Frame & Reference Podcast - 129: "Percy Jackson" DP Pierre Gill, CSC

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

This week we've got the wonderful Pierre Gill, CSC on to talk about his work on the Disney+ show "Percy Jackson & The Olympians"! Pierre Gill C.S.C. is a Canadian cinematographer and film and television director. A Montreal native, he is closely associated with Quebecois cinema, and has collaborated with directors like Jean-Marc Vallée, Charles Binamé, Christian Duguay, Allan Moyle, and Denis Villeneuve, working on such films as Black List, The Art of War, Lost and Delirious, The Rocket, Polytechnique, and Upside Down. He served as the second unit director of photography on Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, which won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. 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 this another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and you're listening to Episode 129 with Pierre Gill, DP of the Percy Jackson TV show. Enjoy. Because you guys did, what did you do, the Blade Runner shorts, right? Yeah, I showed the Blade Runner shorts because I was second unit DP on Blade Runner for beacons. And then Ridley Scott wanted to do some promotions, so we did some sports with Batista, right? Yeah, I read the two of Batista. Yes, exactly.

So, yeah. So basically we did on a short kind of promotion for Blade Runner with Jared Little and one with Batista.

Yeah. I think I saw those on the Blu-ray. Oh, nice. Yeah. That's great. What was your gig

on second unit? I actually enjoy second unit jobs. They feel like almost easier. Actually, I love second unit because, yes,

you are, you have more time, you're doing the big shots like a lot of big action sequence everything is long everything is slow so it's much better than being on set all day and going crazy with like you know

touch up make up and go go go go go go so a second unit is nice I love it especially like on Blade Runner of course you have the task of trying to not trying you have to match Deacons there's no

there's no way out. You got to figure out to make sure it looks like what he's doing. So this is cool because this is something I learned to do. And I've done it pretty good with Dickens. Actually, I think he was very happy because he mentioned me in the ASC magazine article. And I know he liked and he hate the community a lot. So I think it was a very good thing that he talked about me. He was happy with the shot. And then I did also, for Greg Frazier, I'd finish the movie Dune with Denivanov because me and Greg shot Dune 1. And after they went to editing, they realized they were missing some scenes, key scenes. And Greg Frazier was doing the Batman. So the Nivirenev called me and asked me if I wanted to come and shoot the scenes. And actually, it was a lot. I ended up shooting probably the 10,

at least the 10th first minute of the movie. It's all my stuff. Wow. It's a lot. Yeah, yeah, it's like all the breakfast scene and all the Jason Mobile coming with his like spacecraft and talking with Mottie Shalami and telling him, like, you gain some weight.

And all the, with his, Timothy and his father with the funeral at the funeral. and all the treaty when they signed the treaty so yeah like a big chunk I didn't know I was going to do so much and he said like I'd have to reshoot it I'm going to shoot a new thing but you know it's mostly we have to pick up some

we have to pick up some shots into some scenes to to put so basically one shot in Bruebeke de morning is it did I say that right not Rebecca the morning

that's another actress okay so basically one shot with Rebecca Ferguson oh oh oh sure yeah that is in the middle of a scene so this is really hard you have to match like you have to match to the dot

no no no no no possibility and also I've done this also on arrival for Brandon Bradford Young Bradford Young yeah I'm sorry I'm blitzing

You're gonna have to read it a lot because Yeah that's why I take notes now I was just telling measure smit I'm like yeah I do notes now I actually note when I'm supposed to cut stuff Or just remember things I'm so bad that one thing that the reason I bring it up earlier about like have you heard this

is because I Now there's a little vacuum All like you'll be saying something And I'll get really excited and then I'll jump off topic To a different topic and I never come So I was having, I was like, now I should just use, we have pencils, we're adults. Perfect. But what, I mean, that work with Denise must have been on there, my iPad dad, too.

We're just having all kinds of technical glitches. The work with Denise seems to have been really, it's worked out for you. He's gotten some cool, cool gigs under your belt. Yeah. And I shot at one of his first movie. when he came back there doing films, which is called Polytechnique. Yeah, the black and white side. Yeah, so it was deep here on that.

And then I know that he really well. And of course, he moved on to getting like some very big Hollywood movies after that. But I was very happy when he called me for this because it's a big proof, of course, of confidence. And to be, it's a huge task. And I'm very proud and I'm very happy to have done it. you did bring up though uh shooting second unit i love talking to people who have done like really good second unit because um you know we always think especially talk about people like um deacons and whatnot you know they're obviously they're the masters of their craft and then oftentimes there are people like you or or any other second unit that have to replicate that and it can't be a pastiche and it can't be reminiscent of their look it has to be exact and i was wondering what are um kind of some of the keys of people like Bradford or Roger that you have to lean into to make sure that those things look exact. It's very important and it's very hard because the problem is because they're in the

middle of shooting. So the project is not finished. So basically, first of all, when you see daylings, it's not the final look. So there's a recipe beyond the recipe, meaning your final final look is like going in the dark room. You know, so you take pictures with a 35 millimeter film. You go in a dark room. This is where you finish your picture. You know, you do the dodging, you make the sky darker, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then you have to figure out what they're doing and they're busy. So Roger Deakin, I barely talked to him. So I came in, hey, hi, very nice to meet you. And then he was like, thanks for coming in. And you walked away. It's the bottom lines about this.

So then I have to spy. I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking at, I'm trying to see what he's doing. I'm trying to understand. But it's pretty weird because a DP is, you're an artist, even it's highly technical and it's very, you know, like the management and all that. But you have your own style. So it's very hard to recreate somebody's style. So then I have to kind of like understand, okay, what's the real contrast?

What's the real color? what is he putting in the camera? Is there filters and this and that? Of course, it's his job to tell me when he's putting because I'm supposed to work for him. But with him, I had to figure out on my own a lot. And then I try to understand the core and the basic.

