Frame & Reference Podcast - 134: "Girls State" DP Laela Kilbourn

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Laela Kilbourn has accumulated feature credits including Best Cinematography award winner SWIM TEAM, and eight Sundance Film Festival documentary premieres, such as Apple Original Films’ GIRLS STATE; the DuPont-Columbia Journalism Award winner THIS IS HOME: A REFUGEE STORY; Peabody Award winning HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO; and Emmy nominated WORD WARS. She also shot SYNC OR SWIM, winner of the Billie Award for Journalism from the Women’s Sports Foundation, and filmed History’s eleven part docuseries SANDHOGS. Her award-winning narrative work includes CRABS IN A BARREL, featured on HBO Max; THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF QUEENS, awarded Best Narrative Short Film at Katra Latinx Festival; PARK SLOPE MOMS, winner of the NYWIFT/iWomanTV Best Dark Comedy and Audience awards; DEATH OF A FOOL; and JUNE WEDDINGS. 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 134 with Layla Kilbourne, DP of the documentary Girls State. Enjoy. Are you watching anything cool right now? The last thing I saw, well, I saw Sulpburn last week. Oh, last week, okay. Yeah, I just watched it last week for the first time.

And I didn't really know anything about it. I mean, I knew that it was getting a lot of buzz, and I knew the director who was in it, but I didn't know anything about the story. Sure. So I thought it was incredible. Yeah. It was not knowing anything, it was really fun to see it play out and not know where it was going to go.

And the performances were phenomenal. So, and I love the way it looked. I thought. What was that? Sandgren, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't.

I mean, that, I don't know. I don't want to give anything away for anyone who hasn't seen it. But there is a scene where people are sitting inside having a meal. And it's lit by daylight through these big, huge windows. Oh, when they pull the car. Big red curtains. Yeah. And suddenly the room was bathed in red light, which totally goes with what's happening

in the scene. I mean, it was genius. Yeah. His idea was, but it was a great idea. I still kind of want to know, because it's becoming so much more popular. It's like 4-3. I thought 4-3 was going to be kind of like a social media fad, but it's like we've already seen maybe like three, four films in theaters that have started shooting square

or aspect ratios. I'm wondering where that's coming from. I don't know. I wonder if it's trying to throw back to something, you know, from the early days of filmmaking and TV and all of that. I was wondering that, too, watching it why they, it didn't take me out of the movie, but I didn't wonder what the reason for it was. I mean, Maestro does it too. Yeah. So they.

Holdovers. Yeah, it's a free show all over the place in that film. So, yeah. It is a, I agree. he shot the hell out of that film but it is a it is a funny one to go I thought

I thought it's extremities were over overstated there's there's two things in the film that make you go like oh shit

and then other than that it's a pretty straight across the board like drama you know yeah yeah well

dark comedy dark comedy it's a lot of comedy to be like I'm the side of my way I thought really gave it

this extra layer of my enjoyment, depth, all of it, performance. I mean, comedy is unexpected and fun. Well, and the, to the, I'm kind of on the same topic as the, as the Red Shears. Like, I got this very kind of intense, what do you want to call it? Like, the crown kind of, like just having the mansion be kind of a main character. Everything is lit in that kind of old. European style, if you will. Yeah. Yeah, it gives it this weird level of fantasy. Like, it's modern day, but it's not. And

could all of this really happen, or is it very real? It's, yeah, you felt like you were on this epic journey through some unspecified time and place that is connected to our world and yet somehow isn't. Yeah. And I love escapist fiction when I watch movies. I love being taken out of my own world, so. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Did you just get back from Sundance? I did. Yep, Monday. How was that experience for you? Have you had you been before? I assume with your career. I have. Yeah. This was my fifth time going in person with a film. It was great. It was

really fun. It was sort of brief. I whirlwind from the first day to leaving Sunday, but that's kind of a nice way to do it. I think it can be overwhelming if you don't. paste yourself, but we did the premiere of Girls State on Thursday, and it was really to well-receives, great audience response, and all the girls were there, so it was fun to see them again. I'm sure that was fun for them. Yeah, I mean, they were so poised and so just like on fire the whole time. It was great.

They're phenomenally young women, which was clear when we were filming. And now they're all in college and, you know, becoming adults. But it was it was great to see them able to enjoy the film, to enjoy the response to the film, you know, to enjoy the attention without being overwhelmed by it. Because I think, especially people don't know when they do a documentary of what that really means until later. Unless you've done it before, you just have no idea what that kind of attention can mean. And not everybody handles it with such a plan. long the way they did. Well, and with all the, I suppose, like, lessons in public speaking and stuff like that

will come into play. Yeah, the campaigning, I'm sure, was a big help for them. Yeah, I've spoken to a lot of people who went to, like, USC and AFI and all these, but I think you might be the first person that went to Harvard? I did, yes. And your degree was in, what was it, political science or? Anthropology. Anthropology. Yeah. So what was, I mean, there's a clear through line there, but what kind of dovetailed you from, was documentary always supposed to be kind of the goal there? Or what kind of pivoted you?

Yeah. I didn't get into filmmaking until after I left school. I didn't, never even occurred to me while I was in school. I mean, I studied anthropology because I was interested in other people's cultures and experiences and it seemed to make sense of the time. And then when I studied anthropology, because I was interested in other people's cultures and experiences and it seemed to make sense at the time. And then when I, I did discover filmmaking. I thought I was going to start out, at least, doing narrative projects, fiction projects. That was the goal. And I kind of fell into documentary inadvertently and loved it and kept doing it. And now I kind of straddle both worlds when I can. I try to go back and forth between the real and the fiction. And often they are mixed these days.

You try to keep clear which one you're in. Yeah. Did going to such a prestigious school kind of give you anything that translated into the film world? Because, you know, I've heard certainly from certain people who went to, like, USC that maybe it was not disappointing, but didn't, didn't, you know, everyone's like, oh, I want to go to USC. And then you get there like, oh, it's just school, you know? I would say the same. I mean, I don't want to bash the institution. But I was not, I was not particularly. happy there for all kinds of reasons. I will say it has paid off twice in my life

in terms of getting the next goal I wanted to achieve. And one of those times was my first job in New York as a camera assistant. When I first, I moved here, I didn't know anybody, I had no connections,

and I knew I wanted to work in the camera department. And I just, I got the list of the union camera assistants, which you could just kind of get back then and went through it and just started cold calling people and saying, you know, here I am, I'll do a job for free to start, you know, just to show you I know what I'm doing, et cetera, et cetera. And a lot of people were said, yeah, sure, fine, some of your resume, give me another call,

give you another chance, but I didn't, nobody actually followed through until I called this one guy who said, yeah, send me your resume, here's my dress, because you did everything by snail mail then, this is the 90s. And I sent in my resume without, no expectations, it was going to relate anything, just as nothing else had. And he called me up like a couple days later after he got the envelope in the mail and said, why didn't you tell me where you went to school? I went there too. I have a job coming up this weekend.

