of to me. I thought you had to be, you know, Coppola. But I didn't know that you shot that home ad, that Apple Home ad with FKJ. That, that, uh, I fucking loved that ad, man. That was such a good. I was, I was so excited for that. Um, very nice because, you know, you know talking about curiosity i mean if you work with spike he will never never want to do the same thing twice and uh and um he always comes up with with with with new crazy ideas that have nothing to do with anything you prior you know he

he loves put you know throwing himself in the deep every time he come up comes up with a new creative creative idea or something like that it's is wild yeah Well, and he also does a lot of, kind of similar to Nolan, does a lot of stuff as much as he can in camera. I remember this one quote where he was saying that when he was going to go do where the wild things are that Fincher got in his ear about the faces. He's like, you're going to fucking hate if they're puppets. And he's like, no, no, it'll be great. And then he gets there and there. And he's like, nope, we're doing those digitally.

This was a bad idea. But he's super, how do you call it? super very intuitive as well you know yes he has to feel it he really has to feel it and in order for him to feel it i he will make every every sacrifice you know um he has to believe it he has to feel it and um you know it has to be done with the right mentality and um you know he's very seldom smuck about about about this ideas and he has this kind of nice humbleness towards them you know but it's and it's and it's very difficult to keep up with that but it's also very nice and very challenging you know you really you you you you never get away with like trickery or uh you know

if if you think that you know exactly what you're going to do and how you're going to do it you know you usually already can assume that you're doing it wrong, you know. To be a little bit on thin eyes or, you know, it has to be a little, yeah, there has to be a little bit of resistance, you know, a little anxiety. Little anxiety, for sure. Do you, in going back to the idea that this just occurred to me, like the digital, you know, spike is analog and stuff. What in Oppenheimer, I'm sure you may have spoken about this before, but what things were you not able to rely on that were purely analog or purely photocamp, you know, in, what did you have to rely on modern technology for to get the final project across the finish line?

I mean, listen, not not to be mistaken, but we're using a lot of, you know, modern technology. We just combine it a lot with old sort of proven. technology, right? I mean, the, you know, my lighting package is very, is in a way, very modern, you know, the way we control lights and control colors. Now with help of, for instance, LED technology. I mean, we go all out as well as, you know, the technology around the camera and the engineering around the camera and the lenses. This is not necessarily stuff that could have been done like 15 years ago even or 10 years ago. And, And so, you know, Dan's work and the camera is excessive, you know, and it's, you know, he's an innovator. So he's always, always, always innovating. So we're not resorting in this old technology in order for us to just be old. I mean, we, you know, both myself and Chris, we're we're super tech freaks as well as I shoot like, you know, 80% of stuff, you know, in my life, I shoot digital, you know?

Right. Like almost every commercial is done on digital camera. So I'm pretty much in tune with the technology and what's out there, etc., etc. But then also, you know, on a film with Chris, for instance, you know, we know what we like and we know how to do it. And if we can't achieve that, we start always finding ways and, you know, finding ways to do things in camera. And again, we do that so that we can preserve the full quality. And if that doesn't work, I mean, sooner or later, you know, of course there is a computer,

you know, helping us with creating things that we were unable to create. But until that moment arrives, we will have for sure exhausted any resource and any resource. any possibilities to, you know, do it in a way that allows us to preserve as much as possible of the, you know, sort of the original vision or the original sort of riches. Yeah. Well, and to your point about it, not necessarily that this is your department, but something I noticed a lot that is technologically advanced that we would not have seen 15 years ago. 3D printing technology, being able to mock stuff up exactly the way you want it with 3D print.

Like, I own a 3D printer and I print parts for my cameras and stuff just because it's easier. Absolutely. And by the way, I mean, listen, on our camera and department, there's a lot of 3D printed materials. Myself, I do a lot of CNC machining, you know. I have a CNC mill in my garage. Nice. we are all the time building parts and we are all the time building

brackets or devices that enable us to do things that you know we've been exploring a lot of high speed photography of course for for this you know I called myself an old photosonic 65 millimeter camera

we were thinking about rebuilding turned out to be too costly and too complex but you know we're always playing with with with with with with things like that you know yeah it's oh go ahead no no no sorry another thing too that kind of in this sort of same vein is um the idea of i saw you did this in dunkirk to a degree obanheimer to a degree where there isn't a slavish um sort of approach to everything needs to be this kind of goes back to the idea of emotionally correct or technically

the correct. Everything needs to be period accurate down to the button, you know, where it's like you, I think it was mentioned that you try to bring everything up as modern as possible until it actually wouldn't make sense. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, that was, that was pretty much our philosophy in Dunkirk, but definitely also in Oppenheimer. And that is that, you know, you know you want you want you want you want you want it to feel life and you want it to feel real you don't want to walk around in a film as if you're you know walking around in a museum you know museum of nostalgia you know that it was not what we're doing we we were not you know the film was not a vehicle to sort of show how funny the cars look and how

what a weird taste people had in terms of interior decoration or anything like that. All these kind of things they wanted to be just they wanted to feel real and you don't want to drag too much attention to it. And of course

there's different films. Some films they are designed in order for us to get a very specific period of time but I think that you know like in Dunkirk it was all about the anxiety of that beach and about the constant threats that is relentlessly pounding on you. And, you know, on Okunheimer, we were trying to tell the story of a, of a, you know, very ambiguous soul trying to achieve something in a world with a lot of resistance and, you know, working with very abstract ideas on something that.