But when I got there, you know, they have been shooting for 305 days. I went there for the last four months. So I don't get all the years. I have to really figure it out. And then that's what I did. And then I try to understand that I'm very meticulous for that. I'm good to do this, actually, and I think it's a very good quality.

As a D.P, if you can, mimic another DEP exactly. It's a very good thing. Yeah. It doesn't mean you're a better DEP, but it means you're highly qualified. And you have this very over good eye, too. Being able to replicate is difficult. It's very hard And you know what

For example When I work with Bradford Young And he shot a rival And then again I came the same thing I go there like Five months later Because they're going to reshoot

Then I have to reshoot stuff That goes exactly in the scene So you're cutting To a scene to my shot To another shot To a scene to my shot And then I talked to him And say hey cool

So what lens in you use And he goes Oh I use some like uncoated, but there's only one kit in the world. I'm like okay, so I'm going to get that? No, it's not available.

So then I was like, okay, so then I have to match your movie, not using the same lens? Wow, this is pretty crazy. So what I've done, I made my own mats in my head so I took the same type of lens that were not uncoated.

And I told him, I said, I'm going to change your contrast ratio. I'm going to change the way, you shot because I'm going to make the image softer in a certain way in the lighting so once you bring it back together it should get closer together and it worked and I did that

and it worked so but this is you see it's unique experience to know that thanks for the guy I'll have to figure it out was there what kind of things did you learn from having to you know roughly obviously I feel like

second unit is kind of like paint restoration people, you know, like paint restores must learn a lot from having to mimic the brush strokes of the paintings they restore. I imagine doing second unit has been pretty educational and helped you in your further work. Absolutely. And that's why I love it because what it did, it's like, first of all, it gets you very precise. It's good for your job because you become more precise. Then the other thing you learn to a second unit is big shots

like big because I ended up with shoots, you know, with stunts and eight cameras set up. The drone, three techno cranes, a cable cam. At the same time, you know, with huge stunts going blowing up away and then you read those

mega gigantic setups. So then, trust me, you learn a lot. This is really fun. And then So with Deacons, you know, I learned, you know, I've never used a four-point cable cam and there was this shot. Like the football cameras? Exactly. Because you have to, for a feature film, you have to get the equipment and build it for a week.

You know, it's like in the football field, it's permanent. Right. It's going around like this, but it's a huge deal that is a huge rigging that is done already. But for Blade Runner, we had to bring it to Budapest from London with the four construction crane to all these four points and all the movement were created on a computer to do the shot they wanted to do on the preview. So stuff like that, you know.

So this is like a thing that I've never done before, of course. And the other thing that I didn't shoot much, which I learned, which is great, because I'm Percy Jackson and they helped me a lot because with Blade Runner there's a lot of water and I shot part of the sequence

with Harrison Ford when they crashed at the end and Harrison Ford is stuck into the spinner the base craft and this is going underwater so we use like big gigantic

techno crane with hybrid camera that dip underwater and a lot of things like this so it's one of the cool thing about second unit is you're going to end up doing the shot with whatever the horse going through the yard, you're going to end up doing like the stunt following from the roof. So you have more time and this is what you don't have time to do on first unit. That's what there's a second unit, you know.

It's like impossible. It's too long to do these shots. Yeah. Yeah. I always feel like the, I've said this before to a couple. episodes, but I feel like the second unit gets to do all the stuff that we, when we're young and we, like, get into film school, we're like, that's what we want to do. Especially when you're around my age, when it's like, you watch all these special effects films and stuff. And you're like, I want to do that. It's like, well, that was, you want to be second unit. You don't want to be a DP. Exactly. You're the DP who decides of like, you know, so at the end, Blake Runner is Beacon Vision, you know. So my shot that I put in there is fun, but he's the creator of that. And also some of the shots, it's not always the same

but with DeKins and Denny De Neville, of course, he's a precise man. It's not like, hey, you know, shoot me a few guys punching each other. No, no, no, no. Nobody, it's not the stunt coordinator is going to decide how the guy will punch the other with us. Right. It's super precise.

You have to follow Deacon's order like to the dot and the knee and it's so this is a different type of second unit. It's extremely precise. You can get into maybe some mission and potable stuff would be a bit more loose, you know? Let's follow a cruise with his motorcycle in Paris.

Of course, it's put as me in camera, go with the drone, put a long lens, pan through the cars. Of course, it's all precise, but some of it is also a bit improvised, you know, and I knew. So, yeah. Yeah. The, oh, lost that thought. shit whatever um oh no that's what i was going to say i uh i was talking to eric mezer schmidt

earlier today um and i was telling him i got to see ferrari but the q and a was with dene and michael man or dene with interviewing michael man and uh that was a fascinating conversation to sit in on to see like an hour you know to see the two of them and watch them kind of bounce off each other and then they were just hanging out eating snacks outside with everyone else. And I was like, you guys didn't run away. So there was,

you know, I got to like meet him and stuff. There, um, it was cool to see like two, two minds like that really. And, and like you're saying,

like the precision and also something that I really appreciate it about Deney now hearing him talk is like his, um, his emotion towards film. Like, uh, something I've always said is like emotionally correct is more often correct than technically correct.

And he seems to be one of those directors that really, um, has, has a love, an actual like borderline. romantic love with the material oftentimes. Yeah, then he's so great. And I don't know when you work with him, he's like,

first of all, he'll never put two cameras in a scene. It's one camera at a time. That's it. Interesting. On June, I was, sometimes I had the opportunity. I said, look, I can give you a second shot. And he was like, Pierre, don't do that. You're going to kill me.