I'd love for you to come on and be a loader for me. And I was like, yes, sign me up. So the network, the network part of that prestigious institution paid off in that way. It has been completely irrelevant pretty much since, except for, I would say, the anthropology part of it is not at all irrelevant to documentary work. But I didn't know that going into it, that that's where I'd end up. But so you never know how things are going to help you down the road. Yeah. I mean, I've found that when speaking to students or prospective filmmakers, that there's a lot of film school talk and it gets brought off.

on this podcast a lot. But I, you know, I went to Arizona State. And at the time, the film department had just started. I mean, there was a handful of us, and we were all fighting over a 5D mark two. Right. Yeah. And, but it was everything else that I did in college that was helpful, not necessarily the film school, which I think you can tell any student, like, oh, make sure to use that time to, like, make as much as you can. You're like, no, there's other parties to go to. There's, you know, people to date, new experiences. Exactly. And that all informs everything you're going to do later. So I agree, 100%. Yeah, I did actually take one of my favorite classes was, in fact, forensic anthropology, which is different because that's after everyone passes away, pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to deal with actual people, you know, and their feelings. Yeah, yeah. So what kind of films were you into? Because obviously you don't just hop into it because it sounds fun. So when you were, like, you know, coming up and stuff, what were the things you were going to drawn to? Well, as I said before, escapist fiction. So science fiction, fantasy. I mean, I have a list of favorite films, and The Matrix is definitely one of them.

You can talk to the right guy? Yeah. I mean, could you not love The Matrix? I'm sorry. It's just a, it's groundbreaking. It's beautiful. It's fun. It's good performances.

I mean, there's nothing wrong. with, I'm a leap. So that, that, that, my actual, my actual favorite film of all time is, which is a big thing to say, but it's kind of true, is nil by mouth, which was the only film that Gary Oldman ever directed. What's it called? Nilled by mouse, which is the way the British put, it's a sign, it comes from inside the movie and it's a sign that British hospitals put at, at the, on the, put of the bed on

that, like the chart. And it means can't have any food or water, like, no, but nothing by mouth. So that's how they say it, I guess. And that's where it comes from. And it's a very, I think it's possibly semi-autobiographical, but it's about an alcoholic, abusive father and his wife and teenage son and how they all kind of are dysfunctional and loving and taonic together in working class London. in, I forget which era exactly, it might have been,

it came out in the 90s, the film, I think it might have meant to have been in the 80s, it takes place. But what I love about it is, it's sort of observationally shot, I mean, it's very documentary-like. It's very intimate, and yet you're removed from it. Ron Fortunato shot it, and he used a lot of the long lenses, and it feels like it's improvisational, and like they just came up with it in the mall, moment, I did talk to him one day about it because I was so interested. And he said, no, everything was written in the script, choreographed, lit. Nothing was shot documentary style. Sometimes we had multiple cameras, but mostly we didn't. And, but you would think someone just, you know,

literally turned a camera on and left it there and they just did the scenes. It's so beautifully shot. Yeah. So, you know, that's, that, when I first started thinking I wanted to, you know, to be a cinematographer, that's what I wanted to do, was make movies that were that intimate and real and yet took you out of your own world. Yeah. For me, definitely, I had to write down mill by mouth because I never heard of that, but the Matrix for me. Yeah. Well, and I'm a big proponent of physical media. Oh, yeah. You probably have it hidden in there somewhere. Yeah, probably. But the Matrix definitely for me was, and especially being a teenage boy in the 90s and 2000s, like the Matrix and Fight Club and all that stuff was very like formative for me and I've got

every version of the Matrix in here I've got all the American cinematographer I had to like seek him out you know find some guy and you know Tallahassee who happened to have a copy and I'm like give me that one um that's awesome but yeah the same thing I that escape is the it it occurs to me that when you when you see movies like that that just feel so natural you um as a cinematographer you young you know, maybe inexperienced when you go, oh, wait, that's just a lot of rehearsal. I have no, I have nothing to do with the fun part that I was drawn to. Yeah. That's true.

And also you don't, I guess one thing that I think about a lot now versus when I first start is what is natural? Because I've gotten more and more attracted to hard light, striking colors. you know, interesting foreground, background, differentials. Whereas I think when I first started, I thought everything had to be soft and, you know, no unmotivated light.

Now I love unmotivated light. So sort of what is natural, and I think natural is what makes you feel like you're in the scene or in the movie yourself, and it feels real, even if it could be crazily artificial, and yet if it works for that moment in the scene, you buy it and you're part of it.

And that's more interesting to me now than some rigid concept of what natural lighting or natural look is. Yeah. I've said this probably 400 million times and I might as well put it on a T-shirt, but it always seems to hold true. And that is, to your point, emotionally correct, far often Trump's technically correct. you know, having someone go in there and be like, oh, that, you know, that, as you said, that light's unmotivated. It's like, yeah, but it feels right. It feels good. So I'm going to leave it in. Yeah, no, absolutely. I guess. I 100% agree. But I didn't, I will say I didn't feel that way at the beginning of learning how to see things. I thought it had to look a certain way to be

beautiful, good, correct, whatever words you want to use. And I didn't, I needed to see more things and see how more people came up with ideas and adapted to the, you know, as you said, the emotional content of the scene and to realize that that's what really mattered. Yeah. And

I think, you know, it is all about the emotional experience. For me, the cinematographer and for the audience who's going to watch it. And for the, if it's real people experiencing their lives in the documentary or if it's actors in a scene, it's all about connecting to what they're going through in the

moment that you're watching. So that's what I see my job as to make a space where that can happen and to create an environment where if you feel that, you feel that you're in it with them. And that can mean, that can mean all kinds of things. So it's sort of figuring it out in the moment with the people you're working with. Yeah. And as someone who bounces between narrative and Doc, as you said, like, are you able to use those kind of, because every, you know, every gig you ever get, someone goes, I want this to look cinematic. Like, all right, well, that's the whole, you, your documentary about race cars is going to be, you know, we can work on it. But are you able to kind of find ways to apply maybe some of those narrative tool, stuff from that narrative toolkit to your documentary work? Yeah, well, I think.

whether it be lighting or whatever? Yeah, no, I think it's a combination of actual technical tools that you learn. And one of the things that's great about working on episodic narrative TV or, you know, bitter budget stuff is you learn all these tools and these pieces of equipment that you don't generally get access to in the dock world, but you might find a way to bring in or do something similar that is useful. So I love that part of it. But I also think if you're going to shoot anything, narrative,

documentary, you need to understand how a scene goes together. And that seems more obvious in a narrative setting because you have a script that breaks it down and you know, everyone, you literally do different angles and you understand how it all, ideally, how it's going to edit together. But the shoot in the documentary scene, you need to understand that too, because you've got to give the editor of that film enough footage to work with to then put it together in a coherent fashion for the audience. Because no one's going to watch the raw footage, except the actor and the director. No one really wants to.