you know, potentially could have crazy and huge implications of mankind. And of course, you know, you might miss a point when you start watching that film and suddenly you start noticing, you know, old cars or old buildings and, you know, those kind of cutenesses. I think for us it has always been very important that you're not necessarily only engaged in watching something in an intellectual way, you know, but also you have to immerse yourself

you have to be able to be in it you have to sort of be able to switch off your your your your your you know certainly parts of your brain in order to

really really live into that film you know well and that actually brings up something that I can't remember the exact quote but it's stuck with me forever because I think again this kind of I just keep carving on this emotionally correct thing. But pure immersion is not, I don't think, what anyone wants because if that were the

case, anytime someone died, you would be horrified. Like if someone got shot, you would, I mean, it would ruin your life. No one wants to watch a murder. So there is this weird middle ground where it is you give yourself to the art form, whether it be music or film or whatever, and you let it speak to you in a non-intellectual way. Um, and that is far more important than as we're saying like, oh, period, correct, you know, hub caps on this fucking thing or, you know, whatever like that. And I, and I think that's a hard thing to explain to non artists. Like don't, don't, you know, especially in news and PR and all this. It's like, that's not necessarily. Sometimes it's hard to explain and that's fine. You just got to feel it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and of course, you know, um, uh, the proof is in the putting always, you know. You know. And the way people experience your film, it's totally exclusively to them. You can tell people, oh, you have to watch it this way or this way,

or you have to watch it on a big screen or a small screen. In the end, people watch it the way they want and they shoot, you know. And the only thing you can do is to make as much as possible impact or find the ways that you can sort of make that. experience be as intense as possible. And of course, there's limits to that as well. But for me, it's interesting, for me, with work on IMEX is very much framing. Framing is one of these very interesting things.

Because where I come from, you know, Polish film school, you know, framing and, you know, the golden ratio and, you know, for years I've been framing up things. very neatly in the way that I thought was correct for cinematography with the adequate headspace and the adequate amount of negative space and you know every every shot always looked very well composed you know normalism but but what is well composed and and in recent years I started center punching a lot more you know I started I started sort of stepping away from that sort of, you know, cinematography, kind of cinematographer framework kind of way of thinking. And I just started to notice in myself that, you know, I responded to frames in a very different

way when I started center framing, you know, in an emotional way. And then when you start working with IMAX, for instance, you know, the way that IMAX work and the way that your eyes can work in the cinema, you suddenly are forced to the center frame because when you start offsetting things in the frame, you know, certain sequences don't work at all, you know? So then you start, you know, instead of see your frame as a two-dimensional sort of composition,

you have to start thinking about depth perception, for instance, you know, even in a wider shot, you know. For one shot, you cut into this shot and you sit in the cinema and what do you see, what do you feel? how do you experience the depth of it and how immersive is it and so and so on and that's and that's that's very interesting because i i i now very often i watch films don't by colleagues are very talented colleagues and i look at their frames and there's nothing wrong with it it's beautiful and

it's perfect and probably a lot of people will say oh this is great cinematography and i just get the irritates you know i'm just like why this why the fuck did you did you did you did you did you did you did you put this specific scene in the perfect golden ratio and write it just just just pen right put it in the center and and you know and and and and and and allow us to just watch it without without showing hey this is done by a cinematographer and I have to have a point of view here you know yeah um it's uh you know again you know for for time you know I I I get slightly more courageous in order to be a little simpler as well yeah but you know you you're still you it's a lesson um um that you have to learn you know it's it's it's i still i still i would

probably never have had this thought if i wouldn't have come from a very conservative sort of you know cinema school background like polish film school at rinsen yeah the uh the one thing that I that I started doing in the similar vein was I learned on 60 million fare but I deleted the guide frames on my digital cameras

because it's so easy to just upset yourself in that grid you know that that three by three grid or whatever and then make sure he's in the corner and instead it's just blank and all I have left is the is battery and recording time just so I don't fuck that up but like you know and just let the little box speak for itself

you know I love If you work, for instance, with a camera operator, the best way to screw around with a camera operator is that, you know, they framed something up and then, you know, you have something in the side of your frame, right? And then you see they walk through the set and everything that, if something would be here, you know, they would put it here. So they're right.

Space here and here, you know. So, and then it really complements that frame. But I always end up walking on the set and shopping, like shopping everything to the side. Slightly irritating. You can drive cooperates totally nuts with that. But I just, I just also, you know, there's something, how do you call it, finite with a well-composed frames. Like when you put everything in the right space from your frame edges and you have exactly the right adequate headspace, that your frame left, right, that's the world, that's everywhere, that's where we live in

as an audience, where else I think if something sticks half out of the frame, that already breaks that thing, and then suddenly you have a frame, which is you put a framework in there, but the world grows out beyond the frame. And I think that's a very beautiful thought in a way, you know, and of course, as humans or as cinematographers, I would say, we always have the impulse to put things in a box and neatly present it. But there is something to be set about making that box not too precious and letting things lead out of it so that, you know, as an audience, you still can envision or imagine the world that you can't capture as a filter as a cinematographer. Yeah, I was going to say it's anything kind of over here suggests more world versus just the prudonym. Yeah, and it also suggests that there is such a thing and that the real world and the real emotions is not something that just is valid when it's boxed in by you as a visionary.

You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm being told I have to let you go. Yeah, unfortunately, but it was a good conversation, I think. Yeah, I was going to say that I have this theory that human nature is everyone wants to, like you go to a house party, everyone always wants to be in the kitchen. Like everyone likes squeezing themselves into boxes and you're like, no, get out. Get out of the rest of the house. But yeah, man, it was super awesome talking to you.

Next time you get a chance or whatever, I'd love to have you back if you'd be willing. Absolutely. I'd love to talk more about the sort of full. philosophy of these things with you. Yeah. It's all fake and there's still a lot to learn. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I'll let you get to the rest of your day, man. Thank you again so much and take care. Take care. Bye. I don't know. . I don't know. I don't know.