And I was like, okay, no problem. We've done it only once, I think, in the cemetery because we ran out of time seriously. But first of all, he goes shut by shot. And second of all, it's like what's great with him is like he's really thinking. You see him and if you see making up, you can see he's looking down. He closed his eyes. He's looking down. Doesn't talk much.

He's really an interior guy. And then he shoots and then he's going to look. Okay. talks to the actor and then he shoots again and goes okay cut okay moving on and you're like okay good so we do the next shot no don't need it anymore good done moving on that's nice to the director oh my god it's so good it's like on june he was doing this too we were we had a plan for a few things and then he was like no i'm good i was like okay perfect that's it so it's very very good he's very precise and he has a vision and

And you see that it works because these movies are great, you know. But what's great about this is that he builds the story. And so because overshooting is not necessarily a good thing, you know, because what happened, of course, the editor has a big part, but the problem is sometimes when you try to fix the movie in editing or change it, that's a problem. and the biggest problem with editing and it happened more

in television of course is because in television you have to do more coverage more close up you can barely leave the scenes with just two active talking in a frame

they're always going to say oh they do a close up it's a close up and the problem is this if you if you start you shoot your movie you're finished or your TV show you're finished

you put it in editing the first thing's going to happen it's going to be like, of course, the first cut will be too long. It's going to be like an hour and a half instead of, let's say, 50 minutes. Now, then you have to trim what's too much. You try to figure out the story point, make it work. Once you have it, the problem is this, is that once you have it and you're happy and you start looking at it, it's great.

But if you see it two times, three times, four times, five times, ten times in editing, you're going to say, hey, you know what, it's a little slow. why don't you try this shot of the guy when he was running around and then you add one shot and then suddenly wow it feels good because it's new right then you add another one

and then you add another one and that's why sometimes you saw some TV shows it cuts like nonstop and it's not a good thing it's something that happens because you see that your movie or your TV show too often

in editing and if it's good me you know what when I work I work like this I watch the movies or on set okay so on set

I always have my sound I'm always have a com tech I'm listening to the actors talking so if I do the camera or I have camera operators I don't mind I always have sound because my image doesn't go without sound

right I'm not doing a silent film I'm doing a film with sound and then I want to feel if my camera is moving properly. Is it too fast? Is it too this? And this is it at a good moment. And then I see sometimes I'm like looking.

I'm like, okay, good cut. Yeah, it was good. There you are. Yeah, it's fine. Sometimes I'm like, I see it. I'm like, okay, from here to here it was magic. Super powerful. Done.

Take this, put it in the other thing. Put the other piece. Build the other piece. Done. You don't have to overdo it. It's good. And you should not look at it anymore. Let the audience look at it later.

So this is, this isn't the law. Well, and I feel like, too, I was, it's funny. I was just saying that, you know, I did three interviews today. I was just talking to Matt Lloyd about origin and, you know, with Ava Duvani. And he was saying how singular vision she is and how, like, dialed. And we were kind of talking about the same thing. where like the fire hose cover, well, they were shooting on film too

and they had no budget, but like, no budget, low budget. But the idea of that fire hose coverage I feel like is it's very safe on set to say, oh, well, we'll just, we'll cover it so that we have options. But then when you default to that, let's have options mentality,

that singular vision doesn't come through and it doesn't feel like a storyteller is telling you a story. It feels like you're being presented with clips, which is not very compelling. And I feel like even an uneducated audience in terms of film, not uneducated, like stupid, an uneducated audience can tell. They can tell when it's been kind of overmanaged.

Absolutely. Because it's a human brain understand these things. That's why exactly people are not stupid. Even if you're thinking like some people are like exactly undecated audience or the thing is this the subconscious some subconscious understand something

and knows that's why we pay so much attention to details sometimes you know my girlfriend she's not in movies and she's new to this and she's like wow you're really doing this yeah oh yeah I'm going to put some snow in the background over there

because if I don't put a piece of white and I'm inside the house doesn't feel like winter. Yeah, but you don't see there. Yeah, but the brain sees it. So this detail, if I make it right, well, you know what's happened? It's like the audience is following

the actor and the emotion better. When there's a glitch, when something is wrong, I swear I God, if you do fake rain that behind you, the rain is stupidly crazy, and it's not supposed to be an hurricane the show, you know, it's not a tornado with

shards. It's like it doesn't work. So you cannot do that. And people will notice right away, even if they don't even know. The only thing they will say after a scene is, something is bothering me. I don't know what it is. So we pay attention to a lot of stuff. You know, for me, it's always when you see a lot of rain, it's usually at night. And then you can see a puddle in the back,

but there's no rain hitting that puddle. Yeah. I'm always like, oh, that's just some PA with a hose over the car. Oh, man, this is very frustrating because it happened off, and even on big budget, it's very hard these things. But actually,

that brings up something I wanted to talk about later, but we'll talk about it now because you know, the segues are fun. You on Percy Jackson, you shot a lot of volume stuff, I read. And I was wondering, you know, not that it's new technology

in that most people know about it now but it is a really new technology you know it's very you know you're probably one of i don't know 10 like major productions that have actually used it to any degree um how were you able to how much of it was volume because i couldn't even really tell watch i mean i only saw a handful of episodes um fortunately i didn't have a ton of time before when i got back from colorado but uh couldn't tell but also how are you able to make it look realistic. I read in an article that part of it was making it not look realistic, made it look realistic.

Yeah, it's a good question. And I mean, I'm very happy if you tell me that you didn't notice or you don't even know which was shot on a video on the show because there was a lot. And there was a lot of extremely difficult situations. So bottom line So that's why And I really put my blood on to this

Because it was so hard The thing is this It was my first time with a volume But I learned fast And I worked with Deakin Of Blade Runner and June So I'm okay I can't figure it out

Give me the end four I'm going to understand I have a good instinct So I'm good to try to figure it out And then I made some research And all that That's fine Now the thing I didn't know

And I was working with Ireland which are the best, you know, so they did Mandalorian and all of this Bob Arfitt and all the amazing stuff. And the thing I did not know, and the thing I realized that they did not know also, is that we tried to do realism, and she can't. You can barely do it.