So it has to come together and you have to give them options and give them, whether it's cutaways or the things that tell the story you're trying to capture. If you don't understand how a scene actually does go together, you're going to miss stuff

or give them unusable. I mean, it might be a beautiful shot, but if it's not furthering that particular story of that moment, it won't make it into the movie. So, you know. I've said, another thing I've said a bunch is like I think every DP, especially today, should edit as much as possible and color as much as possible so that A, exactly as you're saying, you know how to, A, you know how to structure scene, but also what shots are you don't need. I think it's very easy to overshoot something and then you just, you have an A.E. who's really mad at you. And then B. And then with coloring, it's like, you know, no.

how the sensor works, it's kind of that boring technical shit, but it's, you know, understanding how you're, where your sensor breaks, what you can get away with in the grade, you know, it's, you got a hot wall, you know, like, oh, we don't need to flag that off. That can be windowed versus like, no, that's actually peaked out. That's done. We need to fix that, you know, all that kind of stuff. No, that's, that's all the key. And I mean, I, the, the specifics of the technical stuff is really boring to talk about, but really important to know, and understand on, you know, a basic gut level so you can manipulate it, how you want to, like you said. So, yeah, I also agree.

You should edit, even if it's just your own real, just edit something so you understand that. And I mean, if we don't understand the color work, we shouldn't be using digital cameras because it means you're giving that over to somebody else and whatever you thought you wanted to do is not what it's going to end up being. Yeah. Yeah, it's like developing a photograph. It's the second half of the process. Yeah.

I love the color correction. It's so much fun. Over the pandemic when, you know, obviously no one was shooting anything, I just immediately, because I was colored my own stuff. And I just started freelance coloring. And I love cinematography. I love being a DP. But color correction, color grading, whatever you want to call it, is not only more fun,

but way less stressful. You know, if someone goes, that shot sucks. It's like, oh, fuck, I worked on that one really hard. But if it's like that shot sucks, I don't like that. I don't change it. It's a knob. I don't care. Fix it for you. Yeah, it's magic. It's magic. I love it. Yeah. When, um, to your point about, uh, you know, working with people and stuff, or just like when we were talking about rehearsal, like, do you, how much interaction do you have as the DP with your documentary subjects? Because, um, you know, certain sets you're allowed to talk to.

actors more or less, you know, especially like camera operators might be a little more vocal than others. But in a documentary, like, it's that weird line that I've always been fascinated with about like how much artifice are we willing to put into this. You know, I think Michael Moore is an example of someone who's willing to put a lot of artifice into their documentaries to make it more entertaining, but also more like personal, I guess, to his voice. But I imagine not being the director and just kind of sitting behind the lens, there's a lot of give and take there. There is.

And what I've learned is that what I have to do in terms of interacting with the people I'm filming depends on them. And it's different every time. And I mean, what I said before about making a safe space, it's about making a place where they feel comfortable enough with me that they forget I'm there. So they have to feel that comfort level. has to come from somewhere, and some people really need to engage. They want to know about me.

They want to talk to me. They want to feel that I'm a human being like them, and they can talk to me. Some people don't at all. I mean, it's like I'm not there, and that's okay. It's whatever their comfort level is, and I have to figure that out as I go. And I learned that really working on a The docu-series about the sandhogs, the guys who build the subway tunnels under New York City. Oh, wow. The miners who literally dig the tunnels for the water pipes and for the subways. And I spent five months underground filming them doing this work. And before that job, this was a long time ago, but before that job, I was very much of the mind that as a cinematographer,

on a documentary, you didn't try to interact with the people you're filming much. That was the director's job. And I was supposed to kind of stay back and be quiet and invisible. And what I found with the Sandhogs was because it's such a dangerous environment down there, and they need to know that everyone they're working with, they can trust in an instant because your lives are literally in danger. I mean, all the time, it's just a, it's a dangerous environment. Mining is dangerous work. So they have to know each other intimately and feel safe with each other. And we as a film crew were no different. They needed to know that we were safe to have down there. And part of that for them was talking to me and figuring out who I was and what I was like. And there are other

things that happened. But I discovered I had to engage with them and engage with them, I mean, constantly. They talked to me while we're filming all the time. And the editors had to kind of work around that. But it's important to them that they knew who I was and what my state of mind was and how present I was in the moment because, again, it was a dangerous environment and they needed to know that I was paying attention to that in addition to filming and story and all those things. Like, you know, there's machines down there that can kill you. So you have to, you have to be aware. So that was a real lesson because at the beginning of that job, I didn't, I didn't really know that I, and it was, and I'm also, I'm not a particularly gregarious person. I tend to be

very quiet in most environments, so I wasn't, I wasn't anxious to talk to all these new people and to realize I needed to for the job, and it was important, and for telling the film, you know, making the film that we were, we were doing was a really good lesson that I tried to keep on every other projects since. And not that I have to talk to people, but that I have to be aware if they want to talk to me and that that's okay. And it's not going to destroy the film. I'm suddenly fascinated by what the technical challenges are of filming a bunch of minors. Because I imagine sound is going to be an issue. Light is going to be an issue. All of it.

You know, not distracting them too much. Yeah. I mean, it was a loud, dirty, wet, noisy. not chaotic, but busy environment. And we, this was, what was this, this was 2008. So we were shooting on the Panasonic DVX 100. Classic. Yeah. Classic.

