Frame & Reference Podcast - 132: "Still: A Michael J Fox Movie" DP C. Kim Miles, ASC CSC MYSC

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

C. Kim Miles is here to talk about his work on one of my favorite docs in recent years "Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie"! There's some crazy good reenactments in it if you haven't seen it, highly recommend seeking it out. Kim also shot episodes of The Brothers Sun, Yellowjackets, Project Blue Book, The Flash, Lost in Space, as well as the film "Welcome to Marwen". 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 132 with C. Kim Miles, ASC, C-S-S-C, M-Y-S-S-C, DP of Still the Michael J-Fox movie. Enjoy. Um, so you've been, are you said you're working on a feature? Uh, yeah, a little lion's gate, uh, feature based on, uh, the book that, uh, people love, I guess, called, uh, the best Christmas pageant ever. Hmm. Sounds like a hallmark movie, but, uh, hopefully it doesn't, uh, turn out that way.

I'm off. That's what, I was going to, normally I ask, uh, what's, you know, what have you been watching? But I assume as you're working, it's pretty hard to just sit down and catch a flick or whatever. Yeah, I'm actually, I'm trying to decide what to go see this afternoon. I might go see night swim of all things, but, uh, really, but, uh, what have I been watching? What was the, I can't remember what, oh, the latest one was probably like the holdovers. And I think last week we went, saw, oh, clearly it was a huge impression on me.

I can't even think what we saw last week, but it was good. Dude, I, I'll, I'll watch like, sometimes I just go on a rip and I'll watch like three movies in a row and then I'll be my girlfriend to be like, what'd you do today? And I'm like, I watched, um, yeah, no idea. Uh, I've been, I've been catching up. I've for a long time not seen succession. So I've been catching up on that, on the couch, um, uh, and enjoying that a lot.

And, uh, yeah, just midway through season three right now. So that's, that's been sort of the focus, like, sure. Yeah, at the time of this episode's release, which will be dating it a little bit, Um, my interview with Eigle Burl, who shot the holdovers just came out. Yeah. Oh, right. Um, I, I, not only is it like one of my favorite movies of last year, just period, but that they achieved, like, whenever people go, I want it to look like film. I, I, now I just have something to point to it's like, do you want it to look like that or do you want it to look like your memory of like blockbuster films or something?

Because there's a difference. That's what film looked like. Yeah. I thought it looked great. I was convinced I went with my camera operator and that's on this show with me. And we came out and we go like, wow, I guess they shot on 16. It looked like they shot on film. Yeah, no, great job.

Yeah, he was, you should go listen to it. But the short of it was basically they tested everything and they were like, fuck, if we shoot like normal film, like 16's too dirty. But if they shoot 35, it's like meant to be scanned anyway. so they'd be adding brain right so they're like fuck it just shoot digital like why are we trying to ever complicate this then you can control it like like down to the pixel right yeah yeah yeah for sure the um i did see in your uh little cv there on your website that you started you your uh major was in fine art photography uh yeah i was i was wondering if you could talk to me about how you got to that point

Also, what effect, because, like, fine art photography is so much more different than, like, documentary or, or even certain, like, we're both in commercial stuff, you know, and it is so subjective. I'm always fascinated to hear when people work in that at that level. My sister's degrees in fine art as well. So, well, I, I, yeah, it was kind of a misstep in a lot of ways, I think. I, the way it all started was I grew up in Malaysia and, um, uh, The company that I started working for in Malaysia belonged to the parents of a very good friend of mine. And his dad was a still photographer, and that's how that's how that company got started. He was a still photographer, and then they discovered that there was more money to be made, I guess. There's a better business model to be in. So he had kind of shelved the still photography side of the business and focused on motion picture. And it was all commercials and stuff like that. It wasn't anything, no narrative stuff.

So when it came time for me to go to college, he had said, Henry, the dad had said, look, you know, maybe there's, maybe there's an opportunity for us to get the still photography side of things going again. And so maybe, you know, if you're going to go, you know, pick something to study, maybe that's what you should do. And I looked at a few schools. The one I really wanted was RMIT, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australian. They have a great commercial photography program there. But I was 16 or 17, I

think, and my girlfriend was going to Vancouver. So I looked around Vancouver and said, well, that one's got sort of a photography thing. Maybe I'll start there and then work my way somewhere else. And never ended up going anywhere else. I went to you, the University of Victoria and ended up staying there. So, you know, midway through the whole thing, I was pretty disillusioned with it. I'm like, this is a degree to be an artist, which is sort of, it's so counterintuitive. That's right.

That it doesn't really make any sense. And our, without mentioning names, I felt like our instructors had a, at a very select group of favorites that got all the, you know, all the critique time and stuff. The whole thing was really a huge deal for me. And I was, I was pulling focus and doing that sort of thing on weekends, but during summers, stuff, I would go back to Malaysia and work.

So, so photography thing was going on. I was always kind of in the film side of things and, you know, never really kind of amounted to anything. Now it's come full circle because, you know, I get, I get to put photos up at the ASC Clubhouse once in a while, right, or members photography. But, you know, I don't, I just don't take a lot of stills anymore. I do, I go on these little spurts, you know, like, like, for example, you know, like, for example, now I'm out of town. So maybe I'll run around a little bit and, uh, and shoot some stills just because it's, it's, you know, something new. But then it kind of comes in fits and sparks. I don't really, you know, I'm not dedicated into running around shooting stills, like,

like some of my contemporaries, like David Mullen, for example, I don't know how David finds enough hours in the day to do everything that he does between the blogs and the, and the, and the cinematography forum and shooting stills and, you know, shooting Mrs. Maisel and, you know, He's a pretty inspiring kind of guy. But, yeah, so the stills is kind of more, I wouldn't even say it's a hobby. It's just something that's kind of fun once in a while. It doesn't really have a huge bearing on my life. Yeah.

Did that education affect your kind of your eye for framing or anything like that? Or was it potentially more like conceptual? It was more conceptual. And the whole thing was such a disillusionment for me that, I didn't feel like I took a lot away from it at all. I'd already been shooting stills as a kid. My mom was into photography, not in a super fine artsy kind of way, but I think that's what sort of got my attention on cameras at first.

And I'm kind of, you know, I'm a nerd like everybody else that does my job. And the technology and the cameras, you know, all that stuff was the sort of physical side of it that was to me, you know. So I'd always kind of dabbled with, and I don't feel like I really took a whole lot away from going to university. And, you know, things like framing aesthetic and that sort of thing are things that have just sort of developed over time. And, you know, I'm constantly learning, and we're all constantly learning about new aesthetics and how to push the boundaries and how to, you know, what the rules are, knowing how to break the rules and that sort of thing.

And I think I've learned it all, you know, just by trial and error and being at work and learning from the people around me. Yeah. Well, yeah, you, I mean, you had a, I was also checking out, you know, you got to do some research. And now, your IMD's long as shit, man. Like, you've got so many projects under your belt. And I was wondering, like, was there a, did you see kind of a through line with that? Because I know in a different interview, you had said you'd done a lot of, like, picture of the weeks or whatever you wanted to call them, you know. And, you know, I always say like even like Hallmark movies, I'd love to do that. It looks like fun. I'm sure it's quick. I'm sure everyone loves each other. Yeah. Stuff like that is rad.