So this is where I sweat a lot. And then with my great friends at Island, that we started to, you know, because the show that we tried to do with Percy was one thing, not Avengers, not superhero, not over the top. Let's make a series with a down-to-art guy, a real character, a real kid that are like going to a journey, and my take was to make it realistic, natural, but with an end, it's like, you know, gorgeous and nice and Disney.

Disney-ish, a bit, without going to super, like, you know, poppy and, like, over the top and be watch and whatever. Right. So, well, I mean, like the, oh, the big blue sky thing. But I try to keep color. I wanted to keep color because I'm missing it, because everything is dissaturated now. Everything is monochromatic. And I'm like, it's easy to do monochromatic.

I sort of got, if you want to do color, it's difficult. So anyway, to come back to the volume. what happened is that we started by doing the exterior met which is the first scene almost the first scene of the show and it's so this is all volume but oh my friend the museum was volume yeah the exterior and the interior yeah that wasn't where I would have pointed both of them and actually the interior was it was

really a success okay because we were And what was the strange is because I didn't know, but they came up with the shots because what they do, they go shoot. They went to shoot the exterior met and the interior met, the museum, with like digital cameras and they grab everything and they create a 3D museum, which is a real museum. But then when they showed me the entry museum, I was like, okay, so now I what do I do? I need to light it. And they were like, well, no, it's lit. I said, no, it's not lit. It's lit by the allergen lamb that you shot at the museum.

I'm a DPD. I'm going to light it. So they were like, yeah, okay. So I said, no, no, no, no. I have to light this. I'm going to real light this. So they went, okay, so we use a 3D structure, and all of the interior is relit by me,

the bound, the thing, all the concept of what I wanted to delight to look like. to try to make it work also as best as possible in the volume because you have to understand that you have some creative choices but they come to reality quick so you don't it's not like oh yeah I wanted to do exactly that no I wanted to do something else but I could not achieve that at the moment but it's okay I mean it's part of the game as well what you do every day on any you know production so we realize we relight it we do some tests in the volume and it started to look really cool. Now, the thing is, at the same time, we do the exterior, and we put it on the volume to test it, and it starts to be very difficult because it doesn't look real.

Now, then we realize, with ILM also, they realize that it's like, this is what is the reality about that. If you do Star Trek, Star Wars, Mandalorian, anything that has the word sci-fire fantasy, your brain, like I was talking about the subconscious, will accept the fakeness of it, the not the reality of it. So even if it looks super good, I mean, like the Mandalian and all that, that's amazing, but it doesn't look real, real, real, you know,

so you're okay. First of all, the costume are different, the people who are wearing masks and makeup and stuff like that. And Star Trek, for example, where if you read like, you have red and blue stripes and white stripe with black paint. And the background is very like, you know, like click, click, click with lines. It's not an organic type of set. And then when we go into the volume to do an exterior realistic set, it's like it was very hard. So after a lot of sweating and a lot of like fixing and a lot of this and that,

we ended up with a pretty decent volume. So I'm very happy. At the moment, a lot of people don't know about what was volume or not. Some people know, of course. But a lot of it add some touch up, but not a lot of touch up. So this is a really good news because that's the goal when you should volume. You know you have to touch up in VFX. First of all, because there's a ceiling and you have cameras and there you have to raise them.

So just basically like that. But so what I've done in that, that volume is that the first thing is like, and to talk about person generally speaking, when I started my prep, what I did is my hanker was the volume. Because I knew we were going to have about, let's say, we had planned 30% of the shoot was volume, for example. Oh, wow. So I cannot do anything else than start my test in the volume. So, My camera package, my lenses, and all the prep I've done is only inside a volume. So I just did 100 lenses.

I wanted to shoot an amorphic. I wanted to have no flares in these lens. I didn't want a television lens with a flare like a really cool stuff. Because the problem with this is like if the lamp is not, is only, because I'm going to put lights in that volume. But the volume arch directed and post. Well, no, I said that is because if I cheat the sun, I can put a little light in the volume to cheat the sun and we can erase the tripod, but this light is 30 feet away from you. So it doesn't work. If the flare will tell you that you're too closed, it doesn't work physically.

So I didn't want to have blairs. I wanted to have blooms and very little flares, of course. So at the end, I found the cook lenses, the big, like, very heavy, amazing animal, or facial clay. Yeah, those cocoanomorphics are like this. Oh, they're gigantic. Yeah, they're gigantic. My study gem of purgatory was like, like, in your, oh, no, crazy. I was about like a handheld there.

There's so much glass inside there. But they're gorgeous. The thing is that they are beautiful for faces and skin, and this is really fun. And then, so what I did, I did that, and I took a venice, because then they mix with those two elements. So the cook and the venous two became a very, very lovable mix for the volume. So I had a clean image, but not too clean, and also very velvety because I got William Ashwhite and Canada. They went through four kit of my lenses, four sets of my cook lenses, and I had them to detune them.