That camera was, it held up so well in that environment, the water, the dirt, the dust. I mean, after a while, we started using rain covers on them all the time because they just kept getting wet. But other than that, you know, they had the solid state drive. no problems with that and they were small enough that I could so you know part of what was involved

was that we were climbing around these things called the moles which are the tunnel boring machines that actually did the tunnels and to get to the head of the mole you have to literally crawl on your belly along the conveyor belt that pulls out all the dirt

and rocks that gets cut up in the front inside the head behind the cutting face and they did that a lot because they had to repair the cutters that actually cut the rock. There's always something breaking, something that was slowing them down. They'd have to crawl in there and fix it.

And it's totally dark. There's no lighting, except for their flashlights or headlamps. It's hot, it's humid, it's filthy, and so I would just be in there with my camera with a little onboard light and whatever lights they were using kind of bouncing around.

And the sound of the machines, the jacks, that were, you know, cutting into the rocks, the water pouring, all these things. It was, I think it was probably a post-nightmare. I was a part of that. It was a great, it was one of my favorite projects to film. I mean, these guys were amazing, and they were so fun and so full of energy, and they were just interesting characters, all of them. They all had their own eccentricities.

and they were very once they figured out that they could trust us in that environment they let us film pretty much anything we wanted and we were just very welcoming and supportive

and yeah it was a long whatever it was five months being underground all day but I'm really yeah it was great I really I really was glad I did it that I'm just imagining

how see that has the the potential of looking really i obviously i haven't seen it that has the potential of looking really cool but the the dynamic range of the ddbx terrifies me for being under underground and just some of the dark areas were were pretty grainy i will say um and we were shooting 720 p we weren't shooting even full 1080 at that point so it was pretty and it's standard deaf i mean it's just it's as compared to what we do now was it 720 or 480 it was it 720 or 480 it was 720P, which is a 480, yeah, 720 by 480. Oh, oh, copy that.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's a tiny little image. Yeah, it's a tiny little sensor. And we're used to very different looking things now. But at the time, that was state of the art. And it gives it now, because I've watched it again recently, it does look, it gives it a grittiness that works for what we're it's not clean it's not sharp it's got a little bit of schmutz on over everything because there

literally was dirt on the lens half the time so you know it uh but i think it works for that story and yeah that's that's what you want yeah i uh i was lucky enough that in i think like oh six i guess my like grandparents had left me some bonds or something and i cashed in most of them and i got an excel too So instead of the DVX, I had the XL2, and I felt very cool for like 10 years. Yeah. I love that camera. I shot a couple of docs on the XL1, and then when that was a run, and then eventually got my hands on it, too, as well. Yeah.

It was for great cameras. They were little. They didn't weigh anything. The XL2 just sat on your shoulder, just fine. You know, I mean, they didn't have great with all the cameras. Well, what's fascinating to me is, like, I just did, like, not just, maybe like, two years ago. I pulled it back out, I still have it I pulled it back out of storage and I was just like

what is, you know, how does this compare to today's stuff? Obviously visually it's different but there's like some there like that lens the XL2, the standard lens actually all of them I think have like built in NDs built into the lens that you could toggle through

add SDI out on it like now you you got a fight to get that on any camera like most don't have it well I guess a lot of them have NDs now but red. It is fascinating how modern

the only thing that's changed really is the sensor. We kind of nailed it 20 years ago. No, I agree. Yeah. And the form factor

of a camera, I mean, they figured that out on film cameras much better even than some of the digital cameras were getting now. One of the best things

I did at Sunday dance this last weekend, I got to talk with the Canon R&D people. Oh, lovely. It was, I mean, it was like giving me candy. It was so much fun to tell them what works for me about the cameras and what didn't. It was just a great conversation. And I was saying to them, you know, the Aton just sat on your shoulder. Like, it was waitlets because the ergonomics were so good.

And that's what we need to get back to as opposed to these little boxes that we keep seeming to have to work with. And I know, you trick them out, whoever you want, but why can't it just start out as this beautiful product that just sits on your shoulder and you don't have to think about? That's what we, that's how, you know, people figured that out a long time ago. We sort of forgot, it seems. Yeah. Well, and so I, I, I, uh, when I started my freelance business, I got a C100 mark two. That's actually this camera. I got a C100 mark two. Then I got a C500 mark two. I got serial number eight. It was the first person in the U.S.

I first or second. And then I just got a C-70, which I love. But it is kind of interesting that Cannon has this dual mind where they want to be in the cinema space. So they're making, you know, like C-500 Mark-2, C-300-3 boxy cinema-style body. But, you know, like every interview that Canon throws me is always a documentary. They seem to be the documentary workhorses right next to like an FS7 or whatever. And I'm like, you guys just need to either make two separate cameras or just pick a link. Pick a lane.

You know, no, I agree. That's true. Yeah. And they do, they've done very well in the doc world. Yeah. I think because they've had meetings like they have with me. They've listened to people who are an engineer saying this is how I actually use the camera. You know, you might think about that when you make them.

Yeah. Hey, man, just grab the XL2 and swap the sensor out. Give me the exact same camera and I'd be happy. For the most part. Exactly. For the most part. But yeah. The, you know what's funny is I got to interview, it was Thorson Thilo, right, who shot Boy State? Yes. Yeah. So I got to interview him, whatever it was, two years ago. And I found that documentary fascinating. I think he also shot on Canon. and um but because uh this film is in sundance currently i girl state i did not get to see it so i was wondering if you could um i read you know some of the reviews online but i was wondering especially

for the listeners if you could kind of run us through maybe um what the documentary is about for people who don't know and then people who have maybe heard the interview with thor or maybe have seen boy state like kind of what the differences are and i know i'm from reading i know there's kind of pivotal differences between the two events, let alone the two documentaries. Yes, exactly. Okay, so Girl State follows, it's a political camp for girls called Girl State. It takes place in states all over the country every year in the summer. It's about a week long.

And it's basically giving girls a chance to come together. In this case, there were 500 girls, we were in Missouri, and learn how to form a government. They campaign for office. They vote for each other. They run for the Supreme Court, attorney general, all these different offices. And then they, that sort of happens for most of the week, and they have a brief period where they win these offices,

and then they do things in those capacities. So if you saw Boy State or know about Boy State, it's the same concept, except it's the girls. But what we found filming it was that, and the year we filmed, part of the reason we filmed in Missouri, was that year Boy State and Girl State for the first time ever

were on the same campus at the same time. So you weren't filming Boy State. And that had never happened. That had never happened before. Yeah. And that's part of why the directors, Jesse Moss and Amanda McBain,

who did Boy State, picked that particular Girl State program, the Missouri one. So that had a couple of different impacts. One, I mean, we were aware of, them. Obviously, Boy State happening. There are moments from Boy State that appear in the film,

but it was more the girls themselves were aware of what Boy State was like versus what their program was like. And there were pretty clearly some major differences that came apparent to them that they weren't happy about. And it becomes, in the film, it's sort of a, I mean, it's not even that small, but it's a microcosm of American gender inequality. and how you can see in boys' state that they are being prepared to take power and to run things. And the girls, not so much. In the way it's structured, and the kinds of activities they're given, you know, all these things. And the girls are vocal about it.

And that's a big part of the film that I think is important. Yeah. And that's one of those things that you don't know going into it is going to happen and be a major storyline. there it was and yeah and then at the same time you were I'm going to put blessed in heavy air quotes they were about to overturn Roe v. Wade

so now you've got all these women young women like that's got to be at the forefront of their mind and now that's going to be the whole not the whole discussion but at least I assume gives the documentary a pretty sharp point for which to pivot around Yes. So we were filming between the leak of the Dobbs decision and the official of returning

of Roe v. Laid by the Supreme Court. So it was very much on people's minds and the girls' minds. So they do talk about it. There's a case that they bring to trial, which has to do with it. and it's a real-time experience for them of what political power can and can't do and how it has immediate impact on their own lives. And that's, I think, I mean, for me, one of the important takeaways from the experience of filming it and from watching the finished film also is that These girls are, and this is the future. Right.

This is who we're going to be. And for them to experience something that tangible and impactful and impactful in front of us and see what they do with it because I thought they were phenomenal young women. And so it gives you, I think, some measure of, you don't hope at least, that they're going to tackle this stuff. And it's not that they all agree even on what the right way to tackle. it is. I mean, we had all kinds of political spectrum ideas going on and girls' state. It wasn't a monolith

with any standard. But they have, they had energy, they were motivated, they were engaged. They want to do things. And that, for me, was incredibly inspiring to see because we just don't get that many movies about girls.

Sure. I mean, women either, but I mean, girls specifically don't get a lot of presence in the adult world, and they should, you know. There's a whole, that whole period of being a teenager, being female, is a very difficult time. And it's when, because when you're little, you think you can do anything.

And the world basically doesn't disabuse you of that notion until you hit teenagehood. And then suddenly you're given all these, you know, the women's lane. version of life in this society anyway so that's where these girls were and to see them trying

to take on their own power and be impactful was really wonderful and I hope that people take that from the film I think we were all trying to capture yeah well and I imagine too like being I also to put a

further point on it I fucking hate how we I don't know if it's just America or what but it's insane how quickly we decide that childhood is over now you're an adult whether it be 18 or 16 or 21 or whatever and then but we never there's no on rent for it you have a birthday and suddenly it's like you should know better it's like when did no one ever told me when did know better like I was just allowed to dream dreams and now it's pay taxes like yeah yeah I imagine that uh especially in like um Missouri like Because I think in the film, there's a pretty, you can see a stark difference between how well funded and how much import is put on the boys state versus the girls state program. And they're told that they have to dress a certain way and go out in pairs and all this. And that has, I imagine, got to put so much more of a fire under their asses to change the status quo. I imagine it feels almost like performative.

Like, okay, yeah, you get a girl state. Have fun at summer camp. There's an element of that, yeah. Yeah, it did seem that way. I mean, I don't want to, I think the people running girl state have incredibly good intentions. Sure. I think a lot of this is systemic and so deeply ingrained and comes from, you know, American culture. And that's what's illuminating about it.

Because here is a program designed to empower girls to run the country. And yet, even there. it's the same it's the same crap that we get everywhere so that was that was a real that was really wasn't eye-opening because kind of expected but it was important that that became part of the film and

and that became part of the story which is not I think what anybody anticipated going into it because none of us not as I'd seen in a girl state and I didn't shoot boy state so I didn't see that either but the directors they had one experience and now here was this

this new paradigm of what the program could be yeah and so when you guys like how did you get the okay were they like yeah absolutely should talk about us or was there like trepidation

on their part that maybe you might paint them in the wrong light or whatever yeah I wasn't part of that prosper of the process what Jesse and I've said is they looked at a lot of programs a lot of different states and part of the determination was the ones that were open

to having someone come in and film. So I guess Missouri did say basically immediately, yes, we'd love to have you. And then there was the added bonus that the boys and girls' and girls' states were at the same place at the same time and that sort of made it the obvious choice. But they did look at other programs

and I think not everyone was on board. Sure. And the Boy State film was in Texas, right? Texas, yeah. For a third film, are you going to analyze both of them at the same time? Yeah, yes, I'm going to ask that at the Q&A. What's the follow-up? And I was it?

Justi said something about, I guess, like, if they do a completely mixed program as opposed to, you know, ideally if that ever happened, that that would be the third film. And Amanda was like, nope. I've had enough. Yeah. And she was joking, but it was a funny moment. Yeah, I don't know. know what the

next stage would be if you made a trilogy out of it. Sure. There's unanswered questions to follow so I don't know. Well,

and everything has to be a franchise as we know. So you got to... That's right. You got to set it up. Yep. Yep. So what was the

kind of shooting package going in? You know, were you able to light anything? You know, were you just micing everyone in arm's reach and then hoping for the best?

You know, what were some of those challenges and how'd you overcome them? Sure. So I should start by saying there were seven of us. We had seven cinematographers. Damn. Yeah.

All right. I was one of seven. And that was a unique and it turned out to be, I didn't know going into it what that would be like because it wasn't, it wasn't that there was like one DP and six operators. We were all cinematographers working together independently and simultaneously. And that's not how things are generally done. Right. So I didn't know going into it what that would be like.

and it turned out to be a lot of fun. So the idea was each DP with one sound person was paired with one girl, and you stuck with that girl throughout the course of the camp, so that that girl would become comfortable having you around and having the camera and the blue like and, you know, laughs, all that. If it was the same people every day,

you know, the theory was that the girl would get more comfortable more quickly, which I think did work. And also it helped in keeping, you know, if you stay with the same girl, you know what's happening, you know what did happen, you know what things are going to be important next because you saw it, you know, today, so tomorrow you'll know what to do. Whereas if we were jumping from girl to girl, you have to kind of fall into that story and you don't know the backstory. So it all made sense to me. And the fun part was, so each day we would go out independently with our girl was whatever things they were doing. But then we had this sort of base camp where all the equipment was and where the directors kind of were captaining the whole thing. And we would check back in for meal times, for breaks, but also to sort of download what happened, literally download the footage, but download what we know we just shot to Amanda and Jesse, so they were on board with what was happening. And we could connect with each other as DPs and say, you know, how is this equipment working for you? What are you finding? What is, what's

what's working, what's not, what's hard, and to have that kind of interaction and then be able to immediately implement what you learn from your fellow DPs when you went back out was really great. And also just the sense of being a team, because it was a very long, I mean, thinking D.P is generally a pretty lonely situation. You're the only one. And you don't get to learn from a lot of other people. You have to figure it on your own. So to have that group there and to feel like you were part of this team that was, you know, pending something out like this big octopus, but then came back in to reconnect and rejuvenate was great.

I would do it again. And also the energy of that many creative, talented people, all in one place, all with lots of great experience, great ideas. You know, again, it's just you don't get that that often. I mean, you always get creative people, but not who do exactly what you do right there where you can say any of them. So, you know, that thing you've got on your camera, what is that? Why do you have it? How does it work?

And you can say, oh, well, this is my actual light meter that I would put on the lens or whatever it is. You know, if they're whatever a weird little thing that people have, because everyone has their idiosyncratic devices that they've managed to meld together to be the perfect rig. Yeah. You know, we had seven people, and none of us had the same rig. None of us operated the same way. So that was fascinating because when you watch the film, at least I thought, you wouldn't know that. It doesn't look like seven different people. It looks pretty seamless.

So that we were able to achieve that, you know, I think that is a testament to how well we communicated with each other. But also how there are just many ways to solve the problem. there's no one right way whether it's how you rig your camera as to how you physically move in the room there are lots of roots to the same end so

were there any rig things that you stole from anyone else for your future work I put on a follow so I normally you know we all plug our own focus and it was a lot of focus playing because we were we were shooting on primes on Sims.

What lenses? We had the Canon C&E Prime, Cine Primes. That's nice. They are nice. And I had, I shot on the 50 mil for the duration. You were on the C-500? I was on the 500 Mark 2, yep. Which I love, I think it's a great camera.

And I love that it's, you know, it's modular and you can trick it out or make it small, or whatever you want to do. And I, these days generally operate shoulder-mounted because I can see focus better that way. And also, I like how it just kind of become as part of your body and you don't have to think about it. So what I was going to say was the pulling focus part of it on a prime, you're doing it a lot. And especially with primes, you kind of hold the frame longer and let things move within it as opposed to constantly shifting yourself. It's just too much movement when you don't have the luxury of zooming in or zooming out to adjust. So there's a lot, we talked about,

all this, all of us together before we shot anything about how we were going to approach this. And, you know, the idea was hold shots longer, let scenes play out naturally, you try to get things so that they can cut it, but it's more about what's happening within the frame. So you're shifting focus all the time within that frame as people move or talk or whatever. So I ended up putting an actual follow focus on, which I generally don't do. I just kind of do it on a lens with a zoom. was easy, but with a prime, it's going around a little more, at least the ones we had. And there's just so much of it that having the focus handle was a major plus. Yeah. Yeah, I tend to

not use follow focus. Well, because like, especially on like C70, C500, the auto focus is really good. So if I'm ever using a stills lens, I just rely on that. But I find that I tend to shoot handheld. I have like a pad that I put on the back that actually hold. holds the V lock and then I just go straight into the thing because you know bricks don't and I'll just keep that real close to my chest but if I've found that if I use a follow focus I put weight on it like I try to hold the whole camera on the follow focus and then you end up jarring the lens you're shifting it off the base plate or it just doesn't work for so I'm always hand but I shot a fashion

commercial for this company P&co the good friends of mine in the UK and I was I had Sumerase, which are basically just modded, sinis. And, yeah, doing those huge racks off the barrel is a pain in the ass. Yeah, yeah. And you just don't get there fast enough. I mean, by the time you get in the focus, the moment has already happened. And that's a little trash. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's interesting what you say about the, I mean, I did, I'm shorter. So having it on my shoulder is generally a pretty good level for unless people are super tall. I can kind of get everybody. Yeah. I did love, like when we were talking about the Panasonic DVX 100A, you know, it was little and you could do this and this and move it around. And that's great.

But with a bigger, heavier camera, I kind of need to have it somehow attached to me. And down here is generally too low for unless some people are sitting down. So that was one of the things that was interesting with the 70Ps. Laura Hudak was one of them who's quite tall. She's a good six inches taller than me. And for her, being on the shoulder is too high most of the time. So she had it built differently and used it more down here, like you were saying. But the results match really well.

Yeah. I saw this great, I don't know, have you ever heard of the hip shot? Yeah. Yeah. I learned about that from the Parts Unknown DP, Zach Zamboni. And I'm like, man, I have you ever heard of the hip shot? I kind of want to get one of those, but I, too, am not that tall. I'm like 5'9 on a good day.

So it's like even me going chest tight is still like a little. I kind of like shooting low, though, and I keep, I get a lot of notes from a lot of direct, like, can you just just a little higher? And I'm like, but it looks, I like seeing the ceiling. Like I watched too many David Fincher movies. I need to go up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It always makes it more interesting when you go lower.

I think so. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. What was a, what was your guys's media, man? management system like, because I assume you were shooting XFAVC? You weren't shoot raw, yeah. So, but you're still burning through cards. Yeah, we were burning through cards.

We only shot, we did shoot the interviews full frame raw because those, we had two dedicated cameras. There aren't that many interviews in the film, but we did, all the girls got interviewed at some point. So we had one space where we set up two cameras and lit it, and they were just dedicated, and those were full frame raw. Everything else was 4KXF, ABC. So, right, yeah.

Still using the full sensor, or were you doing the Super 35? No, we're using Super 35 at that point. Yeah. Oh, okay. So, um, I'm going to say, uh, what did you ask me? The media management. The media management, yeah. So we had two DITs who were just burning through all that footage, you know, checking it,

storing it, making sure they, they helped with the Lutz, they helped with our saying they were great. and we had two camera assistants also bringing batteries, lenses, whatever needed, you know, tripods, whatever we needed. I mean, the bulk of the film is Veritaine, that's what we were doing all day, and it was all available light, and, you know, there wasn't much to use. It was, you know, on your shoulder or in your hand, whatever you chose to do, just the interviews were, I guess some people got some sort of, you know, beauty shots of the environment on tripod, but I tried, I usually tried to grab those on the fly

as I was going on. Were you a big card team or little card team? Because there's, there's competing schools of thought. You know, if you have a big card and it gets corrupted, you're screwed. But also small cards are swapping in and out, you know, 100 times a day. Yeah, I'm kind of, yeah, it's a good question. I guess I'm fairly big. I mean, I have 512 get cards, which is like under 40 minutes, I guess, at that.

