Frame & Reference Podcast - 131: "Origin" DP Matthew Lloyd, ASC CSC

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Today we've got another incredible DP in the form of Matthew Lloyd, here to talk about his work on Ava DuVernay's wonderful new film Origin! They shot it on 16mm over a handful of continents in 37 days, making it a triumph of filmmaking in any capacity. You're gonna love this one! 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 131 with Matthew Lloyd, ASC-S-C-S-C, DP of Origin. Enjoy. Because yeah, that was the big thing that got me into filmmaking was definitely Spike Jones because I was a big jackass fan. And then I was like, how are you making jackass, all these amazing skate films, and Oscar nominated films all at once? I was like, that's the dream.

Dude. I mean, I go back to Spike even like way before Jackass. I go, I go all the way back to like Mouse and Paco and all the early girl films. And yeah, right was the one that obviously. yeah i mean yeah right but he was i mean mouse has like some of the most amazing kind of sketches and just sort of like really still to this day to me like speak to his sort of stylistic inclination and almost more than any of the other stuff and uh it was just this understanding that like you know the things you were into can extend beyond the physical act you

know it's like you can i remember watching those things in the shop i worked in you know just i mean we wear the tapes out you know literally mouse was running chocolate tour was running like over and over and over again and uh it just seems so fun like it just seemed like you're just like making stuff with your friends and it's fun and like it added to the landscape of the culture you know in a way that like wasn't skate you know what i mean it wasn't for the purest like It should just be tricks and music, but it was like part of the tapestry that like made what we did fun to be around, you know, beyond just the act of like, you know, burial flips and stuff. Well, and for me too, like I couldn't skate. That's why I got into snowboarding because I couldn't, I could, I could, I could, I could allie once out of every probably 30 attempts like successfully.

Like, I could land in Ollie, but anytime it was like up a curb or whatever, it was game over. So, no, it's, I mean, still, like, my, my son's into it now, too, and I'm still skating a lot, you know, for my age. And, uh, and man, it's like, it's the endless challenge, you know, like, you take two weeks off to help promote a movie and then you get back on it, you're like, I may as well have just started from scratch. Yeah. Well, I, I, uh, the thing that keeps me going in it is, and snowboarding is, uh, I help run college ski trips every year. Oh, so I think we had to reschedule, like, once or, twice and it was because I was working those trips. Oh, right. And I got back on a huge, I mean, the whole Summit County got nuked with snow as I was

leaving and luckily I got out of there. But like even the past two days, I've just been like laying on the couch recovering because one, it's like, it's a lot of snowboarding and it was kind of icy so it was really like yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a treacherous physical endeavor for sure. Yeah.

But it reminded me like, I got to work out more. Let's, yeah, yeah. Nothing can get wheel. But one thing I did want to say that you reminded me, I was like that there was a, I grew up in the Napa Valley and there was this skateboard shop called Board Garden. And they always had like the 401 tapes and stuff like connolly playing or, or, you know, any of those things. And it did remind me how like that sort of, same thing with snowboarding too, but the snowboard shops were

really a place you to hang out because they're pretty seasonal but uh it was interesting how that would really shape the conversations you had with your friends like those films are of course like skateboarder magazine or trans world or anything like that like or even even stupid shit like ccs like just going through the now order calendar it was like oh dude you see the new whatever graphics for the alien boards or whatever i mean i remember all that man i remember all that like super well and it was just like it was art it was accessible It was physical media that felt like something you could see yourself doing, you know? Like, I didn't grow up in an environment where I could see myself making a movie.

Like, how do you even get made? I understand. No one makes movies where I'm from. Like, what are we even talking about here? But you hang out with your friends with a video camera or something or, like, you can shoot, you know, like Pops' Super 8 camera and, like, get something cool. You know what I mean? Like that. Totally.

And then work it in. You can do a zine. you can do uh you know you can take photos and and do posters and stuff you know it's like we just like go to the print shop and like make the stuff all of our early you know efforts were like VHS and we like had the the jackets printed and we would fold them and glue them in my basement you know what I mean and the shop would like hold the premiere for the thing and we would you know it's just like we were making stuff you know sort of naively but also we had tangible like heroes, legends in the community who were, who felt, you know, excessive, like felt like you

could see yourself actually doing that. Dude, Billy Peppley was really good at, like, making you feel like it's unreachable, you know? Oh, 100%. That was the thing. The board garden, I can't remember what film it was, but there was a board garden premiere where they, like, rented out a, uh, actually, you know what? Have you ever heard of bottle rock?

The, so I remember, I can't believe I'm putting this together right now. In like 2000, I want to say, they did a premiere of some film that I can't quite remember in this little room and like all this pros showed up, which I thought was insane, right? They came up to a town of 5,000 people and signed everything, whatever, had a party. But that's that room is where they do bottle rock. Oh, wow. I mean, they do bottle rock outside that room. But yeah, just remember that's the same fucking look. It's the only like multi-purpose room in Napa at the time.

Oh, but it kind of goes back to what you said earlier about, like, that curation thing. Like, I think about, like, how radio doesn't curate anymore. No, like, I'm like, no, what's going on with the radio, but it's the same 12 songs every time. I mean, the personalities are still great, but they don't get to choose. Yeah, yeah, it's all bought and paid for. Yeah, you know? And, and that's frustrating, whereas, like, at least, I feel like there was curation at skate shops. You know, it wasn't like, oh, for sure.

And like some shops carried some brands and others didn't carry other brands and oh, you want, you know, something from Crail Tap, but you have to go to this shop. If you want alien boards, you have to go to this shop. You know, it's like not everybody has everything. And there's so much, you know, at the time especially, it was so sort of like random when things would come out. And, you know, it was like you didn't know. Some shops would have one board of, you know, a that people loved, it'd be gone. You know, it wouldn't, it wasn't like today where you just, like, get online. You're like, type in the whatever you want, and there it is, you know. It is. That could be an entire podcast right there.

It's just like the importance of curation. The importance of, of taste makers, you know? 100%. And of physical, and of physical media, I think. Like, you know, I hope Zines come back. Dude, I mean, it's all, it's all starting to come back to people. to hold things. You know what I mean? Like people, we're, we're, we're, as human beings, like, you want to hold things. We've been making artifacts since the dawn of time. You know, people want to

hold things. They don't just want to, like, turn on a digital buffet and be inundated with like nine million choices of things that aren't that just there and then gone, you know, it's like you don't, the way, the physical act of doing things, you know, vinyl sales are back up. Somebody was telling me like DVD, aftermarket DVD. I mean, clearly, you've got it in the background. Dog, I had to find a blockbuster copy of dogma on Blu-ray. Yeah, because that asshole Weinstein won't let go of the, yeah, won't let go of the rights because Kevin Smith was like, fuck that guy.