So they spent 1,000 hours to detune every lens one by one. So that was an achievement. Really? Yeah, yeah, it was unbelievable. And what happened with this is they got the flare to be just out, but also the lens to bloom. And I call them the velvet. They were PG velvet. So what happened with this, actually the volume was very pleasant because it was soft enough. So the screen was just blending better in the camera. But still, it was sharp enough to be what you see on TV, which is quite, it's actually quite sharp, Chris.

but it's not disturbing it's not because I hate crisp you know and deep easily we like film and we like the grain and we like all this but when I'm looking at the series on my screen

my TV at home and I'm quite happy to be honest with Jim like well it looks pretty good so that was a one of the big thing to find this and when I found my lens I never even tested my camera outside

ever the only test I've done in the volume and when I was like yeah the church is working done and then

the only work I started doing was really to figure out how to do those volume so at the end there's a lot

there's like the exterior met interior met there's a minor a crash the car inside the car the crash

outside the mom talking with Percy and the rain with the car lighting your face which I love it this is where you see

this lens with our accordion There's all the minor tour fight. I mean, this is only episode one, you know? Yeah, well, I thought, I was going to say that I thought it was the camp. The camp, but like I saw that you guys built a real camp. Yes, exactly. So part of the camp is in the volume.

Part of it is outside. Part of it is inside the stage. So that was also very difficult because I got to figure out how to make these to be, all the same path, you know? Yeah. So what, I'm glad you brought up those lenses because you're totally right. Like there's this wonderful velvet, I guess, is the proper word now that I know. But I was going to say there's this wonderful creaminess, but everything's super, like, not super

sharp, not annoyingly sharp, but like, especially in close-ups. Just everyone looks, red, the eyes are clean. Yeah. You see their eyes are like, yeah. So this, this lens is great because what it does, it's just nice. enough for the skin to get the curse out of the skin. But you

look at the eyes and what we did is like first of all I use this 55 macro and the 75 millimeter a lot because they're a good distance and to be anamorphic what is very important of anamorphic your clothes to the actor and I love that because you feel it

even on an iPhone and watch it I'm like yeah so in the opening of episode one there's a shot of Percy like doing his voiceover and he's and the lightning, and he got into a super big close-up. If you look at this shot again, watch it. This is a 65 macro, and when he comes close, you see, he's there. He's perfectly there.

He's with you. And the fact that it's anamorphic, at this point, it was maybe three feet away, one meter away from the length. So it's around. It's round. So the difference between spherical and amorphic, the spherical you would be eight feet away, so it's flat. So you're not as close

of the actor and you don't feel the roundness you don't see the side of the face it makes it more two-dimensional this shot is a nice example that people want to understand what is an amorphic look at this opening shot

of Percy Jackson in his close-up and he comes in there then with the lightning you see his eyes and you see how beautiful these lenses are gorgeous

yeah and you said they were modified what again oh the cooks they were their cook 2x anamorphic ice S35 series but I got them

I got William F. White to tune them. That was a big thing because nobody wanted to touch these lenses. Even Cook doesn't want me to do that which I understand. So what we've done is there's this an extra dog at William F. White

he said I'm going to try and then there was one thing, there was one technical problem I didn't like because they made a flare with an orange line in it and that's orange dot sorry and that was a big problem that I have to get go around it and he was able to make it disappear okay so from there I said okay can you try so we tried only three lenses at the beginning and then he understood what to do because he spent at least two weeks for three lens just to figure out how to open it close it I mean

there's like the glass and there is all made in England life and made it's it's crazy so it was quite an accomplishment in two with you it's like so yeah um so the anamorphic obviously is like one element of it but what what in your mind uh kind of gives it this sort of blockbustery look that it has because i don't know what your guys's schedule was but it does have i know you said you didn't want it to look too like uh hero you know superhero but it does kind of have that same flavor of like a marble film in terms of it's very high quality great color separation as you were saying great sat you know vibrance and and and um it's it definitely has that kind of look to it and i was wondering i'd seen uh online a few like

um lighting masterclasses you had done and and i wouldn't say that your style has changed very much over the years but like obviously not everything you've shot has been sort of a blockbuster thing So if there's a question in there, you could either. What is that kind of look to you in this film? And also, like, what is your kind of generalized approach to shooting anything? Big soft source backlight. No, well, listen, it's a good point. My main thing is, yeah, I do have a style, but I have a very olivalin style.

I can do a lot of things, meaning I can do like dirty and hell. I can do like super clean stuff and I can do something like you shot on billy eyedish that's it. It's like I'm pretty much polyvada and I have a very very narrow style which is an advantage probably but I do have a style

in terms of color meanings I use a lot of time I have like a three color palette in my thing so I'm creating deep in every shot because I'm changing color. I'm changing the color of my lights in layers. And I'm making the shot to expand by doing this. So I think that's one thing. I use this on Percy Jackson, of course, a lot. But one of the thing that you say there's scope is because my first thing is how much I love lighting. The lighting is not important. What's important is the

framing. So the only important thing is to know how to pick up the good lens for the good shot. Because if you put an so for example, my characters, I know that

I'm using the 65 on this actor and the 75 on that actor and I know that the 110 will be better on that woman than the 75. So their faces, that's the first thing. Of course, it slows up because it's the emotion.

You need to master this first. And I call it a G-spot. Sorry, but that's what it is for me. It's like there's a sweet spot for a lens that you get exactly. And I tell my operator all the time and my dolly pushers, I'm like, guys, when you go in, you'll see at one point the lens just go, it explode. It gets in dimension. So there's some lens you get to exactly.

exactly there and some of the images maybe it gets strong if you're one feet behind it's okay so this is the first thing that's why you get scope you find the right lens and you see and we then do like the supererole stuff

meaning there's not even there's barely any like low super wide angle shot to make people the big and like that there's none of it but still there's scope so wine because this is the height also So yeah, when I use my wider lens, I go lower a bit, I make sure, like, the distance kicks in.