Great place to cut your teeth. 100%. You know, and I people look down on, in fact, I made a joke about Hallmark movies just now with, with Spadger movie. I'm Jake. It's, you know, people tend to be snotty and look down on those movies as though they're somehow. of a different tier of and I suppose they are

in a way that a different there's certainly a different tier a rate but you know what they're but they're great

they're a great proving ground you know I did 35 or 36 of those movie in the week type you know lifetime

lifetheller and Hallmark Christmas movies and stuff like that and and I was always trying to push the envelope

and make them look different make them look like a bigger movie than they than they were and I was lucky enough to have directors that felt the same way that weren't just there, you know, phoning it in. And through that process of working those movies, we discovered that, you know, you don't have the studio looking over your shoulder the whole time. You don't

have a whole bunch of executives that are constantly scrutinizing dailies and, and making notes. So you can get away with a little bit more than you can, you know, on a studio picture. And it was a really great kind of proving ground, a great place to learn and push the envelope and kind of find where the boundaries of, you know, what you can get away with were. So I'm grateful for the time that I did those. You know, they kept food on the table when the time was there and they built my resume like super, super fast. I would do probably, you know, eight or ten of those a year, you know, six, well, maybe

But six and eight of them maybe a year, you know, 15-day movies. Some of them were eight-day movies, which was kind of crazy. But each one I like to think I learned something from and took something away from that I could then apply and aptify and, you know, help with the next one, you know. It was lots of fun, made a lot of good friends and some long enduring relationships out of those movies for sure. Yeah, well, and I always tell like student, because, you know, I saw. suppose part of my job it's education like I always tell students you're not going to get out of here and go make following for your first film or go you know you're going to shoot 600 commercials if

you're lucky and like if they're the the way to get you know you don't graduate film school and then suddenly you're a DP or a director or whatever it may be um true and when I when I finally internalized that as a kid I did I definitely was like my perspective. on, like you said, people look down on certain. I don't look down on anything more, especially I had to realize that some movies aren't made for me. Yeah. I think a lot of consumers of movies and television think that everything is supposed to

be for them, and if they don't get it, it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's very true. And it's hard to, you know, I, you see it every time you try to find something to watch on Netflix, you know, when you go, oh, I don't know about that. I'm not looking at that. That looks terrible.

And then on the occasional moment when you actually land on something that you wouldn't normally watch, I always find I'm like, oh, this is a really good story. Or, you know, or there's always stuff hidden that isn't what you naturally gravitate towards. And that's, that's part of the fun, right? Yeah, I was, like, I mean, like this whole thing of doing a Christmas movie, it wasn't, it's, it's not my instinct. You know, it's not the first choice. I wouldn't want to, you know, jump out of, out of bed to go do a Christmas movie. but this one was just was right, you know, at the time.

And it's a great story and people know the book. And, you know, time and again, I've said to people, you know, what are you working on right now? And I'm like, and I'll kind of mubble around our best Christmas pride and ever. And nine times out of ten people go, based on the book, I love that book. My parents used to read that to me when I was a kid. So it's something that's meaningful to some people. So hopefully, hopefully that resonates.

Totally. Absolutely. I was going to say, last night I watched Green Mile and then Contact, and I was just sitting there thinking going, like, man, you could sneak someone into either of these films and not tell them how it ends up. And they will either love that or hate it. Green Mile especially, it doesn't start getting weird until like 45 minutes left in the movie. Right. Yeah. It's so great, though. It's such a great film. And it's all, it's all performance. I think. Both those films are just performance, performance, you know, character-driven performance. And it's so, contact is one of my favorites, you know, Ben of Bonds. I fucking love that movie. Oh, and you worked with Bob's, but I didn't even think about that.

You what's right him on, what was it, Marwin? Welcome to Marwin, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think I caught that one in theaters. I remember, well, it's it. Yeah, it was, it was interesting. Sure. I don't think it got where it needed to go in terms of the, you know, in terms of how it

ended up editorially and, and I'm, but far be it from me to criticize that sort of thing that's well about like big words. Yeah, yeah. Well, that and that was the one where Steve, Steve, Steve Carell was in it, right? And then he, like, yeah, like, he was like, he had toys that would come to life or some. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My memory was a great story. Yeah, yeah, right. It was a great story, you know, it was on a documentary entitled Marwin Call. And Steve Carell's character was a fellow named Mark Bogancamp,

who was beaten nearly to death for admitting that he liked wearing women's shoes in a New State New York. And the real character, Mark, had to relearn, you know, how to eat how to speak after his beating it was he was so severely um beaten up and the real character is really angry and really kind of um disappointed in the world and and and that didn't really again far be it from me to the uh to talk about performance but it felt like that was an element that was missing from that movie and you know it kind of for me felt a little for that way oh boy i hope i don't regret saying all that anyway well i think it's far enough i think everyone's opinions about

especially like I thought about that with this podcast is like how I would never say anything but like I do feel bad when you can like not everything we all know not everything's amazing like we kids we if we're yeah how are we going to learn from each other's mistakes if we all pretend that not that you know that's a cinematography mistake there but uh you know yeah you got to be a little open about it 100% and that was that was the first of of like a sort of decent sized studio picture for me. There was a lot of new ground that I was exposing myself to you in terms of, in terms of the politics of the studio. And I'm not saying that there was a lot of studio interfere anyway. Right. Because it was Bob Z and who's going to tell Bob Z what to do. And right, right, and right, right, rightfully so.

So that was an interesting kind of break into that. It was nice to kind of break into the studio side of things with the, the almost with the protection or under the wing of Bob Z to you know to to to kind of insulate me from from from the politics of it yeah right so it was it was nice to have some confidence and not be second-guessing everything I was I was doing because he was there you know sure that that splits me into two thoughts so I left I've I've said this a million times this this season I started taking notes so I'll remember instead of I was and jumping around and going, oh.

But the first one was, before we got away from it, you know, doing all those quicker films, what were some of the things that you learned that allow you to shoot an eight-day film, you know, like some of the maybe like lighting tricks or even managerial tricks or what, you know, what was a, how are you able to stay efficient? Yeah, well, a great question. You need to be ahead of the game all the time. And always thinking about the next, you know, where are we after we're done this scene? What room are we in?

What location are we in? You know, are we doing a company move? So there's always, you have to stay ahead of it so that when you get there, you've thought it out already. And you can kind of slip into it rather than sort of discovering every new location as you go along. It's one of the things that I took away from it was I tend not. to light um those like like tv shows and that's kind of a broad thing to say but um i don't over light um i don't beauty light close up you know every every single time unless there's a narrative reason to do so um and i think i'm willing to take a few more chances with with um with

actors playing on the dark side and and um and not being you know just by virtue of not beauty lighting everything, you get to save a little bit of time. And that's not the reason that I don't do a lot of beauty lighting. It's just that I like stuff that feel real and honest. And the world's never perfect. And manufacturing perfect lighting for close-ups to me takes me out of the story, takes me out of the narrative. So I think embracing that and talking directors into saying,

hey, or talking directors into letting a scene play in silhouette or letting it play in crosslight, not only keeps it more alive and keeps it more real, but it allows you to save some time on set. So I developed a habit of looking at locations and or studio sets and working with directors early to devise blockings that allow us to maximize the natural advantages of those locations or sets. so that we're not fighting the location, you know, for every shot. We're not trying to manufacture light that's coming from a place that

where it doesn't naturally occur in the set. Right. But I think it's kind of a, you know, maybe there's a, I didn't come from documentaries, but there's kind of a documentary approach to that in a way. You know, I'm a huge fan of people like Barry Aykroyd that is in that documentary world. And, you know, you're forced by budget and schedule and, and, and, and, and, and, and, not knowing what's going to happen in the next 10 minutes with your subject matter to embrace what's happening around you to make the best of it.

And I think that's a huge part of making those movies successful, is being able to sort of take advantage of and amplify what's already happened rather than trying to fight it and manufacture something that isn't already going on. And then that translated well into television, you know, when we're doing seven pages a day on on something like the flash or arrow and and you know always same same principles stay one or two sets ahead so that you're rigging guys are are lighting other sets while you're shooting this one and staging you know staging blocking so that so that you can take advantage of what the sets offer naturally you know and it's it's all of that all those e-fish that you kind of learn to

take into stride in the fact it's got to the point where when we're on a feature and And I'm just, and we're shooting a page and a half a day. I find myself having to slow down and say, look, let's, let's, let's, let's stop for a second and, you know, throw the anchor out and see what we can improve, you know, instead of accepting things. Let's see what we can do to make things a little bit more, you know, a little bit more perfect, turn a little bit more interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's always a balancing. Yeah.

I imagine when suddenly you have an eight or, what is the, eight times less stuff to do, you start getting anxious. anxious. Like, what did I forget, you know? Well, it's like, what should I be doing right now? I feel like I should be doing something. But I know the AD, the first AD on, on Marvin was the most

amazing assistant director I've ever worked. It's named Lee Grumet. He's from the UK. He's done a lot of Bob's, if not all of Bob's, most recent movies, along with a bunch of stuff with Ridley Scott. I just saw something that

that he oh um that george cluny movie uh boys in the boat yeah i saw my friend's dad's dad said oh that's awesome yeah that's awesome um i saw lee's name at the end of that i was like oh i know that guy um but lee pulled me aside at the end of at the end of marwin and said hey you know so do you mind if i offer a word of advice absolutely not and he said look because i know there were times during the show when you said you were ready and I think you would have liked to have had another 15 minutes or another 20 minutes to make something better. And I said, well, yeah, but, you know, that's always the case.

Like, you know, if you're going to give me another 20 minutes, I'm always going to find something to do. But, but, you know, we've got to make our day and we've got to get, you know, got to get the pages. And he said, no, no, he goes, no. He goes, at this level, it's all about the picture. And if there's anything that you need, just come and tell me. Or if you want to do something better, if you think it could be.

you know, I wish I had another 20 minutes. Just come and tell me and I'll make up some excuse if I need to to buy that time for you. But he said, but at this level, it's all about the picture and it needs to be exactly the way you want it and you shouldn't be compromising for time or anything.

So that was a really interesting thing for him to say and very gracious of him. No other AD has ever said that. Right. They're like, in 20 minutes, too long all the time. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I'm reminded a great AD is fucking invalid I'm I'm reminded of I think it was Gareth Evans was saying that like you'd be sitting there for an hour and someone

would be moving cable and then you'd start filming in like three minutes into the take people are like come on dude yeah yeah he gotta go it's like the cable got an hour what it's true yeah that's awesome well yeah yeah that's new but you know and and you know occasionally you have directors come up and go what are we doing what are we And you can hear, you can over hear the director of the AD, but what are we doing? What are we waiting for? And I remember when I was directing my first episode of The Flash, you know, you go through the, there's a lot going on in your head.

And, you know, you'd block a scene and work it out with the cast, and you'd have even little conversations with them. They didn't have the floor over to lighting. And the lighting guys start working. And if you don't have a lot of stuff to work through, as a director, you're kind of sitting at the monitor, you know, whittling your thumbs. And after like two or three minutes, like, what are we doing? Like, what's happening?

Why is this taking so long? I think it's only been three minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Get this man again, boy. Exactly. Yeah, fidget spinner or something. There's, there's perception of time changes based on what, uh, what your job responsibilities are.

Sure. Um, I did want to ask, because, uh, this actually kind of fits nicely with that is on the, uh, sort of smaller films and then into the larger films. This is kind of a generalized question that I've just wanted to ask someone and I, I keep kind of forget. to do it directly. And that is from a managerial side, how are you you know, with the film of the week

type movies, you're probably, are you getting like a new crew every time? Like, I assume there's a lot of turnover. Not because people are getting fired, but you know, that's a lot of gigs to do. Yeah, there's a lot of that sort of moving up through the ranks business that's going on these days. No, you know, when I

did those, I think the last one of those that I did was probably back in 2012 or so. So it's been a while since I've done those. But no, I would kind of roll my crew through from one to the next because it was such consistent work. They were able to just kind of, we were able to all kind of stick together and do that. And it's the same, the same's true now.

You know, like when I come to Winnipeg, I have the crew that I like to use here. And when I'm in LA, you know, there's always kind of a core group of people that you trust that you know, whose performance you know you can count on the day. Sometimes you're discovering new people for sure, but I try to roll crew over as much as I can because it's just one less variable totally

when you're particularly with gaffers and camera operators. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess the modification of that question is even if they're not new, like what kind of, what are some of the challenges and things that you kind of learned being a manager because I think a lot of cinematography podcast

don't quite talk about the head of department side of things at least and then I realized I don't do it so I'd kind of like to know you know I know I had a few

leadership positions in my college and outside of college and I fucking blew it I blew it so hard as you know and even now I get like a little

or even not being you know having been a leader in certain senses and then having to go back and maybe work for a leader who's not good at their job. And I have to like really stop myself from going like, let it, come here, you know. So, you know, what are the, what are those kind of things you've run into and look from?

Well, that's always a balancing act. You know, it's, I'm, I'm a strong believer in, in, and this is a fading trend these days. I'm a strong believer in putting your time in and, and, and being there. doing it. You know, I started as a grip. I pestered my way into the camera department. I worked through the camera department. I started shooting stuff before I thought I was ready to shoot stuff because a director kind of forced by hand a little bit, which was right. And I'm grateful forever for that. But and then I gathed stuff after I started shooting, which was really kind of a backward step. But that was because I'd moved back to Canada and nobody would take me

seriously as a DP. So, but every step of it has always turned out to be good. Even steps that have felt like I was going backwards at the time have always turned out to be the proper way that it should have turned out. You know, my Canadian always says everything happens for a reason and, you know, even though it feels like it's going sideways right now, you'll look back on this and at some point and you'll be like, oh, okay, that's why that happened. And that's something that's been true my entire life.

Maybe that's just, just, um, uh, a rose colored glasses in hindsight, but power of us. Um, yeah, but, but I think a huge part of management is, is, is knowing who you're managing and knowing, understanding what you're asking your crew to do and understanding what you're, and then on going the other direction, understanding what you're asking the director to accommodate or asking, uh, or asking the director to compromise on it. in order to make your day or to get a shot the way you particularly want. So there's always the most important thing is the kind of out-of-body perspective and being able to kind of take yourself out of your position and look at the problems that you're dealing with from everybody else's perspective. I think that's probably the most important thing in terms of keeping everybody motivated and keeping everybody for being ahead to the same goal all the time.

Um, I can't, you know, there's so much, um, frustration from time to time these days, where you come across people in, in higher positions, you know, be they, uh, director, as producers, whatever that have kind of ridden the rapid bust to, to their, their job, you know, and that's not to say that that's, that's wrong. It's just, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you have the opportunity to direct something and you've never done it before because you were a writer or because you were an editor or whatever. That's great. I'm delighted to support that. I'm super happy to help, you know, help you find the way and make your episode or your movie or whatever. It was as good as it can

be. But that has to come with humility and you have to, you have to say, you have to be willing to say, look, I'm new to this and you guys amongst you, you know, like when I have my sort of a crew on set in Vancouver. Any director could look around and go, you know what? There's like 350 years of on set experience around me that I can draw from to make this episode or this movie as good as it can be. I can pretend I know everything and dismiss all of their input and we can struggle through every moment of the production. So I think there's while I'm supportive of people that get breaks, it's important to have humility when you get those breaks and take advantage of all the all this stuff around you that's that's available you know if you give everyone

around you ownership of the of the movie then you get 150% more performance from them if they all feel they have something at stake rather than just being told what they're doing it's it's it's so much more rewarding for everyone you know and uh in television you get a lot of a lot of uh directors that are moving up through the ranks very rapidly and when you have the occasional one that that that really isn't up to the task, it becomes very clear, very early, and people like the DP and the strip supervisor and the first AD aren't going to let the show tank,

so they step up. And sometimes it gets combative on set, you know, when you have a director that doesn't really want to comply with what the show is accustomed to doing. But those three people usually push forward and push hard collectively to get the show made the way the show needs to be made and then the double-edged sort of that is the yeah the producers see the cut and they go great that's exactly what we wanted and then you're just like oh right so so uh you know

taking advantage of those of those opportunities to learn to absorb the knowledge of everyone around you is super super critical well it's super important to to develop a managerial style that that that works you know i mean at the end of the day we're all just telling stories you know so none of it's it's not like storming the front lines in Ukraine or something like that. You know, we're just telling stories and why make that hard and why make, you know, why not just learn from it and we can all move forward together. Yeah. Quite a diatribe.

No, that's, what did I say at the beginning? This is the diatribe show. I, uh, I did want to kind of know what that transition then was like for you, you know, going into Arrow and then the flash, which, um, I did want to. a lot of Arrow when it was coming out. I didn't catch up on the Flash ever. I kind of fell out of superhero zone earlier. But did you run in that situation where there was like a lot more experience on those sets or did you, were you bringing that, you know, aforeman day crew or how was that for you? Yeah, no, no. Arrow was sort of my first break into,

into full on like network, full scale network television. And Arrow was at the, you know, that was the time when the Aeroverse was still coming in with prominence and the show hot and it was you know it's a good show and Glenn yeah it was great it was a lot I was right up my alley to the dark you know the mystery I love doing dark dust you know yeah I love being out at the middle of the night every day but sure um but uh on winter who's that who was the DP started that show um had started directing he called he said you want to come I'm directing episode you want to come and shoot it and i was like how do you yeah and i said to this day don't know why came to me i think it was because a mutual friend of us was a camera

system on a show that i did here in winnipeg or operator rather on a i did here in winnipeg and i think he reported back glan and said you know to give this remember the day the first day on set uh or in prep on arrow we were in the concept meeting it was nine clock on a Monday morning or something and everybody else in the room had been on the show for a whole season and I'm the outsider and I remember sitting there and it felt like standing it felt like standing next to the railroad tracks and there's an Amtrak going by at about 75 miles an hour and you're kind of just looking down the railway thinking there's got to be something coming that I can grab onto you and you know get on board this thing right and and uh so

was really just jumping in the deep end and and getting so it was a huge but luckily again like having bob with with studio shows having glen there because he was the deep show to that him say don't worry about like if we get well yeah you know there's that was such a huge comfort factor i think for me on that show knowing that that i could go to glan and go how do i fix how do i fix this problem or how do i anticipate that and he was he was he was he He was actually really great with really building that notion of stay a set or two ahead, always be a set or two ahead. If you're lit and we're waiting for cast, let's walk over to the next location and

have to look through there and make sure that everything's going the way we needed to. So he was super, super influential in how I approached those Warner Brothers shows. I kind of modeled everything I did on how I learned it from him. yeah, it was a, I never had, with some small exceptions, I'd never had a rigging crew and on Arrow on those, you have to have a whole time. Ringing crew, right? Right, right. And I remember the rigging breakdown came in by, shut up on my desk on that first episode of Arrow. And I'm looking through and I'm like, there's 56, like an eight-day episode, we have 50 mandate just for electric rigging. I've even seen the grip one yet. Five, right, six mandates for electric rigging.

And I thought, how do I, like, I can't, I can't go have this conversation. What do I do? So I just ignore it. I'm going to put it over there and talk about it later and avoid the production manager. Don't talk to the line producer. Just, you know, don't make eye contact. And eventually we got deeper into prep and Todd Pitts and the line producer came into my office about something else. And I thought, well, I've got to, I've got to address this.

So I said, hey, Todd, have you seen the, have you seen the electric rigging breakdown? He's like, yeah. And I was like, it's okay. He's like, oh, it seems big, doesn't it? I'm like, well, kind of. He goes, yeah, it's how he goes around here. And that was the end of the conversation. I was like, yeah, okay.

So that's how it goes. So it was, that was a real ultra shock for me was all of a sudden having, having producers that, I don't want to say producers that understood the needs of the production, but producers that were able to, you know, that had the means. and the budget that they could address rigging needs and things like that. I want to be careful about saying that because it wasn't like the movie of the week producers didn't understand that. Oh, it's just I didn't.

There's only so much money, right? Yeah, yeah. And I didn't take it that way. I don't think anyone else. Yeah. So it was it was that was a whole thing and that was like stepping up to another another level of okay, you know, uh, this is what it takes to stay ahead. This is what it takes to shoot a schedule like.

Arrowhead, you know, where we're doing seven-day or eight-day episodes that are full of action and full of stunts and full of the effect, that's what it takes to make that machine work. You know, there's the old adage. I'm sure you've heard there's good and fast and cheap, right? You can pick any two of those. Right. And it's never been, it was never more obvious than on that show. And then since then, you know, like going on to going on to the movie with Bob Zamekis

and working with the designer really closely and building a lot of that movie takes place in Mark Hogan Camp's trailer. He lives in a like a double-white kind of, well, not even double-light, just a regular trailer. And we knew that we knew that we wanted to be moving the camera a lot. We knew that we didn't want to be building dance floor and putting cameras on dollies and fighting for space and so and Bob being Bob we we knew that that a technocrine was going to play a lot in fact I remember having a conversation with that with Cheryl Ann Martin one of the producers and we were talking about techno cranes and and we had a I think it was a 45 day or 50 day

shooting schedule in that movie and and she's like okay so we need to pick what days we have techno I was like okay I'll I'll figure it out with Bob and before the conversation was even over he's like, you know what, it's Bob, so we're going to have a Technicrane. He's going to want it every day. So let's just put it on Run a Show and we'll figure out where to find the money from later. Right. So that, you know, all of a sudden now we've got run a show Techno 30, run a show, Techno 50, you know. So going back to the working with Stefan, the designer,

and we're building this trailer on stage and knowing that we're probably going to live on the techno as much as we can. So what do we need to do to this set to build it in such a way that we can swing a technocrine in here and not have to, you know, not have to wild or, or how do we wild the walls in this place so that they're quick and efficient. We can turn around in 15 minutes. And so the answer was to build all the walls on a guillotine kind of stringers or our rigging grips together with construction. So everything was on on a guillotine kind of rig. So if we needed that wall out, we just roll it up. bring the techno in, set the shot up to whatever we needed, take the techno, put that wall down, take the other one out, turn it around. So it was super efficient, super smart. It was expensive

as heck, but it, you know, it did the job, you know. That movie, that trailer that Mark lives in and that movie exists in the world across the street from this little gingerbread house that his love interest moves into. So we were scouting locations from that, and Bob hadn't shown up in town yet. It was just myself and Stefan, the designer, and we decided to meet at this place and look at this location.

And I'm thinking, gosh, where are we going to find a trailer park across the street from this gingerbread house that are, you know, and we get to this location and they're just open fields. I'm like, oh, this is interesting. And Stefan goes, yeah, we'll build a trailer here

and we'll build a house there. I'm like, oh, that's how it works over here, right? okay. So what we did, we did that. We built the exterior there, and then Bob doesn't like shooting outdoors. If we can avoid shooting outdoors, that's the way we go, because

it's the control. You can predict what is going to do, but you can't. The eat was that you build the locations again on stage. So we can't, not just interiors, but the trailer location on a stage. We had to build an exterior,

for it as well. We had to build his yard with all the grass and he's built this little miniature town outside his house. So we built out on the stage and we'll up. And because all of it was on this

kind of undulating bit of property in the real world, we had the same topography in the state. So the set elevated quite a bit. And then we thought, well, now this makes problems getting the techno into the getting closed. We'll see the technology to reach the entire trailer set. So we thought, well, what if we build the garden on gaffolding that rolls?

If we build on 12 by 12 foot sections of gaffling that are on rollers, then we can we can just kind of run blade along the edge of the 12 by 12 section and roll out a chuck of the yard and roll the technic trade engine. So that's what I do. It was just so being able to just float ideas and have everyone brain storm and go, let's do it, let's do it like this. Let's really break the mold and do what we needed to do instead of fighting, you know, instead of making compromises. So, so that was a really great experience. It was the next level there for me was, was the no compromises approach to

what do we need to do to design our world so that, so that the shooting part of it is as easy as it can be, you know? Yeah. Well, I imagine that also, that's kind of the, probably the feeling that we all chase getting into filming, filmmaking, which is like the magic. part of it where you're like, I want that to exist and then it does. Yeah. Well, that was another big thing for me, you know, with working with Bob, and I don't

mean to make this all about Bob Z, but after doing several side of TV with between and fish, I was getting the time, you know, to be demanding shows in 23 episodes

a year, you know, nine or 10 months a year, and they're, you know, eight day episodes and four of those days are probably 14 hour days. So it starts to really beat you up. And then on top of that, you know, sometimes you're not dealing with the most experienced directors. So it just by the time Marwin came along was getting pretty, pretty jaded and pretty beat up by the old TV thing.

And then all of a sudden I was in this world where you could look around conference table in any prep meeting on Marvin. and realized there were fewer people without an Oscar at the table speaking than with. Sure. You know, and to look around it, everybody in the room and really see that everybody there was helping each other to get to the same goal. And as much as at the time, as TV kind of starts out that way, there's always some sort of antagonism that ends up forming, whether it's in or, you know, this versus them

thing because I guess people like conflict, whether it's, you know, production, production and their writers or production and post-production, but there's always a villain that you have to deal with, you know, and so you some sort of motivation to roll your eyes on set all the time. But all of a sudden, now I was in this, this, you know, theatrical feature environment where everybody was trying to do the same thing. Everybody's goal was to make it as good as they possibly could and bring the best out of everybody else. And it was so, reaffirming for me and it really kind of snapped back into

into believing that this movie this movie business is you know at a certain level is exactly as you imagine it that everybody is trying to help everybody to tell the best story they can and and you know and when it's the people that are at that level that demonstrate that to you that's really really like life affirming sure you know knowing that that that it is that way you know

at the upper levels, for sure. Yeah. So how did those experiences and lessons from the CW shows affect Brother's Son? Because it's similar kind of vibe, kind of a little bit. Yeah, a lot of similarities. We got, Brother Son gave us a chance to, well, there was a lot of things that were really great about Brothers 10. But yeah, we got to take, the director.

Kevin Chancerone that I worked with on Brother, someone that met, there's the, we did know, we've got a Mortal Kombat series together, like a little YouTube thing, and then our paths like, we'll tie in and on Flash as well, because he was directing episodes of those. So we'd always gotten along really well. We always did. We wanted to do something of our own together again. So when this came up, Kevin was like, that was the first call. He's like, hey, you got to come down and do this show. So, yeah, we got to take a lot of, like a lot of the efficiencies that you develop by doing network TV come in really handy in keeping the momentum going on set, especially on an action-oriented

show like The Sun. So I was able, it took a little bit of time. I'd never worked in L.A. So it was, it took a little bit of getting accustomed to, there's a different, um, a different pace of work on step in L.A. than there is in Vancouver. And I think that's mainly because it's an older business in L.A., and it's not, you know, it's rooted in still in the days when it did, you know, I need to do an episode or team. So there's a certain procedure that every, you know, there's a number.

You said when it did to go through, like, it chopped out a little bit there. You said when, because it's an older business that what? that that is rooted in the days when there was more time to make an episode or make a movie, you know, like when you weren't, you weren't trying to do nine pages in a day. So there's a different pace and a different expectation, I guess, of what the pacing of the crew is meant to be. It drove, at first it was driving me a little bit crazy. I'm like, we need to move way fast. It shouldn't take 10 minutes to get something from the truck, you know, all right.

And so there was a bit of, like, trying to adapt the pace that I was expecting from doing Arrow and Flash into, eventually we got, you know, which is true that were awesome. That's the thing about L.A. is that you're working with a member that are second, third, fourth generation in the business, you know, that that you don't get anywhere else. You know, maybe in the UK, but that was really special that it's so much in the DNA of everything around you. And that was really, really cool. So, yeah, a lot of the momentum habits, I think, that I learned, developed on Flackner, definitely translated into brother's son. And I was able to, to sort of analyzing, okay, well, we're.

We're a little bit more methodical on a step-by-step basis on set. So that means that in order to stay ahead, we deliver ahead in what we're going of the advanced set that we're looking at. Maybe we stay three sets now instead of two so they can get, you know, so that they can rig those sets and do whatever they need to do at the pace of their accustomed to so that we're getting on. It took a little bit of adjusting. You know, you're always learning how to adapt your skills to

new, to a new show, to a new brew and that sort of thing. That was the first show in a long time on which I didn't have any crew that I knew. Everybody was new to me. So that took a little bit of getting used to, for sure. Luckily, Kevin was someone I'd work with before, so we could always escape into each other's arms when things weren't going well. But yeah, and, you know, working with our stunt crew was great. Um, uh, Justin, you was our stunt coordinator and he's from the gang that, uh, that did shows like, um, the John Wick series and, and the Furious, you know, uh, super, super, uh, super great, super, um, talented, uh, very established stunt guys, you know, they knew what they were doing. Um, so that helped a lot, you know, not having to, for Kevin not to have to, to micromanage what he was expecting.

out of each fight sequence was really great. You know, it was always an embarrassment of riches when we would look at a fight rehearsal and go, wow, you know, if that's, that's everything that we wanted. Can you flip that else? Yeah, exactly. But there was always, and Justin would, they would always go out of their way and give us a half a dozen extra beats that they thought of, which when you're trying to shoot everything in, in eight hours is tough.

And, and, and it's like, it's like picking which ones of your, children you want to you want to get rid of right it's it's there's so many great bite beats that we had to that we just simply didn't have time to do or you know so it was but it was it's way better to have too many than than too few you know right um going back to lee grommett bob bob zemachus's a d uh lee had a great line he said it's always if you if you think you might need it let's just shoot it yeah because it's always better to look at it than to look for it that's that's a good that's a great lines. Yeah. So that was the thing. Yeah. And then just, you know, once the crew and I had kind of managed to figure each other up and all, which didn't take long and just a week or so to

really iron out the kinks, it was great. And it felt just like any other show. I felt like that's one of the great things about movie making is that because it's such a universal language and such a universal way of doing things, after the first kind of climatization period, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, you always feel like you're putting on an old pair of glove by the time you get to week two, week three of a show where everybody, you know, everybody's just trying to do the same. It's great. It's, it's, it's a real treat to be in a business where you can just go anywhere in the world and kind of slip right in and, and, you know, and do your job without having to reinvent the wheel every time. Totally. Talk to me about the, the lighting

for that show, because I noticed it's, it does have that kind of blockbustery look, um, you know, very, somewhere, I know, is it a, it's not a marble show, isn't it? No, no, yeah, so it's just like, but it still has that kind of like that quality of that look and, and especially like, kind of what, how much does Netflix have to do with that? Um, because it kind of does look like, you know, quote unquote, a Netflix show. I imagine they, I don't know how hands on they are, but, um, yeah, what was your, what was your approach to lightning thing? Yeah, they're, they're not, Netflix isn't, uh, hands on at all in terms of that. We submit our, we submit our, You know, we do a little show and tell at the beginning of a season of a new show with references of, you know, what we think it should look like. You know, if we've shot camera tests, we'll present those.

Generally, Netflix and folks like Netflix and Apple TV and Amazon are really, really great in the sense that they don't get to micromanagey with how the show looks and, you know, they're very, and I don't know if that comes from, uh, there's probably a combination of, of being a lot of the execs are predominantly um, IT types and not necessarily movie types, you know, and, um,

so I think it's a combination that, um, along with, with, uh, a respect. I, I like to think,

you know, maybe it's, maybe it's, it's naive, but I like to think that they have a lot of respect for what the creatives are trying to do on set and they don't, they don't get involved unless something goes egregiously wrong. Right.

Um, So developing the look for, for brother's son, we wanted, I always want to make things look bigger than they, than they, I don't want to say deserve to be. Always want to make things look bigger than they could be. You know, always where I make them feel, you know, a level above. And it, you know, brother's son comes down to the same thing where, where if we can embrace the imperfections in the lighting, then you get, you get to pull so much more out of it. it and not having to light everything perfectly like a TV show and letting it fall off more like the theatrical presentation was one of the things we wanted to focus on and let's stuff play in silhouette, let's stuff play in the dark, you know?

So there was a lot of influence, I think, in certain scenes from Flash and Arrow, you know, in terms of there was a lot of amber versus cyan for example. I was in the scene, you know, that's going to be a question too. And the colors just came, they kind of came organically. You know, we didn't want to build a real,

uh, definitive color palette for the show. We wanted it to be, to be a little bit more fluid than that and, and sort of take what it could out of the environments that, wherever the show take, it took us, you know? Um, so, uh,

like, The story I've been telling a lot lately is the kitchen of Mama's house in the San Gabriel Valley has this really bright amber like streetlight outside this glass brick wall in the kitchen to the point where you're kind of like squinting at it. It's so bright. And because the show has so much Asian connotations, I said to Kevin, I'm like, look, this is this like, this is the character thing for for mama's son like she's the reason they have this house this sort of nondescript house in the San Gabriel Valley is because there's that street light outside the back window and nobody else in this you know in the city wanted to buy this

house because of that obnoxious street light but she got a good deal on it so so you know we can live with the street light so that was the motivation for for a lot of the lighting in the in the kitchens you know so I yeah it was a lot of lot of trying to find environmental ways to justify the lighting and and to keep it honest and and brutal whatever we were trying to do story wise you know we did I don't want to say overstylized but you know there's a there's a sequence in which the brothers end up in this exotic animal dealer in the industrial district of LA and that one we kept kind of dark and it, you know, it was full of tanks and stuff like that.

So we kind of leaned into blade runner-y type influences, you know, and that. So it was fun to be able to just kind of draw from what each location or each set kind of fed us, you know, to determine the lighting. There's a sequence in, I forget which episode it is seven or eight, seven, I think, where there's a giant fight sequence in a Chinese restaurant. And the one we, when we scouted it, we found this one that was, all these kind of translucent yellow windows

down the one side. We're like, perfect. The whole thing's just, you know, just lighted with that. Yeah. So, yeah, it was very much environmentally influenced. And, and one of the things that I always try to do personally is you know, we talked about things being too perfect and too

contrived. I always find myself distracted when stuff is too perfect in terms of lighting or terms of framing and stuff like that. So, so what I like to do a lot is introduce some sort of chaos into every sequence, you know. So, for example, in a kitchen interior that we're shooting on stage, I was trying to put a hot streak of light in somewhere that feels like that little bit of sunlight that you couldn't

quite, yep, get some drift gear on, you know, because there was an hour line or something that you couldn't get in the way. So I find that those little imperfections and that that little bit of chaos helps kind of breathes a little bit of life into into the lighting of a scene. And imperfections to me are critical to making stuff feel believable. So the reason I'm geeking out is because I think in the past like three, maybe like four interviews, I have for some reason mentioned that somebody, and I still don't know who, introduced me to the idea of what he called the fuck it light, which is exactly what you're talking about, like, oh, there's someone else who does the

bucket light. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Something that was, you know, because you're always, like, when you're shooting on a location, the beauty of shooting on locations, you know, against all the inconveniences shooting on location is there's always something that you can't control. Right. You know, and, and so that's like bringing that into the controlled environment is, is, yeah, it makes it, you know, knocks the edge off and makes it feel a little bit more honest. I mean, we built sets, actually, we built sets on, on brother's son without deliberately without wild walls

so that we'd have to kind of force ourselves into a corner sometimes you know, right. Because that stuff you feel also, you know, on the screen. Sometimes we regretted it, but for the most part, you know, forced us into making it a particular way.

Yeah. And did you have to kind of modulate the way that you approach the look to balance the sort of comedic elements with the action elements? Or did you kind of just go with one look and let the script play in there. Yeah, I think a lot of the fun of the show is that it's so tongue-in-cheek that

personally, well, Kevin and I were talking about this, and we found it kind of funnier that the comedy plays out in kind of out of context, in lighting environments that were way too dramatic or, you know, and it kind of makes it land a little bit harder and makes it a little bit funnier, I think that when, you know, when it's not lit like comedy, but it, but it is. You know, it's funny. So, yeah, again, it just came down to environments and lighting each environment the way it needed to be.

And then blocking it in a way that, that, you know, if we absolutely needed to see somebody's expression that we, you know, made sure that they were in a light source when that beat went down, you know, that kind of thing. Sure. Were you doing the classic, just have light the space and then just have like some random key kind of floating around? Yeah, I tend to light the space and include the key. in the environmental light, and then try to influence the blockings to favor that.

85% of the time that work, you know, and then we bring, you know, bring in a paper lantern or something like that to, nowadays, yeah, exactly, a little tube just to get into the eyes, just to, yeah, oh, they're great, right? I mean, they're probably the single most influential bit of technology, I think, that we've had in the last 10 years. that's really changed how we do things, you know. Yeah, really, really good. I'm friends with the people at Astera. I guess they listen to the podcast.

They ran up on me and they're like, we like your stuff. And I was like, that's incredible. But I did this other weird review. Well, me and I remember when the first one, the AX-1s came out, me and the guy at Stray Angel, which is a rental house over here. we drove a fiat into onto the stage and we did a poor man's process with the tubes just because it's a rental house we're trying to show how you might use them and I guess that for for like a year I'd be at some event you know and uh someone would be like hey if we worked together I'm like

no you googled a stara tubes recently didn't you know like yeah yeah yeah that's awesome yeah I mean there's been very few things that I can think of that have changed or simplified how we do things as profoundly as those tubes, the Titan tubes, the Helios tubes, you know. Even things like sky panels and, and vortexes and vertices. It's actually vortexes, too. They're great, but, you know, they don't, they didn't revolutionize things as much as the right. You know, when you can throw something that's battery powered into a corner

or just hold it like a lightsaber next to the camera, you know, and dim it down to next to nothing. Nothing just, they're just, they're fantastic. They're really, really all. Yeah. I always wonder if RGB is a technology, not just the twos, but in general, was one of those things that everyone went, because I remember everyone went, oh, we'll never have to gel again, and then like that doesn't white, they don't, yeah, I look like that.

You end up having to gel, you know, a color temperature, regular, what do you want to call that, you know, panel anyway? Yeah. Yeah. I still, I use a lot of tungsten still. I, you know, I, I'm one of the, I'm a diesel burner. Yeah. Yeah. Even on stage, you know, we've yet to, as good as LED technology is, we, we still haven't quite gotten to, we're getting there, but we haven't quite gotten to the point where you can put up an LED source that behaves like a 20K or a T24, you know, um, uh, Cineo has the, uh, R15. Uh, that's a great little light. 100% but it's still evolving and you know it gives it it's a great quality of life it's just you know the intensity of it isn't quite there yet and and i like big big sources outside windows yeah because that's how it is in the real world you know there's always the biggest source ever outside and and you just can't white do that with with i mean you can you could argue that

you could do it with a 5k or you could do it with an r15 and then bring all the your other levels down to match. And my counter argument would be, yes, but you don't get the same quality of light in there. Like if you pointed R15 through a set window and skip bounce it off the wall, even if you bring every other light source in the room down to the same level,

you still don't get the same life that you would if there was a 20K out that, just hammering that. Yep. Because, you know, there's a breathing that you get from bigger sources that you just don't get, then change smaller stuff, you know, no matter how you finesse it. It always is artificial. Well, and I think we're so used to the idea of like variable ISO and stuff that we forget that the way it looks in reality is probably the way it'll end up, you know, so if it's if it's a soft light on the wall, it's not like, oh, just at the camera rider, it'll look exactly the same because it doesn't. And that's how physics works. That's right.

And then you get into other compromises. If you start messing with ISO, ASA or whatever, it's EI or whatever it's called now, there's other ramifications to that, right? Like if you're if you're trying to, if you're trying to hold exterior highlights, you know, at a practical location, you can't be dumbing down the ISO because now you're losing you're losing or you're compromising the sensor's capability of reproducing detail in the highlight. Right.

So it's so counterintuitive that way, right, where you want to be at 1,600 or 3200 ASA when it's super bright outside. Right, right, right, right. Oh, counterintuitive. So, yeah, there's always, that was a great thing. That was another thing that, that kind of a rule of thumb that I've always had in the back of my mind.

I did, I did the film workshops in Maine. Many, man. Oh, sure, yeah, yeah. Middies. Yeah, they're, they still do them. Anyone? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're great. And there's nothing like having working professionals teaching the courses, you know, instead of, instead of academic types. But Rick Waite had done a lighting and filters course, I think it wasn't. And Rick said, just remember that everything that you, every decision that you make has to have a reason, has to have a motivation. Whether it's a framing discipline and a lighting decision, whatever it is, it has to be motivated by something.

And then on the flip side, every decision that you make will have a consequence. So as long as you balance the motivation and the consequence and, and, you know, balance those as best you can, you'll always, you know, you'll always be on course. Yeah. That's a, yeah. That's a good thing to keep in mind. Yeah, I'm going to think on that one. Yeah, it's all, you know, it's, there's always something, you know, a director will come up

and go, yeah, I want to do it like this. And I always get this kind of, a lot of times the director gets not impatient, but they're like, hey, I want to do it like this. What do you think? What do you think? And I don't like to give him an immediate, oh, yeah, that's going to be great kind of response because I'm, I take, it takes me, maybe it's just because I'm slow, but it takes me a few minutes to kind of cycle through, okay, this is what he wants to do?

What is that going to mean three shots from now? Like if we do it like that, then what are the consequences of that? When we turn around, is it going to make us, is it going to box us into a corner? Is it? So sometimes directors get not frustrated, but they're like, you know, are you, you know, are you listening to what I'm saying? Like, yes, but I'm, I'm digesting what you're saying so that we don't have to, you know, struggle with us later.

Let's, let's just think about it for a sec. So, so I'm always kind of slow to react to things. And I like to kind of, in my head, work through all the steps of what is this going to mean down, downhill from here. And what's the, you know, sure, it'll be, it might be great for this shot, but, you know, It could really handcuff us, you know, on the turnaround or made out of foot. I did want to, because we're, you know, kind of come up on time, I did want to pivot quickly to still because I fucking loved that documentary. And wasn't it great?

Yeah. Dude, incredible. And I left it going, they, those, like, they fucking nailed the, like, mixing the footage with the, with the archival and all that. I was just like, floored. Walk me through how, like, because I know there was three DPs on that. So I know your contribution was different from theirs. Yeah, but walk me through that. And then did you, you did the narrative stuff, right?

Or the, the, the, I did the narratives of, yeah, the reeductment or the, what do they call this? The scripted stuff. Yeah. How the fuck did you pull that? Because that's, that is, that stuff looks exact. We, we, I got in trouble for saying this over and over at the, we did that ASC. clubhouse conversation about this and that question came up you know how do how do we make it all work and my sort of standard answer was I came in really late on that show they'd already cut

the whole movie other than the stuff that we had to shoot so I was just painting my numbers and going okay we have to fit this and there's a second unit shit and there's a second unit shit and there's a you know yeah so yeah so in many ways that show had defined itself long before I came along. And the editor, Michael, his last name escapes me right now, was the one who kind of between him and Davis came up with the idea of how it was cut, how it was going to end up being cut. Almost accidentally, I think, I think the story that I heard was that Mike was, Michael was was looking through archival footage, you know, just looking for stuff that he could use. But at the same time, he was, he was listening to the audio from some of the interview.

video footage that Julia and and Claire oh my Claire had had shot and he found himself going that voiceover from the from the interviews is perfect over this this bit of archival stuff and he's like what if we told the story like with the archive so that that's how it kind of developed and then by the time I came along we were just we were just filling the blanks and making sure that we did we had um that sort of important personal stuff like the the human story part of it were i sussed out and shot the way that david was davis wanted um so yeah there was there were lots of lots of storyboards um davis is an incredible collaborator and uh uh just an unbelievable human being um which is true of pretty much everyone on the

that had anything to do with that show um and the whole thing was super easy. We had, we had, you know, open and frank discussion about every aspect of it. You know, if you want to, he had boards and we looked at the boards and we talked about, hey, what if we do it like this? What do we do it like that? And switched him up. And he was never, you know, unwilling or to listen to other ideas. Right. But when he did, when he felt strongly about something, we stuck to it, you know. And it was a real special experience. I think we had 20, 20 days or 22 the narrative stuff

and it was it was fun it was a lot of fun recreating all those you know that back to the future stuff was great and

what is his childhood stuff you know growing up that wasn't recreation but it was great it was a lot of fun to sort of experiment with time periods and and play around you know and really

really have some fun yeah Because I guess I didn't think about it, but I was like, you don't even have to reference other stuff. You can literally just reference the thing you're matching to. Just, I just make, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, the back to the future stuff, did how, uh, how Dean Kandi, uh, shot it originally and sort of guessed at that gel colors

and stuff. And that worked out pretty well. We did a lot of that on blue screen. Oh, no kidding. That, yeah, the walk down, down through the circus or through the, through base camp to toward the set. That was all, there was a practical location, but we had blue screen up so that they could extend the set.

No, I hadn't. I would ever guess. Right. But yeah, I mean, it was such a, a geeky kind of honor in a way to be able to recreate just a little, you know, a little slice of that stuff that's so iconic. You know, that's in all of our memories. Yeah.

Well, and that's also another shot. I always like to shout out, when they deserve it, you know, production designing and costuming, because, I mean, they fucking nailed it. Yeah, yeah, really nailed it. I mean, the costumes, and again, Davis is uncompromising in that regard. You know, it's like the orange vest, the life jacket has to be the life jacket, you know, or the life vest, you know, so it wasn't without some turmoil getting, you know, making sure

everything was just right, but, you know, you see the result. And it's, those are the things you need to stick to. right is making sure the details the devil's in the details really in all aspects of filmmaking and and that's what people i don't want to say details are what people remember but details are what are the kind of cement that make everything that much more believable yeah uh that the closed the sale so to speak yeah i mean that's something i've always told students is like hey if you're going to shoot this film don't just do it in your apartment no one's going to believe a 18 year old girl lives in your fucking 22-year-old boy apartment.

Yeah. You know, that'll really kill it. I didn't quickly want to ask for it to let you go. What made you choose the movie cam lenses, the Ari, for people who don't know, Ari has these like vintage lenses that are really cool, but what made you choose those was just convenience and kind of vintageiness or had you tested them and they were perfect? Yeah, I had actually just come off of the movie that we used. In fact, we're using them on the movie right now.

Oh, no, shit. I'm in, yeah, I'm in love with those lenses. They have, there's just something about them. Again, you know, part of it harkens back to being imperfect. They're not perfect lenses. And I don't want to go down that cliche wrote them, oh, we want these lenses that are, you know, character character, character, don't read, all that nonsense.

Sure, I mean, great. If you're doing a dream sequence, great, have lenses that don't resolve from edge to inch to inch, Yeah, but there's just something about these ones that have a really great kind of late 80s, early 90s feel to them. They're contrasty, but not too contrasty. They don't, you know, they don't behave like Zeiss Primes, for example, in terms of contrast. They're a little bit milkyer and a little bit kinder. They're a little bit more nostalgic, I think, in a way. They're a little warmer than Zice Primes are.

they and I don't I don't mean to keep calling out Zeiss Prime but they're that's a standard predominantly yeah yeah and they were what we used a lot in the 80s and 90s right um because they were fast and everything but um

the movie cams they just have a a wonderful texture to them that I that I really really like and um when you flare them they have this beautiful kind of on golden pond kind of sensibility about them where they they have this warm kind of veiling

Blair, I use, I've been developing a kind of a riff on the Varycon with Ari over the last few years so that we can put, we can tint shadows not only across the entire frame but in corner of the frame. So you'll see that kind of come into play on a movie like Still. Actually, Brother Son, we used them a lot. And the movie cam primes, because of their warm flare tendencies when you put a kind of a cooler um varicom sort of flare into the shadows they balance so nicely and they just feel there's something about them that feels really great and yeah this it's hard to quantify it beyond you know in a in a physical set but they're they're just great lenses that do a great job that are that happened to be lifted almost

directly out of the late 80s and rehoused in uh in new barrels for the large format cameras yeah that's awesome yeah i'll have to we'll have to have you back on to just to literally just nerd out about the vericon thing because i've i sure i've been like that's a conversation for a longer i wanted one of those so badly when i first got started for some reason i was just like i think that'll solve all my problems or like have you know like cheaper cameras yeah well i mean you know coming from the film days when you would when you'd have to you know get that great big Panavision thing out

to fog the nag basically, right? Until your shadows. It's sort of the same idea, except you do it right in the map box, and the one that we're building allows you to do it in a corner of, like there's 64 LEDs around the filter tray.

Got it. And you're able, they're all RGBW, and you can move them around in two separate sections, so you can put a little, you know, an old amber flare in the top right of the frame and a blue one in the bottom left. independent of one another and move them around and do so. So it's something that we're just kind of playing around with.

But it's, yeah, it's super fun. Yeah, anytime you want to talk about me. Hell yeah. Well, thanks so much for spending the time with me, man. That was great chat. And like I said, I'm my pleasure. Itching to have you back on to talk about that. And also the film you're working on now.

That'll be a, yeah, for sure. Cool. Yeah, that sounds great. Well, I'll let you go and have a great rest of your day, man. Thanks so much, Kenny. I appreciate it. Yep, take care. I see.

frame and reference is an owlbot production produced and edited by me Kenny McMillan and distributed by pro video coalition if you'd 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. Thank you.