And he's like, yeah, well, fuck your movie. Yeah, buried. But it's true, you know, it's like, it's even boards, man. It's like, you know, like as an art medium, like there's so much incredible artwork that just existed on skateboards, you know. and then ultimately like they're meant to be destroyed so it's like a canvas that's getting wrecked and now we're like all desperately trying to be like you know save the boards and you know make sure if anyone has them that they go to one of the collectors who's like preserving the stuff

you know yeah pretty wow it uh do you know the designer uharon draplin yeah of course yeah i find all of his uh that's another like spike jones type person that i that i think is uh relevant to the culture he's so he's super cool actually we kind of I've helped him with a few things a buddy of mine's pretty tight with him really yeah we helped with a few kind of snowboardy projects that they had going back in the day and uh you know

just some like filming and stuff and um very cool like always hooked me up field notes and all that's that's actually guy who believes intangible that's this shorter thing are all field notes yeah exactly just I burned, uh, where's,

yeah, this is my notes for, uh, I was just talking to Eric Bezershmidt, uh, about 20 minutes ago and there's all my like Ferrari notes. Yeah, there you go.

Another guy I know well. Well, we have the same, you know, it's the same company trying to put these movies out. So, yeah. He,

uh, he actually mentioned something that, uh, I thought tied well and I was like, I'm, this is going to be a great like segue. Uh, because we were talking about,

I had, I don't even know if I'm going to put this in, in his episode necessarily, but, but I was talking about how it's, It's kind of crazy how his career went from like Gaffer, Gaffer, Gaffer, to just suddenly working with all the best directors, you know. Venture effect.

Somebody should write a book about incredible DEPs that David Pincher, like, turn the lights on overnight. Yeah. And somehow that got tied into a conversation about, you know, sometimes you don't get put in a position where you, you know, you want to make the $20 million movie, but you have to make the $50 million movie, $100 million, you know, because, you know, you're, you know,

you're not broke, but you need to do that and it kind of tied into what I was thinking about your guys' film because you worked on a bunch of enormous who raised a couple. Did that give you the opportunity to shoot origin? Because it's like

it's a small film. It's almost a documentary. It's like an indie documentary. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, there's some some very size. undertakings in the film.

Yeah. And I think the, the sense of it being a document to some degree has to do with sort of Ava's amazing capacity for staging scenes that don't feel, they don't feel constructed. You know, like she tees up, you know, you look at that book burning sequence in the movie and she tease up, you know, literally like in one setup, like one, you know, four cameras, around the thing five cameras around the thing like marchers come in truck pulls in in the back of the truck books coming out all the way to the fire like that's one continuous 11 minute experience and then the way she's editing and like making her shot selections gives you this sense

of it just kind of unfolding in a in a very non-constructed way like it's not a traditional sort of direct okay now I'm doing close up here and punctuating its movements that unfold in and are constructed in a way to feel like a lived experience. Like, and those of us that, you know, have worked with her for a long time and have seen her do it again and again. Like, you know, you, that's why she has the DP operate too

because it's, it's, um, you honestly, those events to me feel more like events as opposed to like scenes that I remember lighting and making all kinds of filmmaker choices. Like I remember living them, like marching it kept, you know, here, there. hearing her voice like live while we're shooting and making the adjustments and and and you know behaving in a way that you know it felt like you were there and i think that that's a remarkable

thing especially on a budget you know i mean that's it's one thing when you're given infinite time and money and you can really like take your time and move through it but she's got to get this stuff done fast too is the other crazy part so you got a thousand background out there you got all kinds of stuff and you have one night you know what i mean to pull it off so i think that the effect of it being that gives you a sense of it being perhaps simpler or just or just sort of um more rolling off the uh you know falling off the truck but it's really an incredibly constructed thing very similar to like what i experienced when i watched dardan brothers films the french filmmakers who do, you know, these incredible long takes,

handheld long takes through Paris, their following actors, and it looks like it's just happening. Come to find out, these dudes are rehearsing the stuff for days. You know what I mean? Like, they've got the operator who they're really, I mean,

it's super specific, but it feels very lived in and it feels very fluid because of the nature of the choices in the filmmaking. And so, and to answer the question, like, do I do I do? you know that to do the big stuff to do the small stuff i mean ultimately like for me it all goes

back to you know the the skate shop really and like i just feel like my i have just always had a desire to help my friends make things you know yeah yeah yeah like my friend's going to make a two hundred million dollar superhero movie then that's what i'll do and if my friend is trying to make you know origin then that's what i'm going to do and and i think the thing with eva is that she's so singular in this moment as a filmmaker who has such tremendous artistry, you know, master artistry, but is also speaking to the time that we are in and the moment we are in. Like that, that coming together happens very rarely. You know, it's like you have filmmakers who are masters who talk about things from the past. You have filmmakers who are,

you know, less sort of technically achieved or less visualists who are dealing with really cutting edge, you know, philosophical ideas or narrative ideas, films aren't quite crafted in a certain way and to have like a master craft person and a, you know, bringing the story of the moment together in the moment and then being out there as a voice for it is like, I've certainly never experienced that. And so, you know, I mean, she and I are, you know, very much right or die at this, you know, it's, it's, there was no question that we would all be there and be available for this and there, there was never a conversation of, oh, you know, are we going to fit it in? It was just like, tell us when and we'll keep, I'll do Pepsi Cola commercials till I'm blue

in the face, you know, and to make sure that we're here for this, you know, that's, that's what you do when you have friends who are, who are wholly committed to their vision, you, you, you show thought for it, you know, and there's just not really a discussion about it going any other way. Well, and I imagine that in the same way, like, now, I had all these, this is the problem with trying to pre-plan for a lot of these interviews is I found I can get about this many notes in. Yeah, and I get to about half of them because someone says something and I'm like, oh, and it was all the skateboard stuff now. I'm having to like, read program. And now you were going to get some 40-year-old, you know, 90 skate kid in here like 30.

three-year-old bringing out these bike and snowboarders so it's uh it's the friendship well it's just all like it's all interconnected quote from the film there you go see but way less important uh but i imagine that um shooting you know if variety is to be believed uh about a million bucks a day can both be they said 38 mil for 37 days i guess that's probably accurate summer take out there um i imagine that's somewhat freeing in its you know uh adam savage uh quote that i always use is like when when your decisions are limited when it hack when something external force hacks uh decisions off your decision tree you know it makes choices a lot easier um so i imagine that you know limited budget

limited time can be freeing but also at the obviously at the same time um kind of scary i was wondering how you approach that, you know, obviously, like we said, working on bigger films, working on smaller films, working on skate films. What are kind of some of the lessons from all those different worlds that you were able to apply to this film? You know, it's fine. Actually, I've never said this on tape, but I had written something to myself, which was taped to the wall on a bedside table of the hotels that we stayed at that. It was like on a little, hotel notepad

and it just said it was me sort of telling myself in the moment of like going through this process I just wrote it was all just training

meaning I understood immediately that this was a singular filmmaking experience that something was happening that was different that all of the

circumstances that led to the moment of making it were guided and touched by forces that I don't I don't pretend to understand but the fact that it was at a studio left a studio she got the money we did it her like all of the that I'm sure you know she she she is much more of a architect of the grand design I'm sure that there's many things I don't know anything about but the fact that we ended up where we ended up in the moment we ended up doing it

that way felt very much like cosmic intervention to me you know that that and every decision that I had made up to the point of starting this film had just been training to deal with this film you know like racing through the streets shooting skaters for you know basically a decade uh going off to do massive visual effects films and learning that whole language and the mechanics of all of that so that when there wasn't you know when we had an amazing visual effects supervisor rich drunk bride who couldn't afford, you know, we couldn't afford to have them there every day and we couldn't afford to have supervisors every day. I was able to communicate with him and to do the work that he needed

to make sure that his shots were going to be executed to Ava's standard and that he's going to have all the elements he needed because we couldn't go back and there wasn't going to be reshoots and there wasn't going to be all these things. So, you know, I really lived by, it was all just training and you just sort of tell yourself that every single day like you ended up here because you need to be here and everyone that's here is here because it's their contribution to the greater whole, you know, and very much not a individualist effort, you know, that it was all. We all just brought our own histories and skill sets to it, and then it became their film. Like I honestly, like, and I say this over and over again, but I've never done a movie that was so singularly one person's

film, you know, like that she, but that's got to feel good, right? You know, it's amazing. It's like literally what you read about in books, you know, like all the books that train me, you know, when I was like, I swear my shelf over here has books. It's not just me, but, but, you know, you're seriously, you're trying to, you know, back on day like you know film education wasn't as accessible or prolific as it is now certainly the internet was a non non-entity for for the majority of the time that I was formally training myself you know went to books we didn't go to you know we didn't go to the internet really until you know relatively recently so you absorb all of this training in order to be able to serve a purpose

And ultimately, like, it, watching her make this movie was what I remember thinking when I read about all of these incredible filmmakers of that, the true, like, O'Tooer filmmakers of an era gone by before studios and producers and, you know, everybody kind of got in the mix and the decision-making pool, like, this kind of, there's very few left who are really, like, monolithic in their approach to how. the work ends up and like every choice in this thing yeah there were there were limitations financially but ultimately like the energy of what you see on the screen is palpable only because it's coming from like a singular artist vision then everybody was on board with well and the thing the thing I was kind of getting to with the budget is kind of what you just said which is when you have a lower budget you are I feel like I granted I haven't worked at that level but when you make films with your friends, for instance, or whatever,

you're given ultimate freedom. And I feel like when you work outside the studio system, when you have a smaller budget, especially when you have a director who's passionate and knows what they're doing, it's you're willing to, let's say, not that you did, you're willing to work for free or take a longer day or whatever, because it's more exciting than just, you know, getting blood from a stone because you have to, you know?

Yeah, I mean, of course, you know, And ultimately, like, you know, again, like, I don't know that I ever, you know, you don't really, when you're doing things like this, you don't necessarily, you know, you just set yourself up. I mean, for those out there sort of figuring out how all this works, like you just set yourself up to be able to pay your bills, you know, in the grand scheme of things, you know, there's a number that is just what you need to function. And once that is attained, like, you stop talking about you know you're not that's not what's happening it's not transactional there's no sort of oh well we're going to overtone you know it's like there are rules to protect you know labor lives in some case so yeah all the other stuff and and and and a lot of people coming in and out of the fold and this isn't just this movie it's any film studio or otherwise you know but i've never really been once i'm in i'm in you know like you don't really you're not concerning yourself overly with that you just want to make sure everybody's taking care of

and that they're feeling you know compensated for the work etc so forth but it really has become the whole ecosystem of that has really become a very confrontational labor versus management all the stuff we've been seeing you know it's it's it um it's a hard time for i think our industry understanding the value of the work understanding deal making and just when you're working for a writer, director, producer, and it's also her company and her long time producing partner who's, you know, like there every step of the way. Like, you don't have those issues because you're working with its family. You know, your work, everyone is cared for because you can go directly to, it's not 10 layers of, of people to go through in order to figure out what's really going on. You're right there. Everybody there is making the film. It's not, you're not just a second assistant. pushing a car, you know, we didn't even use that terminology anymore because to me literally about to ask about that. I had read that. Like, okay, so you're the second assistant. So what does that mean? You do half the work for the first and you get paid half the work of the first. Like,

a second assistant has an entirely different set of job, a set of work responsibilities and their contribution is entirely different from a first assistant who incidentally is a focus puller. They're not a first place. They have a very, they have a designated tool in their hand for the intent. entirety of the film that communicates elements of storytelling. They're not putting the camera on the tripod. You know, they're reading the screen, you know, like our focus pull. You know, Dave Edsel is a dear friend of mine, incredible focus puller. I call him the assistant cinematographer of this movie.

I think that's a better use of the phrase AC. You know, he's got the script out every day. He's like trying to figure out where people are going to be and how, you know, when he's going to what line and how it's all working in addition to being a master craftsman and a technician who can like manage all this stuff at once um you know that's not a you know that's that's a that is a very complex job title that you know should just be reflected in terminology that actually explains what the role is you know they're they're they're lensing the mood they're putting the iris setting the focus and working the final mechanism that captures the image of

the film is entirely in their purge you know and then and a second second assistant is really a camp technician. They're not, you know, they're out here doing it. And they've got all kinds of logistical things to sort out. They've got all kinds, especially on film, yeah, clerical work to sort out in terms with the script supervising, the slate number, and communicate camera reports that go to editorial. I mean, that's a tremendously robust position. And we sort of say, oh, well, it's the second assistant.