I look at the viewfinder. I'm trying to get the right distance, and I'm like, ah, is it the 35 to 25? I had a great operator, Dean Esselden, from Vancouver, which is like one of the top there. So, you know, I share with him a lot. So, okay, didn't come here, look, this is a 65, I think is great, but I really like the 55. it feels like we feel more and it was like yeah it's great perfect let's do it so a lot of the scope is the framing a lot of the scope is the lens and it's it's really the key of it after that because some of the set are you know big and different so it feels like scope as soon as you you have

a bit more like proof you know you're not in a kitchen and in a kitchen and in a kitchen and in a bad rule. But again, this is not true because if you look at not prisoners, sorry, the movie of Denny which I mean by Ben, wait a minute, let me give me a second. This is stupid. Not prisoners? No, no, after. with the municipal

with the Mexican Mafia. Oh, fucking Sicario. Well, thank you. So you can edit that. So the thing about scope, if you look at Sicario, I mean, super

cinematic, there's a lot of scope. So because Deacons knows how to frame and move the camera and use a lens, because it's, again, what is the scope in that movie? You start in a small little cabanas or a small little house in the middle of like Texas, then you go in a field, then you're inside an office. I mean,

when you think about it, there's no scope to that movie, but it feels really scoping. Though, because you have, first of all, because you have these also, you need to have these, I call them the trailer shots. Up here, we don't have time. I don't care. We have to do it. Let's do it. It's a trailer shot. You need it, you know, you need it either for your trailer or because it's for the scope. And if you have this, well, then everything else fall into place. So there's some of this, of course,

in Percy, because I've done some, but, you know, which one I don't know. But even the first shot, I just talked to, again, I come back to this shot when Percy walks and gets into a big close-up, well, it does have scope because this is like a very juicy, beautiful lens and he stopped to the perfect place.

With his face, it kicks in. So that's some of it. And yeah, I think, you know, and then after, of course, I try to make it look quite pleasing. It's Disney, so I'm not going to make a dirty, fucked up, you know, like a full of grain, dirty, almost black and white thing. Right. I'm going to keep, I'm in Disney World, and I will do something that belongs to them, it's part of like the task you know of course it's something you have to respect you have to try to do but this said i didn't take any any more uh and uh i didn't take any other movies as reference

the only thing i've done is that i started by i read the script and then i told the producers when i had my interview and said you know i feel it should be real in a certain way real but elegant. Yeah. So it's realism with elegance. Well, it doesn't look like a kids show. You know, it certainly, you know, it has elements of things that make a kid's show. You know, like we said, like vibrance and color and a sense of kind of playfulness.

But it looks, like I said, it looks like any other quote-unquote blockbuster TV show. Yeah, there's good quality, exactly. I did want to ask about the lighting, going with the idea of color, were you, I assume using a lot of LEDs, were you, was a lot of that color in the grade or were you using more RGB than, you know, tungsten or white, a daylight balanced light? Like, for instance, in the, I think it's like the first episode when Percy's talking to his stepdad or dad or whoever that is, you know, it's a very colorful scene for being, as we were saying, in a, in an apartment, you know, is that production design or was that a lot of like RGB type LED? Not, it's lighting. It's lighting. And I do light with color. So I don't work and host. But, of course, it's, it's lighting. It's lighting. And I do light with color. So I don't work and host. But, of course, because I come back to photography and dark room, dark room where you have to print your picture and you make your decision.

So for me, pose is critical. It's super important. It's one of the reason why I love the digital world also because I work in a very modern way. I'm working. I do my own color correction on set myself on every shot. all of them every shot i do color correction i create a lot i put a cdl i work with live grade and every shot has this so i work with LED and a board up on a show like this of course because i

can afford it so i have this amazing guy called dan hot and he has his board and he's really fast he's like a crazy video game or whatever you call it but man it's crazy so because i'm set up i had at least 250 to 400 laps, you know. Good, great. It's huge. Oh, no, no. It's like, like when you see the casino on scene, I think, there must be 500 to 600 fixtures. So they are all the LEDs, they are all the mix, and I do put all the colors before.

And then when I finish my thing, the daily color is, they have to bring my daily exactly the way I've done it. The only thing they tweak is the black level. Sure. That's it. Because the black level is never perfect on set because you don't see properly. Now, the second thing I do is that I take my photo software and I take those frames and then I start doing the spices on the omelette. So then what I do is this.

I say, okay, now because I don't work, I do my color correction, but it's linear. It's only I don't change the color of the red. I don't have secondary colors. I don't do this. It's too much. So what I do, for example, all these orange t-shirt, man, it's hard to shoot with all these orange t-shirt. So what I've done is what I did is like I went to my Troto software.

I took some dailies and then I start doing color correction and pick up the orange, change the color, change the saturation, and add some whatever one. I want to the skin tones and change my beautiful or science if I want to. And then I did about 10 frames and I sent it to Charles Bodheng who was my colorist. The great colorist is super good. He could do this alone, but he was very happy because like, my God, this is extremely precise. So what it does is that he's a big fun because he started with a very strong brain

because when he went, when he gets the material that is edited, it's already looking pretty good or pretty equal because it's like there he's and then he has my pictures to know that okay he wants me to do that because sometimes I don't have time I was I left to shoot due TV series after that

so I'm not going to LA to do the color correction so we have to work remotely but I want him to know that yes I want you to really first of all an abet color skin tall has to be like that

I don't want any dark brown. I want her to have this beautiful little chocolate brown that she, her skin is like this. And it can very quickly go to a darker brown. I don't want that, you know. So I'm like, you work on this. You have to fix this. So that's part of like the scope also because it's clean.

And when you watch it and I watch it two days ago with my kid, you know, I watched it to 5 and I was like, it started. It was like, wow, it looks. It looks pretty good, actually. I was very happy because it does look nice, you know, for it's pleasing. So it's well achieved and it's well taking care of. Well, I colorist is amazing. Sorry, the colorist is amazing, but I bring them there and then I say, look, now if you have a week to work, you have a fun week to work.