On the Super 35, yeah. Yeah, because full frame, full frame max up ABC on a 512 on the C500's like. It's like 60 minutes. Yeah, 67 minutes or something like that. No, it's nothing. It's not doable.

Yeah, so I like, I mean, 50012 seems like a good, because I agree, when you start getting the big, huge cards, I get nervous. I have been too terrible. Yeah, well, I mean, that's, it can great. And it's also nice not to have to swap and not to have to download and all those things. I do get, I worked on one project where we shot 2K crop and I was using a Super 16 Zoom the

whole time, which I love. And I like to talk more people into doing it that way. Yeah. But it meant the entire day was on one cart because it compresses it quite a bit, which was great in a lot of ways. It was also a little nerve-wracking. So I don't know. I don't think there's any magic answer to that. I think it's just what you're heartful with and who's doing the downloading and how often. Yeah, yeah. I have found that those CF Express cards are pretty robust from multiple manufacturing, you know, OWC, row grade, whoever.

However, one time, I'm just bringing this up because I have them here. This company, NKI reached out to me and they were like, hey, would you like to try these? And I go, great. They sent me two. And then I used them in my C-500. And then I put them in a Raptor and they bricked. Oh, no. And there was no absolutely they don't mount on the computers I tried putting it back in a raptor to like format didn't work they're just dead and then I went to go email them and be like hey and the company's gone so clearly clearly something happened yeah there's some Chineseium you know product I keep them here for no reason I'm hoping one day someone smarter than me can like revive them but because I got two of them but yeah cautionary tale luckily it was just review footage that was on them not.

not like something serious. But I did want to know what was kind of, was there any kind of like visual references you guys used when, was there like any look development or was it kind of more just like we're going to shoot this thing and, and just make it look nice? Yeah, well, I think it was, we had this big meeting, big Zoom meeting of all the DPs and the directors, you know, before we started shooting. And we talked about the couple things. One, you know, we wanted it to feel, you know, beautiful and natural and all the usual things.

But I think a lot of it was about letting the energy and vitality of the girls be what motivated things. So, in other words, it's not about the operating and it's not about cool shots. It's about letting what's happening happen and sort of like bearing witness to that with the camera. and we talked to we did talk a lot about lens choice and looks part of what happened was and and this is this is the kind of thing that I always think when people talk about well I picked I picked this vintage beautiful lens because and I'm thinking great do you have the budget for that are they available on the dates you're going to shoot do they have enough of the different sizes that you because we had seven sets of lenses we needed to have so insane and you just can't

get seven sets of anything. So that's part of why, I mean, I think this, the canon, uh, sending lenses are beautiful. I'm glad that we got. But for the reason we got those is because we could get at seven sets of them. So, you know, all these things come into it. It's not, and we could afford them. It's not just like you get your heart's desire to create this incredible look. You have to weigh all these other factors.

And, um. And you can get them in EF. Yeah. Yes. I mean, I don't know if we were using EFRPL time. I generally have my camera set in PL because my lenses are all pale, but yeah, exactly.

They come both ways. They're very versatile. They're beautiful. They're clean. They're not too clean. They have some character. The fall off on them is, the focus falloff is just so like,

there's just nothing distracting in the back. You know, some of the old vintage lenses especially can get real chattery back there. That's true. Yep. and very uneven. So you're not, you have very different things happening

in different parts of the frame. And you're right, they're very, they're very, um, consistent. And consistent went to another,

which really mattered for us, because we had seven DPs and we weren't all using the same kind of lens at the same time. And everyone's, you know, styles are different. So, so that was,

that was important. Um, we didn't, we had, so in terms of the look, when we had a lot that we were using that the DTIs developed. And I was, the girl that I was following was the only black girls

that we followed of the group. There was another girl who was Indian American. I think there was a Latina girl. I don't know if she. I can't remember. I saw in a review, someone described one of the girls as fiery, so I'm going to assume it was her.

She might have been the one they were talking about. Yeah, there were a bunch of fiery girls, though. I just, every time I read that in something, I'm always like, oh, I bet they were a Latino. No, I see you're saying. Yeah, well, there is that. Well, that's where I was going to kind of going because it was a very white environment.

The girl's state program, I think, boy, I say, too, I think you're kind of invited to go, and it's usually people in the top of their class, and people already have a lot of privilege. It tends to be pretty white, at least the one I saw. Sure. So the girl, my girl, was Toshi, and she's in the film, and she is, she's of, you know, Nigerian descent, her parents are first immigration, first generation immigrants from Nigeria. And so she had a different experience of girl state, possibly. I mean, everyone's experience is different, but as she talks about it, as a black girl in a sea

of white face it is, it's a different thing. And I was very aware of my responsibility to try to capture that for her, because I think it's an important part of the story of the film and of the experience. And so I had to be very, you know, sensitive to her perspective on what was happening and what she was picking up on, which is necessarily something I'm going to pick up on. So I had to be very open to that. And, oh, the whole reason I got into this was the look question. So they developed this, this Lut that we were all going to use. We all had the same Lut. And the thing was, I didn't find that it was rendering the darker skin as well.

She needed more light. She needed more love. And so I talked to the VITs about it, and we tweaked it a little bit for me. Now, obviously, when the color correct, all of it's going to get smooth out and seamless. Right. But for the, for me to be able to look at it, as I'm shooting and say, this looks okay, I needed them to tweak the law a little bit. And the same with the interview lighting. I had to adjust it to get a little more onto her.

It wasn't, it was set up with a white girl. Because she has very dark skin, it's going to look different. So you have to give her a little bit more attention. Yeah. And I think, I mean, it's just things that you learn. And it's about making people not look like anything in particular, but look like themselves. Right. I feel like themselves.

That's my goal anyway. So, it's, I think there was a lot of layers to this experience that we really needed to be aware of. And again, it helped having seven of us talk about it, share, to come, you know, come back at the end of the day and say, what was your day like? you know what what did your girl experience and hear from them you know well this is what happened and she had a meltdown over this and I'd be like well here's where I happen with me and getting that feedback to know kind of where you were in the larger story was really helpful yeah it is it's kind of wild to think but not surprising but like I remember reading an article I think it was like about one of Issa Ray's shows maybe or something like that where

people were marveling at how like oh they finally lit Black people like well, you know, because we were all just applying the same lighting techniques to everyone. And that was maybe like five years ago, maybe less. And it, I was just like, that's fascinating that it took. I assume digital cameras and LED technology probably makes it easier. But I remember one of the things being that it's just like broader because it's reflective, right? Like white skin, you know, it eats the light, whereas darker skin reflects it. So you need to use like much larger. softer sources to even kind of model the face. Did you find that or like how are you approaching the framings that you were getting to try to do that? Or was it just exclusively in the interviews that you were having to modulate? No, I had to be aware of exposure or I had to be aware of, you know, like hot windows in the background so that you're not trying. You're not pushing the dynamic range too far to keep to keep her looking the way she should look. like herself.

But it's interesting what you say about the reflective thing, because what I find is that everybody's skin is different. Sure. Aside from pigmentation, like some people are just reflective. It just seems to emanate light, and you don't have to put much on them. In fact, you have to take stuff away because they're just bouncing light all over the place. And other people, they seem to eat, like you said, eat up and you can't throw enough on them. So, because I'm, you know, the number of all the interviews I do, lighting for one person and then someone else sits down, it just never works.

You've got a light for the person. You can get the composition. You can get the positioning, but the actual amount of light that you need is, it's never the same. But I found that, oh, I know I was going to say, sorry, I lost my train of that. No, I do it all the time. about people just figuring out how to light darker skin. I don't know if you ever saw the Bernie Mac show. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I always thought that was one of the best-looking shows I ever saw. And part of it was incredible lighting, and they knew what they were doing. Big part of it was the production design. Because every room in his house was a dark wall. It was purple, red, orange, you know, beautiful, dark, thick colors that really were rich. and against which the darker skin looked phenomenal

because it wasn't all this white wall behind you, bouncing light everywhere so that you're just sort of a silhouette against it. You're part of the tapestry of the room, kind of. And I thought it was a gorgeous-looking show, and I don't think you got anywhere near enough credit for it. But I think you have to be coherent in your approach and inclusive of all the departments. whatever color skin you're lighting,

but especially if it's not a traditional, you know, Hollywood look, you've got to think about things like what color are the walls, what color of the furniture, what kinds of clothes are they wearing, makeup, hair, all these things have to be tailored to the person. And we haven't done enough of that, I don't think, in this industry to, I mean, a number of ways in which we have not done enough are legion.

But these are basic, you know, these are parts of the craft. And we have to get that right, too, in addition to including people and in telling the stories, you've got to make it look great. You know, it's got to be tailored to those people and those stories. Well, and I'm the kind of person who loves when it's time to learn new stuff, you know, which might sound ignorant from the sense of like, oh, we should always have known how to like, but like they didn't, that wasn't a class and call. college. You know? No. They didn't, or it wasn't even brought up. Um, so, you know, instead of being like, oh, no, fuck, we've been doing you wrong. I'm like, oh, I get to learn new skills, you know, uh, which is always exciting. I was wondering, do you, uh, more broadly, do you have kind of a, uh, like a go to interview lighting set? What, you know, maybe like, even just corporate

stuff or whatever. Like, do you, do you kind of have like a philosophy when going into an interview lighting? Um, or preference, maybe. Yeah, I like, I do like soft sources that as big as I can get away with. I mean, documentary, you know, transportation is a big part of it, so you have to have things that fold down. But a nice big soft source, then I can place either more frontal or more solid, depending on what the person's face can handle and the nature of the look, the director, and the film is going for. I tend to like things a little more frontal because I just think I like to see people's faces

I like to see their eyes I like things to be lit I like to see things so I mean what I've been using lately is a 2x4 light tile which is it's a beautiful light

and it falls down and it's light and it's easy to transport the ballast is a bit of a thing but you get used to that so and it's a big it's a big soft source and I can put it where I need to usually because it doesn't weigh much and that is very versatile and then sometimes I'll do I mean there's always some kind of fill probably needed sometimes it's just a light sometimes it's just a balance card and then I'm always I don't have any rules about back lighting or back edges if you need it you know if it makes it look better yeah I'm not

like it has to have a hair light or it has to be this. It's always about what looks good in the space that you're in and the person that you're filming, do they need separation because they're wearing a black shirt and the background's black. I mean, whatever it is. I don't, I think, because I didn't, I didn't go to film school, I learned on the job, and I learned some DPs that I assisted. So I learned that, or the way I learned was taking in where you are

and adjusting to that as opposed to saying I'm coming in with X, Y, and Z and we're going to make it that. I never had that. I didn't work with people who had that luxury generally.

They were always making do with what was available. So that's what I learned to do and to be flexible in my opinion about what looks nice. What do you hear? Well, I mean,

to be fair, like I've interviewed some of the, you know, most celebrated DPs in the world and they all seem to have that kind of you know obviously with narrative you have some kind of plan but like a lot of times especially on locations a lot of the time they just go yeah you show up and then you 50% plan 50% whatever

the room's given you and uh it's so it's so funny because you spend all this time thinking you need more gear and more lights and more control and it's like that's window light a little modification that's good i i will say i was going to ask you about the backlight but you brought up i i have become kind of addicted to the shadow side scratch not a full hair light but just the little, I kind of, yeah, I like it. Even if it doesn't make sense, I'm kind of like, I just, for me, it's like invisible enough. Like, no one's ever looking at that as like, why isn't that motivated, you know? Right. And actually, I tend to like it more when it's, there's no reason for it because then

it's just this little beautiful thing that can define the face a little more. And yeah, I agree. I think it could be gorgeous that way. And it doesn't have to be, you know, Like, there's a backstory to it. It's just a light. Yeah. I can't remember who, whose quote it was, but someone was, some famous DP was like, someone asked, oh, where, where's that light coming from? He goes, the same place the music's coming from. Exactly.

I've heard that. Yeah, I don't remember who it was, but that's like. We'll say Conrad Hall. Fuck it. Yeah, that's right. Sure. Well, I've, I've kept you a little over time, so I'll let you go. but I really appreciate you spending the time with me.

This was fun. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Well, I love to hear that. And any time you'd like to come back, please just shoot me an email, and I'd love to have you back on. Oh, great. Thank you. No, this was great.

I'm so grateful. Yeah, no, of course. Thank you. Yeah, all right. Well, I'll let you go. Okay. Take care. Me too.

Bye, bye. Frame and Reference is an Albot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distribute. by Pro Video Coalition. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can go to frame and refepod.com and follow the link to buy me a coffee. It's always appreciated.

And as always, thanks for listening.