Like, we should, you know, and why are they asking for this and that and the other thing? And it's like, no, they're not, why are you designating a value on, or a position in the hierarchy for this person whose job designation is entirely different from somebody else in the department. Like, we are a whole unit, you know? I'm, you know, we're just trying to move towards a conversation where the roles are reflected

in the titles and also like that the titles don't designate value, intrinsic value to the contribution in the filmmaking. Because when you have people who are, who are, you know, celebrated in their role contributing to the image, you see it in the image. And every time, you know, I watched this movie. We had screenings last week. I saw it three times with three different groups of people, you know, over 100 people every time. And just like, the intrinsic properties of that imagery is stronger because everybody behind the camera

believed them all was happening and was making it move forward, you know? Well, and important, not the case in a lot of circumstances. Yeah, and I was going to say importantly, it sounds like you guys also made it so that those people felt not only felt valued, but felt like probably their voices were heard when they needed to be. 100%. I mean, that's the only, you know, that's the only way, that's the only way to proceed and be able to pull something like this off. Like, I don't know how you ask anybody to do 37 days on three continents in, you know, four. four cities and and get it all where you're not you know there's no reshoots there's no you know there were no lost cans of film or flash film or damaged film you know i mean this is like it's

remark on on on you know 400 feet of 16 millimeter which is i don't know it's no eight minutes like that maybe it's a lot of it yeah i mean it's it's over a million feet of 35 if you do the conversion, you know, it's, uh, it's a lot of material and to not have constant issues just means that everybody was operating on 10, you know, and, and contributing to the, to the highest level possible. And that's remarkable to me. Yeah. What were some of the, um, uh, sort of title change? So I don't, I don't know if I said, if we said it out loud, but like you guys basically renamed all the positions. Yeah. Um, for the film. What were some of the, those changes? I assume director didn't become buddy. I know. Well, there's only, yeah, there's a question that there is only

one Ava, but also, you know, nobody could fill those shoes, you know, so that that sort of remained singular inside. But so the basic premise is this. I mean, the way she were also, you need to understand. I mean, this is like five years of working together constantly in finding and getting the people together that were going to form the team that made the show. She just did like two years of interviews with the author right yeah i mean she's so like that alone yeah august 20 20 she sent me the book for the note that said this is next and i probably read the first script like early 22 so it was a a lengthy process going through and and that was kept away from you know we didn't i didn't track much of what was happening there i just knew that she was out and they were talking and we made other things

you know we made a dm z you know kind of miniseries we made uh colin and black and black and right, the story of young Mr. Cabernick as he, you know, went on to be this seminal figure in his equal justice initiatives. And all of that was just sort of again, like this training process is distilling down where we were coming from in our personal histories and how I could best organize things to suit her filmmaking dynamic, you know. And one thing that was very clear to me early on is it's two cameras on everything, you know, because I think the spontaneity of the way that she's working and then also the desire for continuous action just means that she can move people around and, and something can fall apart on one camera, she can keep going

with the other. And then it's like the space between roll and cut is really her magic zone, you know, and the things that lead up to it are important, you know, obviously set dressing, all this stuff happens but it's like roll to cut where it's really you know that's the juice and you know on some filmmakers it's all in the lead up to it and then you just roll cut next thing you know she's not like that it's it's it's we're working live in these spaces actors are free everything's free and she's like conducting the cameras in a way to to and and editing in her mind on the fly to assemble these incredible sequences. So, you know, I knew very early on, you know, we're also going to shoot film.

That was something else that she brought up and hadn't done before. So I knew immediately like the other camera had to be a cinematographer, right, right? Had to be someone with some knowledge of film, had to be somebody who is relatively selfless in the sense that, you know, they're coming on board to do something. And her and I've been working on it for, you know, years. for lack of a better, you know, just sort of figuring the thing out. So, you know, that list became very short about who could sort of do that kind of thing. And I was so blessed that Michael Combeo Fernandez come in and be what I, what, you know,

the only language I can use for it is sort of like a tandem unit, right? Like you're in the same building and it's not like there's, you know, you're not in the parking lot shooting, you know, inserts of the spedometer. Right. In the scene, you're invested in the scene, but you are making the images. like because I'm standing there also making images so it's not this weird kind of system that we have where you sort of appoint a director of photography who then like designates the intrinsic value of images prioritizing one over another and all this operator should do this shot and then this

operator should do this shot because you know and oh just throw it on a long lens and see if you can get pieces there was none of that this was like two fully functional units right? Dave Ed Sloan Cambio on one and myself and my, you know, longtime Atlanta focus puller on the other. And we just, you know, worked it out so that there was autonomy. It wasn't like, I need to see what you shot, you know, film. It's like it's gone. You know, you can watch it on the, on the playback, but it's 480P black and white, you know, video tap. It's not going to tell you anything about what you did. So once these spaces were lit it and we were happy with the environment and the exposure was going to be sufficient to do whatever we were going to do and felt like we had the mood right. It was just game on, you know, it was just, it was street photography, you know, it was, it was going through, you know, like you were just shooting it with a like of finding frames, grabbing things, and then Ava's guiding us the whole time through that whole process. So we, we, I dispensed with the idea that this was like a B camera, that's complete nonsense, right?

I mean, clearly that this person is contributing mightily to the effort. Right. So we just said, okay, it's Matt and it's, it's my goal. So we'll just call it East. Well, you know, I'm from the East Coast. So I, you know, it came to L.A. from Toronto. So I, I rep the East camera and then, you know, combio's from out here. So we called that West camera. And it was this East and West. And then dispensed with this idea of first, second assistant, because that's also nonsense. So then you had your focus pullers on each camera. Right. And And then you, the camera assistant, who is in fact designated as a second assistant, but is really the one doing all of the assisting to the camera,

we're called camera assistants, roughly so, because that's the correct designation for that, that contribution. So that did away with a lot. That did away with, oh, can we get rid of B camera? You know, like you hear these things every day on film. And we never really question them. Like, oh, can we get rid of B camera? It's like, well, I mean, obviously not.

Or, you know, can be camera come out here and do the watch? You know, it's not, it's placing an intrinsic value on what that contribution is and what they should be doing at any given time. And I think when you really work with a master director who knows how to shoot with two cameras and you watch two people who know how to work on film and know how to capture imagery, in an organic sort of natural way, you can end up with imagery like that

because it's all flowing together. It's all the pieces were aligned in a way to produce this ultimate outcome. And there's certain sort of selflessness required in all of that, right? Because you can't, you know, I can't stand next to this work and not acknowledge the immense

contribution of all of these people. You know, you think about Mazi Min. Mitchell, the gaffer, I mean, this, I had the camera on my shoulder every single day, all day, the entire time. So we get down into, even into metering lighting, understanding the contrast ratios, understanding the quality of stuff. And there's no time, you know, it's like, you know, we're, we're going to have to do a night for day thing because we're shooting in the winter. So he's got a light whole spaces for daytime. You know, we don't have time to see that. And that's a master, um, lighting designer, you know, truthfully. So why is he sort of called the gaffer and, and sort of. treated like he's meant to balance, you know, the cable and that the DP does all the light. I mean, that's nonsense. Anybody who's ever made a film will tell you, like, it's only getting better. If you have a great lighting designer helping you kind of construct the sense of the look of the film, like, it's only getting better, right?

And if we're hanging on to our own innate desire to take credit for everything, you're working against yourself because you're not involving the artisans that have come. come to join you in, in, in equal ways. So just looking at all of that, really, and trying to figure out how certainly Ava and I together, but also just me personally going on to, to other things, how we can try to propagate some of that, you know, mentality. Yeah, I did, I started to, I was just telling Eric this, I started taking notes about things I wanted to talk about instead of just forgetting and then going, oh, if you've ever heard this podcast, you will know what I'm talking about. I did want to kind of touch on the, a few factors of

shooting 16. First of all, why that when, you know, on a limited budget, that could certainly potentially hurt you, you know. And also, also there's a very good video tap that I saw at Sinegear this year, last year. It's full color HD. I can't remember who made it, but it exists. Anyway, uh, so Y-16 and also, um, if you could speak to the importance of, uh, communal dailies. Oh, wow. Yeah. Um, so Y-16 is because Ava called me one day and said, I've been watching a ton of movies in 16 and I love it as a format. Um, we should do that. And I, he sort of immediately said, I sort of thought, oh, okay, for maybe for one part of the movie, you know, because we have multiple storylines

kind of woven into the tapestry. Sure. And you're like, for the old stuff? No. And yeah, exactly. I said, for what part? And she said, for the whole thing? I said, oh, right.

Because honestly, it's about continuity of vision. These are lived experiences of people that have been dealing with this throughout history, you know, and the circumstances of the oppression and the terror that's being discussed here is the same. that's basic core of the innate human desire to rank our containers in terms of intrinsic value in order to, you know, support the few and, and oppress the many, you know, and so the idea that these things were going to look different was preposterous, you know, now the unintentional effect of that is that when you look at the film, the American South versus Berlin in February

versus, you know, Delhi, India and essentially the summertime all have in a visual properties that are undeniable. And so it appears as though there are differences in the look, but those are just, we're just allowing those spaces to speak to the film and capturing them in the most sort of holistic natural sense possible. And you end up with a tapestry that has certain looks in certain places, only because, like, nothing is happening different with the film stock. Nothing is happening different with filtration, color, any of that. That's just the natural state of those environments.

Right. Kind of an interesting unintentional, or not necessarily unintentional, but just an interesting phenomena in how we go about filming things. Because the alternative would be to try really hard to get desaturated blue Berlin, you know, but you're dealing with the tobacco filter in Mexico. Right. Right, exactly, that you're dealing with places that already have visual identities. And so why exacerbate the difference with a bunch of technique?

That, to me, just feels like, oh, that's an attempt to sort of be a filmmaker, you know, or be or to stamp it somehow, which is not to the ethos of the film or the story or anything that we were particularly interested in. Um, so, so 16 became the choice for all of it. And, um, and luckily for me, it was also the film format that was most conducive to Ava's process. So we had, you know, 11 minutes on the mag. We had 416s, which are compact coax magazines and don't require the door to be open to thread a loop and all those sorts of things. Sure. Yeah. Were immensely helpful. I mean, even if we had had, you know, if we had done two per 35, but had to threat, I mean, literally just. I mean, literally just.

just the time to thread the loop into the movement would have been not possible because you have the ingenue Ellis delivering this powerhouse performance. It's like, I mean, they got to the point where they were just pulling off the exposed bag and putting on a new one and rolling again. Like no one was even saying, you know, reloading or anything. It was, okay, roll out and we shut all of the bells off the thing and just, okay, no more film, pull out, new one in, rolling, hand that to, to, uh, the assistant who would then, you know, get all the, appropriate data on there and off to the lab.

So on a train I saw. Yeah, extremely really fly with you fucking stuff. Yeah, extremely fortunate for us that, you know, again, it's just this sense that there was a hand on the thing from the beginning because what Ava was after

photographically also was, to me, the only film format that was going to function. And honestly, you start to look at it and you're like, part of what we love about film are these characteristics, you know, these stocks have gotten so good.

I mean, the vision, you know, honestly, and I, dear friends of Kodak, I've been, you know, dealing with for decades at this point. And, you know, when you shoot 35 now, honestly, the grain structure is so tight. We don't. And the technology that exists in the silver emulsion is so good that you almost wonder, like, is it worth it? I mean, not to say it. I love 35 as much as anybody, but like, if you're not starting digital, if you're not projecting it on film, and certainly if it's not going to large venues, are you really at this point, like with the grain overlays that we have and all a lot of the scanned film grain, the live grain, all of these things like, and and these pretty

phenomenal digital technologies available, like, I don't know if you really feel it. I know for a fact when that 16 gets projected every night in our screening room for dailies, you know that shit is fell. Like there's just a question and grain structure, all of it is all there. And so, you know, once we, you know, I did a little, a quick 35 test just to satisfy my own sense that it was not something to to really dive into because some of the night stuff is said, oh, maybe the 16 is going to get granny or what if we have to push it? Honestly, it's looked.

I mean, she even responded more to the push process stuff because it even had a little bit more. You know, the 50D, the 50 speed daylight film in 16 millimeter is like what I remember 35 being. Right. You know what I mean? Like it's so good that you almost like, it almost defeats the purpose to some degree. So except, you know, when you have to look through a welding glass shooting too. hundred speed film outside during the day because, you know, you're trying to shoot a five, six, and you're at a sixty four and a half.

With key film speed you have, so, um, you know, there were some complexities with that choice, but, you know, certainly on a basic level, like her response to the more film mixed up led to the way the film looks. And, and we're very like, we're very just open with the whole process. Like Dave would go and he would shoot these lens tests, he would shoot these stock tests, And we would just go to the theater with Ava and we'd just play it. And, you know, you have this sense of a real visualist. Like, no, you know, for anyone to say anything other than this is a singular voice is, you know, wild to me. Because, you know, literally picking film stocks, picking processing, picking lens.

I like this, love versus that, looking at sets, I mean, her capacity to respond to things and to know what she likes and doesn't like is like nothing I've ever seen in my whole life. I mean, at the amount of time that was spent, you know, it's like, and this is a busy lady, you got to schedule it, get her in, show her exactly what it is, and it's like, you immediately get a response and you know where you're headed, okay, we'll go shoot another one. Then you pull out a few more lenses, okay, this and that, and we're looking for a specialty thing for this moment, okay, what Zooms can work, you know, you sort of assemble this whole kit based on a direct response from the author of the work. It's like, it's amazing.

It's like the dream scenario, you know, where you don't have to guess. It's like it's very clear what it is that we're after. And then, and then, you know, to be able to go every night, work out a system where in 20, 23, we could get the film back. Fast enough that you're watching yesterday's stuff every night in a screening room that's built into the hotel and getting a director's, well, that's cool story that's made in the film. So I traveled with a DaVinci Resolve setup. You know, my good friend, Michael Kim, is a great DIT in Atlanta, set us up with a travel kit, a DaVinci Resolve travel kit. We could get the scans back from Kodak.

Tom Poole, a company three, built a print emulation lot. We could put that on there. We could project it, you know, you have to wait. If there was something we really wanted to see, you could honestly get it back by noon the next day. If they pushed it and we were able to, you know, We had the internet lined up in a way that we could download it. Otherwise, we would wait for the, if it was non-critical,

we would wait for the fully finished dailies to come from Company 3 in Atlanta, which was probably the next evening. So it was like a 48-hour thing. But if you really needed to push it, you could get it back in 24 or 30 hours. And then you just sit there and you watch it and you respond and you're watching this incredible performance from the best actor. I mean, I've never seen anything like that with me. What?

And you've got fucking everyone in this movie, too, let alone. That's a lot of people. But all as you knew, like, as a singular, as a singular performance on film, I don't know that I've ever been in the room with that kind of energy. Like, it was so every time she walked in, it was just like, there was no talking. There was no blocking. You know, I mean, they worked out quietly what they needed to work out in terms of blocking in the scene and what the shot was.

but she was totally free to live in the character and do the performance you know it's to me it's like if we're capable of doing that and this is what the result is um it's pretty special yeah the uh i'm gonna try to tack through all the things i thought what uh to your point about 35 looking uh kind of maybe too modern or whatever uh i was talking to eagle burled about holdovers and it was saying how um they tried 35 at first And because 35, the Vision 3 stock is intended to be scanned, it ends up looking digital. So he was like, we were about to film 35 and then put like a 16 grain on it and all this bullshit. And he's like, ah, fuck it.

Let's just shoot digital. It'll be, it'll be easier to make it look the way we want. Oh, and if we try that, do it real talk. For sure. Because when your film first, when I was watching it, the opening scene, I was like, damn, that's some good emulation. And then it took about like five minutes. And I went, oh, no, that's, that's just real film. That's, there was like too much, like, like the halation and stuff.

I was obviously all of it. It's very hard to, I mean, you know, you could spend. And that's the other thing. Like people sort of talk about, oh, the expensive film, blah, blah, blah. Like, you end up spending the money. Like either with the, you know, data management, which is enormously expensive, the DIT and all the cabling and all the monitors and the extra gear required for all of that, cameras which constantly need updating, you know, various software and hardware management

to get through and do what you're trying to do. You might have multiple bodies for high speed and different things. You know, it's like it's a lot just to physically get it to the lab. Then you got to deal with the lab part of it, all the transcoding, everything that's got to go into it. You're dealing with wild resolutions that will never be displayed, you know, it's 16K, 8K, know, it's like, what are we, I don't know what you're going to do with all those Ks, but I mean, maybe they'll be useful one day. And then, and then you get into the D.I. And you end up spending

an exorbitant amount of time and money trying to match the thing that you could have just shot in the first place. So to me, it's like when we sort of, I wish there were a way to present a spreadsheet that just kind of laid out all the costs that go in to making a, you know, if you're really after a film look, and some films are not, in which case they should be done digitally, and that's fine, but if you're really trying to do something that has that feel, you're likely going

to spend the month. Yeah. You know, like, why not do it at the point of capture as opposed to way down the road with, you know, grain layering and makes it, you know, the license for live grade now, I mean, live grain, all the things are, it's a huge undertaking, you know, and maybe you can be more selective with it,

but ultimately, like, out of the gate, if that's just what it is. I mean, the D.I. for this was very, very simple. You know, we had a master. Like, Tom Poole is absolutely, like, to me, is like a master still photo printer. You know what I mean? This dude has made some of the most iconic images, but you watch him work, and it's just so simple. You know, there's not a million things and keys and all this stuff.

Like, he's just, he prints the film in such a delicate way that it lands. You know, right out of the gate, like in a couple of days, you've got to pass, and then it's just the tweaks and the small stuff and getting everything that Ava wants taking care of and taking care of. But that part of the process, because it's captured on film, is, you know, is simpler. Well, and so it reminds me of something that I got to interview Hoytah about Oppenheimer, and I was asking him, you know, about, like, why shoot IMAX for a drama? And his position was slightly different than yours, but the gist of,

the thing that I that I think matches both films is like it's it's so why why put all this artifice between you and the audience the story and the audience with you know like you were saying like all this various stuff when you could literally just take film in his case take film contact print project it yeah like then then that that puts the audience as close to the story as as physically possible versus all these you know various layers and stuff like that. Yeah. Distribution thing, sadly, you know, is such that we don't often show a true film print, but I think that there is a way to stay true to the point of capture is, I think, your point. You know, let the environment speak to the film and then show the film in the most uninterrupted way possible. And, you know, when you're doing a movie that has, you know, I mean, I don't know what the VFX shot count is in this, but it's not enormous. Like you're looking at really photographic material.

I did want to ask about that because I'm a big proponent of, uh, I like Todd Viziri. I like his, you know, stuff. He's, he's a good artist and also a good,

um, advocate for VFX. And I wanted to ask, because every film has VFX somewhere in it. Yeah. And, uh, so I was wondering for this film,

what was it? Cause it, uh, obviously the book burning scene probably. But was it, that's like, Real fire that those... Oh, I meant for the crowd.

I didn't even mean the fire. No, the crowd's pretty cool. I mean, we definitely did some tiling for the big shots. I think we had probably three groups that we spread out, you know, with three separate passes. And not, not, not, you know, normally what you go through where you're having to really build a whole... There were just, you know, thousands of people out there by the time we were shooting. So... And those, I think, weirdly were the easier.

shots for I mean I wouldn't speak for rich but I think just conceptually like um you know some of the ideations on creating the leaves sequence like when she's going through the period of loss in her life because we had you know obviously like to get that feeling that Ava was after required you know we shot a lot of practical elements and then he was able to just create the shadows and the leaves landing exactly where we want it. I would never have thought that was a VFX shot. Right. Well, it wasn't.

I mean, because it was done, it was, or it did not, I would never have guessed that someone had, yeah, a post hand in it. Exactly, because it's, it's photographed. It's, it's, it's live. And then the culmination of that is, you know, a shot that looks very natural, as opposed to, we'll shoot it on, we'll shoot her on, blue and then we'll build the ground and the thing and the leaves and whatever you know she's laying on a on a on a on a on a on a on a on a on a on a on a black sweep it's shot at 72 or or whatever the frame rate was high speed you know there's physically leaves falling the timing might not be right but we're we're you know shooting elements of all these things and the majority of the image is preserved and then he's able to like really get the finesse we're directed a bit art directed. Yeah, exactly.

So how much, I'm going there, and we're starting to hit time, so I'm trying to get through here. How much improv was in the film? Obviously, there's that kind of towards the end, there's that conversation with the dude by the pool who I read was a guy just telling his story. But was there any other improv?

Because, again, the film feels, like I said earlier, like almost documentary. Like, I know it's got such this, it's got such a live texture to it. And I was wondering, even some of the conversations feel very much like we're having, where people are nodding and interrupting each other and stuff, which is not necessarily something that you see in a scripted film, you know. Yeah, it's interesting. Like, you know, as a writer-director, I think Ava is very particular about take one should be the script.

Take one should be, just say the words that I wrote one time just so. you know, that is the point of departure. And then from there, it's a conversation. It's a very private conversation. It's not one that I'm often privy to with regard to how she's working with the artists and the performances and what parts of it are unplanned or if any of it's unplanned. Like, I don't really know because that, she's very personal about that part of her craft. And it doesn't happen in public.

It's very, um, it's very, um, it's very purposeful. And so, oh, the experience of filming it has that effect where I don't, I don't often, I, you know, the script kind of, uh, dissolves in my own mind and you start to just feel the energy of the moment and, and, and, and, and then you look back, you know, I recently look back at the script, just to sort of prepare for some of these discussions. And you go, like, it's remarkably close like it's really not even if it went full circle you know what i mean like even if it went off the the grid there for a second it always comes back to like very close to what the written intention was when eva when eva you know had that first draft finished um and so

certainly elements of it are different but the intent is the same the moment is the same and And it's hard to really gauge, like, exactly what you would call sort of improv. I mean, I can remember when Ajaune was delivering an absolutely stunning performance in one of the gala scenes where she's sort of trying to articulate the germ of what she has in store in terms of this kind of far out concept for the book. And her publishers sort of not, they're on the fence. No one really understands what she's saying. She's emotional. I can remember that moment. and not really like you're just so enthralled in what's happening, you know, the moment of it.

And in fact, like, Cambio's doing her angle and I'm doing the other one. So I'm only hearing it, you know, I'm not really sure the intensity of that image necessarily in the moment. And so it's just interesting, like it feels further maybe from the script in the moment, like there's something happening. And then you go back and you look and you're like, no, the intention is. That is like, again, a very singular film. It's one voice. It's, it's, yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah.

I got maybe like two more questions that I'll let you go. I did want to, as this is a cinematography podcast, I wanted to talk about the lighting. Because it's such a naturally lit film. And I was wondering, were you, was it kind of the classic, which obviously is a lot easier on digital? Was it the classic, you know, deal with the window light and maybe put, some diffusion on it or a little punch or because it was filmed, did you have to actually light a lot more aggressively than we might perceive? It really is an exorbitant amount of light. I mean, you know, honestly, and I think it speaks to Mazi's kind of mastery and sensibility

that a lot of people just feel like it's natural lighting. I mean, look, the reality of working with Ava on film, which she hadn't done in settings that were very challenging where it was one chance, the responsibility to ensure that the negative was perfectly captured. And not even necessarily think. It can be thin where it's thin,

but you have to know what you're doing. I mean, you can't, you're not risking this lady's a seminal moment in this artist's trajectory is not one to be taken lightly. So, you know, I'm not going to be running around at a 1-4, hoping for the best. You know, we're shooting. I mean, the majority of the movie is a 4-5-6 split inside, outside. Night scenes are 2-8, maybe.

I mean, there were a few moments where, but I would almost rather push-process the film and stay at a 2-8 than to get into a 1-4-2 split, you know, and get soft, you know, and have it be soft because there was just no, there was no, no opportunity for it to go back. And the fact that 37 days on film in 2023 can be done with no major loss, no major unusable material to any degree. You know, I mean, I remember the days of, you know, we bumped the camera and the flange went out and you shoot, you know, 17,000 feet of film, all of which is gate soft entirely

unusable. And they're like, well, guess we got to go back. That was not this situation at all. So, Mazia and I said very early on, I said, look, I'm not doing the LED. thing. I can't recalibrate my brain to understand what these very narrow color spaces are going to reproduce, how that's going to work on film. I don't know why 43.7 Kelvin at 1% dimming. I don't know what that means on film. I don't have time to relearn all this stuff. It's not that I don't use LEDs, but we use LEDs by eye. Cut it me a little bit more, you know, just turn it up a little

give me a little more, you get the color wheel going, you're trying to find something like you're, and you're seeing the result on, on, on, you know, in, in,

in, in, in, in, in, in, I'm not, I'm not trying to play that way in film,

but, you know, maybe there's folks that can do that, but I certainly just went straight back to my, the early days to the training, 56 to 32, you know, we know what fluorescence do,

you know, cool, white, warm, we went back to the bulbs, you know, incandcent. and voltages, you know, we know what that looks like, you know, 50% is going to be this warm versus that warm. Like those are cemented in all of our minds in terms of how to execute that kind of work.

So everything was tungstenor, HMI, fluorescence, where they were unchangeable, you know, but they weren't changed out to LED things that we were trying to control. They were, you know, gel proper, like sleeves for screen if that was appropriate or we let the green play and timed it out. Um, and, you know, he's, he's working an extraordinarily, uh, uh, uh, a extraordinarily robust lighting arsenal to keep it looking natural. You know, to you got to have these sources, you know, we're looking at windows. You got to have these sources on the other side of the street. So you might have eight or nine, 18s, you know, pushing through or into some kind of bounce thing. We did a lot of, um, you know, sort of stealing from the European school,

a lot of visors we call them or sky balances where you sort of have articulated bounces above windows that then in the you know you trench out below and you can balance oh like a skip balance up the ceiling yeah skip bounce up the ceiling but outside the window so it falls out naturally and then you can do sun effects from there I think Ava's sense is one that like sort of the the natural passive skylight is very much her aesthetic

you know, a lot of that sort of northern passive skylight feeling stuff. So it was just about, you know, how do we make this stuff? And she's so quick to point out when stuff looks lit or fake or anything, you know what I mean? Like just like that wouldn't. So it was about, you know, I think early on she was kind of saying, you know, every time we would be in a room on a scout or in the office or whatever. And you would just see a lighting effect that was not normal or not even normal, but just not one that you would reproduce out of instinct in a movie. environment like coming slashing off the thing and you get a glow and then it's sort of hitting someone's face it was those effects that were best serving the visuals that and I have this sort

of thing that I say all the time to gaffers that I don't know very well or um lighting designers that I don't know very well where I say uh uh my sense is that lighting needs to struggle to get to the set I think it's convenient lighting where you sort of have these, you know, shafts of light coming through and there's haze and smoke and it's just hitting everything perfectly and the wrap is perfect. I've just never made, I mean, certainly you can do it, but like I've never really had a connection with that kind of imagery. It can be very sort of enticing and right for comedic.

It's seductive in a way, you know, like you see it all the time. You're like, wow, that's sort of conventionally photographically beautiful things have a certain time and a place. But this film was all about why, you know, to quote another great DP, like, why the story is happening is because it's happening here. So these spaces, the selection of houses, I mean, we've, I don't know how many houses we went to. And so, but maybe all, every available house in Savannah, Jordan. I mean, it was months of scouting to find. And Ava was so specific about what specifically the Ruby character, the mom's house, um, had to be, you know, like what that needed to be from a visual, from a, from a, from a architectural, a zone, a, a historical zone, from a lighting perspective. what the possibilities were like we it was endless to to find these spaces and then to figure out

how to communicate them with lighting in a way that would serve the film and the style of filmmaking what you want to do you know it's a it's a really it feels very natural when you're doing it with somebody so you know amazing for lack of a better word people say that all the time but like you're you're doing it with this incredible artist so it feels like it's just kind of happening but then you go back and you're like holy smokes like the amount of decisions that went into getting us here in this moment with this lighting possibility in this location or said it's really like a lot of decision making from a lot of people that get at you to that moment you know i'm going to have to steal the uh light should struggle

quote yeah i mean it's crazy you know it's like it it it it it struggles now you know i'm like kind of looking at this room and like the lighting is weird and good you know but it's like it's skipping off the cement outside and kind of giving a shape to the wall but like I'm I'm getting you know a little bit of rays in here you know it's just like it's it's it's not coming in a convenient way right well I've got I've got delivery the delivery mechanism for light is not convenient typically I've got I think 251 on my way yeah you're looking to you got that nice yeah I mean that's that's real to me you know and like and but if there were like a slash a light on the wall and that fall off and everything's smoky you're kind of going

I don't know. So that was the thing that I was going to say was, I can't remember who told me this, but like, they were like, there has to be a fuck it light. And I was like, what does that mean? And he was like, it just like there needs to be a light that doesn't make any sense. Not that it doesn't make sense, but like it, it, it no one would intentionally put it there. Right. Because that has to be. And then it just sells the idea that, oh, yeah, that is coming through the window because there's just some weirdo slash that's like hitting it kind of fucky.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We got some of those other anybody's face just like is lighting air and then hitting the wall. You know, it's like, yeah. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's tricky too. Like the when the, when the technical parameters are also requiring like working at sort of an OG foot candle level, you know, where we'll walk in and they're like, what the hell? I mean, it is even any of the reproving. Right in here.

No, but like, she, we had a few nights where it was like to reproach. to what it takes to shoot on film, you know, it's like, folks, I haven't done that in a while. A lot of people haven't done that in a while. So like when you walk on the street, you're like, whoa. Right. You see the results. And it's, it's, you know, it's very much in the zone. So, you know, you just have to, I bet that's something you don't get on film as a producer hovering over your shoulder going, can we bring that up a little? Oh, dude. Yeah, no. To kill it. Yeah, yeah, what is happening here? That's why keeping it just far away, big and far away. That's like the, you know, the key to a lot of it.

Yeah. Final question. I saw this and I'm only asking because I want him to be my film daddy. And that is what was Guillermo's influence on the film? Because I saw he kind of helped out a little bit. Well, I mean, that's more of an Ava question because, you know, I only know Mr. Del Toro anecdotally. He is a lovely man.

incredible filmmaker and um i know that the sound of eva's voice after he would contribute to the script or to the edit like you can tell that there's a kinship in that relationship and in that artistry that is undeniable and the spark that he was able to ignite in in the filmmaker to stay on the path or to charge it up more to hit it even harder like it was undeniable so the fact that this gentleman is taking time out of what we can only imagine is an extraordinarily busy

I follow on blue sky he's making he's making miniatures yeah making miniatures do it 10 you know I mean I don't even know at this point like he's a very busy man and is harnessing when he sees true

seminal filmmakers that are being challenged by their parameters and and he can contribute in some way to provide mostly just sheer love of cinema and motivation it goes uh it goes the tremendous lengths you know it you almost can't even imagine it like to have folks like this in the filmmaking community who really care about the legacy of cinema and of the work um he he contributed mightily to our overall emotional state, I think,

throughout the course of filmmaking. Yeah. Well, I mean, you look at his films and there's a not so subtle attack on fascism in a lot of them. So I imagine he had a lot to do a lot to do. Well, you guys did a fucking tremendous job on the film. Appreciate it to me. Outstanding.

Looks great. And you guys did a great job. Thank you so much, sir. I appreciate it. Yeah. And it was awesome talking to you. Please come back fucking any. time. Hey man, happy to.

Happy to. Whenever we got something to chat about, I'll be here. Sounds good, brother. Okay, sir. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Frayman Reference is an Al-Bodd production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenne McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can go to freemanrefpod.com

and follow the link to buy me a coffee. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.