Because you know what? You can go in the sky in the background, fix the cloud. You can do this, fix this, because we have time. to do some cool stuff instead of trying to rebuild it all. Yeah, yeah, that's the hard thing with like, I do a lot of freelance coloring because over the pandemic,

obviously I wasn't working, I wasn't shooting any video. So I, and that's been the more difficult thing is trying to explain, especially as a DP, trying to explain to a director like, no, actually your DP fucked up

and this is going to take three days just to like get it all balanced before we can start talking about how your look isn't there yet, you know? Exactly. Well, my way of working, you get it balanced. And I learned that very quick.

I learned that like 10, 14 years ago with the Borgias. And the people who showed me this, I was in Budapest. And these guys from colorfront, this young guy, Daniel Farca, he was looking at me, and he was looking at me

putting with gels and color and this. And I was working with an Alexa, but he could see that I was always calling the color, the colorist for the daily colorist, saying, you know, I want the magenta to be like this. I want the cyan to be like this. I want the sat-da-da-da-da. Then he said to me, Pierre, yeah, I get this thing is super cool. It's life grade. And I have this little knob thing, and you should try that, and you could control a bit your CDL. And I'm not a whiz kid, and I'm not a video. and viewing games, you know, I'm not like a computer creepy thing. But I kind of understood and what happened to me, I was like, oh my God, this is, this is it. Because what it did to me is that I finally gained control again of being a DEP because I loved it after being on film. Whether you're on film, you are the total magician. Nobody sees it. There's a box.

It's secret. You can light blue and you can see the elites. they're going to be orange. Nobody knows. But now with Digital, and it started with commercial, there's 20 people looking and chipping. Oh, is it?

It's a bit too much color. It's a bit too this. And you're like, okay, but that's just a reference. Can we just not talk about it? But then I started to do this very precisely to be able to get everybody to shut up, and it worked.

Because bottom line, right after that, I shot, remember I shot a movie called The Colony. I don't know if you see this, but if you see it, It looks like Magdaleney. That's it. And plus, plus. And I've done this with some colorists.

I work with a really, really high-hand colorist in New York. And when I told him, oh, I want you to start from my signal, he was upset. And at first, and he was like, well, no, I'm a colorist.

I was like, yeah, cute, but I don't care. You start from my thing because we start with my look and because I want us to have fun. So, blah, blah, blah. He was in New York and I took a plane a week later, get there. I get into his room and he's like, hey, clear there.

Hi. Oh, Pierre, I'm in love with the way he do. It's amazing. And I was like, okay, so for him, he was like, you're right. I put it up and then it did look good already. So of course I have to clean it up, but it's a shorter cleanup. But then the fun part is that then we create a look. and you apply it and it follows everywhere,

like you just said. But you do this when you start. You don't do this after a week and a half of re-during everything. You know what I mean? So it's also this process. It's great for editors and musicians that are getting the cut and the dealings

because they are a bit closer to the final thing. In the first per se, dailies was looking like those shows. Of course, not as beautiful, but it was that in that world yeah it's uh

you actually bring up a good point that was uh this is the bad side of me being my own colorist is uh when I've been hired not every time obviously but there have been times when I've been hired to shoot something and I'm so used to like letting something on set go

because I know I can fix it like oh I'll bring that down or oh that color's a little fucky but I can fix it. And then I remember, oh, no, I'm not the colorist. You know, I'll be like, oh, no, I can do it. And they're like, we have someone. And I'm like, okay, fuck. Because then they're going to get the footage.

Oh, I know. He blew it. And I'm like, oh, but I know what the fix. No, no, but I do it. I'll at least once a day, I do it. I say, okay, and let's try it. And I was like, you know, I'll fix it in post. Yeah.

I'll get the wall darker there or this and that. because it's time-consuming. But at the moment, I was able to fix it and achieve it because my colorist was sending me frames on what I was shooting June. So in the morning, I would like, you know, get on set on June, trying to keep my head into that world and getting, you know, frames from Percy. And then sometimes I have to take notes, you know, since long. I put this in Photoshop and then I have to do arrows.

that the skin is great the contrast is too dark I don't want the thing I don't want is crash black I hate it I stayed it with a passion for all my thing

when I see it's velvet because everything I work on is that the black has the beautiful little detail so even if it has to be contrasted I'm opening that it's not crap now to be honest with you

at the moment my TV is that properly it looks really good but I know that a lot of people we see this and will say it's very contrasting, it's hyper-color because like I would say

90% of television sets are completely destroyed by the manufacturer because they're set to the football game and the freaking hockey games so it's very, very bad for us. A huge problem. That was literally like

maybe the first five minutes in my conversation with Messerschmitt. We were talking about how he was saying he doesn't shoot because we're you know we're talking about at one point Ferrari and at the same time the killer and I was like working with Netflix like do you have to assume that the TV is set to shit and he was like no but we do assume that they're going to watch it on a small TV and I was like that's an interesting point that I hadn't thought of well maybe I had in the past but I didn't really think about it was like if everyone's going to be watching it on an

iPad or like a like a 27 or like a laptop your framing changes you know you're not not going to shoot one point or his other point shooting like wide open at 1.4 looks great on an iPad and weird in a theater no of course for the theater it's different my my thing goes directly to television so my take is right there but an iPad is the best screen ever to watch anything i i think it's the most beautiful screen ever because the black is rich it's like it's gorgeous the colors. The only thing with the iPad, there's a little tint of slyan, generally speaking, but I love the iPad, definitely. It's the only thing I watch my dating is on, actually. Now, the thing is that I'm trying to work with the ASC as much as I can eventually

to get Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, and Netflix and Disney and everybody saying, look, it's simple. We do a show. We put it to your point. platform, let's have a code and this code should go directly to your television and your television should change completely to what it's supposed to be. And when the show is finished and you go back to your hockey game, well, it comes back super sharp with this stupid motion blur, anti-motion blur that is destroying our movies completely. So can we get there please, 2023,

I hope we can get there very soon because this is the worst thing ever, seriously. It's, I do my,

my part whenever I go to a hotel or an Airbnb or whatever, I always change it. A awful lot of addict. Me too. Yeah,

but, but you have a good point though because that's not a far off technology. I know, like I have a PlayStation that I watch movies on,

you know, 4K blue rays, whatever. And when you, when you're playing a game, the TV, and I have a, TCL, you know,

Chinese $100. It looks nice, but it's not like a, you know, it's not a LGC1 or whatever. But when you, when I'm playing a video game, it says game mode activated and it'll say like your PlayStationer, and then when I put a movie,

this is game mode deactivated. It doesn't even on that. Well, the PlayStation does it, you know? So it shouldn't happen. Of course it should happen. It should be based. And I mean, it's even like Sony makes TV,

Sony produces film. and TV show and they put billions into this it would be great that it would be like pioneers to just change that talk to Amazon, make sure it's like they have enough money and things to make it work. The technology

should be simple. Figure out a way that it's just like the TV understands the code from the server is simple as that, you know? I think it's going to be very, very important very soon because yeah, when I go to my brother and I look at

I watch on his TV. Look at my new TV. It's amazing. You put the movie, The Matrix, the first Matrix, which is gorgeous. It was an amazing film. I look at this. I'm like, oh, my God. What happened to carry up?

This ain't right. She's full of crater. Her skin is like, well, look, pores. I'm like, what the hell is? I've never seen this in my life. She's not like this. His TV made her face look like she has like these big pores. So this is really bad.

And, you know, all their work, like we're talking back to Percy about these lens and the skin and how gorgeous it is, it's for the human to be pleased and, and connect to a cab actor and a drama, you know? So it's like, it is important. It's not a joke. Yeah. Well, and also to finalize that point, like Netflix, I think, has the, this thing where they, they don't put grain in the, um, file that is sent. The grain gets added at the app level, uh, so that it doesn't get mushy. Like, the reason that you're able to see grain on Netflix is because it's added on your app or on your TV and not through the

compression. Like, so it doesn't get compared to it. So there's got to be a way to talk to TV. If you could do that, there's got to be a way to tell the TV to turn. on filmmaker mode. For sure. I did want to, I know we're about out of time here. I did want to ask, am I misquoting here? Did you say that two of the influences for Percy Jackson were E.T. and the Green Mile. Or is that a different film?

No, no, no. So that's me saying that. So this is very funny because when I get a call for my agent saying they would like you to read the script, and so in particular, I said, of course, there was many DPs that being interviewed, so I get some in the script, I read it, and what I usually do is I do a lookbook or a mood board for my interview, because it's for me to express what I saw and what I think. So what I did on this one, and I always start with a page with five movie posters, then I had like, I said, okay, so this is the type of, you know, inspiration. So one of the musici because of the youth, the kid, the Spielberg way of shooting.

There was Lord of the Ring because of the scope and the, you know, like we want some juicy, big stuff. There was a, well, I don't remember, but at the end there was my last poster was the Green Mile. And then the producer John Steinberg and Dan Schultz were like, okay, Pierre, that way. The Green Mile. What the hell? Why do you come out with that? Want everyone to be sad? And I know.

And I said, well, listen, I said because it's one of the most beautiful movie of two characters that are going to our journey that are completely different from race, from social identity. One is a prisoner. One is a guard. One is black. One is white. One is huge. One is small. I mean, they're all, and they're going to our journey, and it's very, I'm emotional.

And I said, I don't know. When I read the script, this is where I would like this to go, because there's good lines in there. There's good, like, things, and there's some good things with Grover and him, and I could see, and it was his mom, and I said I can see this going into adult life, meaning seriousness, you know. So that's why I think I put this But to be honest with you I don't really know I'm just trying to get inspired

And then I was like I was like I don't know I see the green mile And it was very strange But you know what It's a very People should watch it A lot of people probably never saw that movie

Because it's a bit older movie But it's very powerful Well you know what I just picked right There Yeah, right about there is the 4K Green Mile, because I heard that transfer was really good, and I haven't watched it yet, but I do have the screeners for the rest of Percy Jackson because that's an advantage to being a journalist. So I'll watch that now, and then I'll finish the series. Then I'll let you know what my opinions are.

Okay. These are inspirations, so maybe there's nothing to it. It'll feel right, you know? Yeah. I mean, I told them that one of my pitch for the series was to, we should shoot it on an iPhone. No kidding. Yes. Yeah. And that was my inspiration. I said, we should shoot it. We should feel like it's shot on an iPhone, which is not at all. It's like super big and scopy and big cranes and everything. But it's still an inspiration, meaning what I talked about this is I said, we need to talk to the young audience. We need to talk to the adults. Actually, that's what Disney did the best when they started with Aladdin, you know, and you shrink and everything that has become crazy where they talk to adults and kids

that the adults were laughing like crazy in the theater and they couldn't, don't know why, you know. So this is something very important. So this is something that is probably part of it, you know. Yeah. Well, I'll let you get to what looks like the rest of your evening. It was really fucking awesome talking to you, man. The show's great, and I'd love to have you back on to talk about, I guess, the Dune series

when that comes out or maybe before if you're ever bored. Yeah, absolutely no problem. We haven't talked too much about Percy, but I think it was fun to talk generally about like your cinematography because it's all related. And thank you for having me.

Frame and references an Al-Bot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. like to support the podcast directly, you can go to frame and refpod.com and follow the link to buy me a coffee. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening.