Frame & Reference Podcast - 143: "Constellation" DP Markus Forderer, ASC BVK

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

This week on the program we've got the wonderful and lovely Markus Forderer, ASC BVK on to talk about his work on the Apple TV+ show Constellation! Selected as one of Variety's 10 Stars behind the Cameras, the German born cinematographer who graduated from University of Television and Film in Munich, has quickly developed an impressive resume of visually unique and critical acclaimed feature films. HELL marked his feature film debut, earning him a number of awards, including the 2012 German Camera Award for Best Cinematography, the Best Cinematography Award at the 2011 Sitges Film Festival in Spain, and a nomination for Best Cinematography Debut at the world-renowned Camerimage Festival in 2012. Markus has since shot Mike Cahill‘s sci-fi drama, I ORIGINS, which was awarded at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival with the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize. He then followed with I REMEMBER which premiered at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival and won the 2016 German Camera Award for Best Cinematography. Markus collaborated with director Roland Emmerich on the landmark period drama STONEWALL, which premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, and the Sci-Fi blockbuster from 20th Century Fox INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE. After shooting the pilot for NBC's RISE, he shot the pilot for the sci-fi horror series NIGHTFLYERS, by GAME OF THRONES writer George R.R. Martin and the sci-fi drama BLISS directed by Mike Cahill. His recent feature film RED NOTICE was released on NETFLIX, the action-comedy directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber marked the streamers most watched movie of all time. He recently wrapped CONSTELLATION a sci-fi drama for Apple TV+ as well as the period film SEPTEMBER 5 produced by Sean Penn. In 2019 Markus became the youngest active member of the American Society of Cinematographers. 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 143 with Marcus Forder, ASC, BVK, DPK, DP, of Constellation. Enjoy. I used to be a magician. I still know some techniques, but I'm very reluctant on doing it. Do you have a magic connection? Oh, yeah. I mean, I got my dad.

So yesterday, I'm Larry Fong did a podcast. Right, magician. He's so fun. I went to the magic house, actually, the other day. A friend of mine was from Germany. He was performing for a week, so invited me. And it was quite fun. Even if you understand the mindset, right?

Usually you can see the next step coming. and there was this mentalist reading minds and he picked me as a participant and I'm so glad because I would have not figured that one out it was like I could read my wife's thoughts and it was amazing, a really cool technique. Yeah. I feel like filmmaking and magic is so much in common, right?

It's all about directing, like especially cinematography, right? You're directing the viewers' attention and eye and a certain spot on the screen or misdirecting it. depending the show right well that was something me and larry were talking about was like the specifically the magic castle is like the only place in the world at least in the u.s i haven't really left um where like people willingly go to watch vaudeville and and you know like suspend like people walk go to movies so critically but when you go to the magic castle for

whatever reason you're like yep i'm a child again you know disbelief gone And it's so fun that it's actually crossed the street from the AC Clubhouse. Wait, where am I going tonight? You like whichever parking is cheaper. Yeah. That's really fascinating, right, the magic and filmmaking. And the early filmmakers were kind of magicians, right, like Millie S. And there's so much all up.

Yeah. I still think I've been trying to, this was something I was going to ask Larry about, but then we ended up just going on a role. Like, what are some of those things that you think you've been able to use as a cinematographer that might be tenets of magic? Because I think an easy one is just like, like, Larry had actually mentioned the Texas Switch is like the most classic. Yeah. But there's got to be a couple others, you know, Pepper's Ghost movie. Actually, like one of my early films, it's called Eye Origins, there was this accident scene where one of the characters gets split in half by an elevator.

And, you know, when you're in this production meetings, you think about technology, technique, and like the visual effects, people always like, let's put green stockings and make it the visual effects. And I knew the way we want to shoot it handheld and very teat and should feel, right? I said, like, there's a way, like David Copperfield has this illusion way split in half by a laser, right? Like we could, and I explained to the director if he pulled this off, right,

we're going to be a bit limited with the camera angles, but it's going to feel so much more authentic. and that's what we did. And I think producer back then thought like, I'm crazy. What about this guy doing here? But it worked out nicely, and it's so intense, because we can rack focus, which would have never been able to do with,

it was a green screen effect. Right. So yeah, we used that technique and all kinds of, like floating, like actually coming to a constellation, like zero gravity, there's, you know, like magicians, no ways to make stuff floats. So it's always interesting production meetings

when you bring up on a conventional technique. that the realm. I remember, who was it? I think Chris Angel had like a levitation that was really famous on TV and he released it on DVD and I got that DVD and the technique, because he could levitate like, you know, a couple feet onto stuff. And I was just like, that's, I have no, not a clue. And then you learn what it is and you're like, see, magicians at the height of what they do

are so clever and don't think. about boundaries literal or otherwise. And I often wish I could unlock that mindset quickly, you know? It's such a specific mindset, right? Absolutely right. And I always try to bring that into filmmaking because I think a couple of years ago, when it was still more practical effects and miniatures, people would figure out, find solutions for any kinds of challenges, right?

like and think outside the box now quite often you read something in the script you discuss it with the team and like oh this is going to be a good effect so people think it's going to be done in a computer right because it's nobody knows immediately has a solution for it but like that magician's mindset right you you tackle a probe like a problem and find a solution that's not very obvious but they're usually very clever right that's why yeah yeah I got to come up with better questions about that because I've been thinking about that for a long time because I think there's a lot of like you said there's I mean some of the original filmmakers are magicians but a lot of DPs either had interest in it's either magic or architecture I have found seem to be like the two side hobbies interesting yeah I want to magic and movies yeah well do you uh normally I asked I asked this at the beginning of But have you been watching anything cool recently? I have my question.

I mean, I've watched Dune 2 a couple times. And I'm in wrap on something news. I'm watching all kinds of cartoons from the 80s. Oh, nice. But I can't name any specific one. Sure. I had seen in a couple interviews you're a pretty big Greg Frazier fan. Yeah.

He's amazing, right? Like what he, like, especially June 2, is like, I'm such a, I'm so much into lenses and, like, what he pulled off with like layers and embracing, right? Did this, like, when you look at the original material, like, or somebody writing a sandworm visually, this couldn't look like cheesy, right? Like in the first one, or like the original. They pulled it off like so tastefully, right? and it feels it's captured by a human with a camera, right?

It's not this trap on some of the big productions is that you end up on a big techno crane and do this smooth, sweeping, perfect, glossy shots but this felt textured and just, it's a brilliant artist. And a great mind, right?

Like also here's an engineering mindset and always eager to embrace new technologies. Yeah, the expect, like, there's certain DPs who seem to really like understand realism. I don't know how better to say that, which does not make me a good interviewer. But like the idea that certain films, you know, that they'll be like, for instance, I know you guys talk to Scott Kelly about the space stuff, right? Because you want it to look real.

Some people, you'll watch a space movie and it's just like snap zoom. and you know flying around it's like or or certain like monster movies you know the camera's like helicoptering around that and it could either be on a helicopter or it could just be a 3d animation that no human would ever do and it does in my opinion affect the audience's perception of the material definitely yet it's right early on in reproduction like I watched some other references and of course gravity had such an impact right on on shooting space but it's this perfect amazing, brilliantly done

warners and complex moves. But I felt like, I never felt at home with this kind of mindset. And that's why actually this conversation with Scott Kelly were so influential. He gave me access to some of the private videos. He shot on the ISS

and I kept asking like, how do you, I was always fascinated how do astronauts fill themselves, let's say in their off time, right? They recording stuff for their memory or kicking out. Or they also, they document obviously the experiment they shoot and I always felt like this is the way to approach this like as if our cameras we're one of those room members we're floating in zero gravity how would you shoot and people

always assume in zero gravity it would be super smooth but it's actually not the case because you're a hand holding a camera and there's usually no resistance yet what I created fireworks I did that that's happening all right I need to talk to the zoom people because that is not i've never seen the fireworks but i don't imagine i didn't even know that's possible um so yeah so basically when you're free floating like that's how it explained it to me with a camera and they film themselves sometimes there's no point of contact sometimes right so it's a lot of wibble you feel your heartbeat so what what she sometimes did to get the perfect shot is you just like you take his iPhone just gives it a little push so it really flea free floats and

And then you follow it. It's almost like a Staticam Gimble where you're not allowed to touch it because it would shake it. We barely maneuver it. And I thought this is so fascinating. And I watched a lot of references with my camera operators. And that's what we went for. Actually, is it handheld in space. That's how we tried to capture this following.

Noomi or like Joe's character, wherever she goes. But so it feels not shot by a machine, right, not by a crane or something like that. Right. Yeah, I guess I never thought about that because I would have thought. the same thing that they could just free float but i guess uh scientifically they're not floating they're falling so you know if you imagine jumping out of a plane and let it go that's what's going on but like uh also you know when you have a small camera what do you do you put a bunch of weight on it so that these little microjitters go away but there's you can't do that mass right there's

in zero gravity that's so interesting there's no weight but it's still mass and yeah something in your hand like a small iPhone that still moves even if i would be floating right now it still moves relative unless he really let it go um so that's what we actually did we had uh our stunt coordinator martin he was brilliant and we came up with riggs to float like him giving him a like a ron and then we could remotely operate it and with some of the more complex stuff like we flew him on wires uh because the whole set is like it's an amazing set handy nicholson our production designer he's like an iS expert like he literally worked on gravity and was nominated for an Academy Award for that.

But he really could build the ISS like to scale. Like we built it in sections, but to scale like super authentic at all this research. So the floors are not meant to be walked on, right? They're like men admit for zero gravity. And because they replicated it so authentically, it was very fragile. It would be like electronic panels on the floor and like. shelves and all kinds of stuff. So it's like, oh, you know, you guys got to

float through with the crane and say, no, we don't want to shoot with a crane, we want this handheld feel. So that's why we sometimes suspended operators or used like all kinds of techniques, like very smooth handheld, sometimes stadicam, gimbles.

And it was really, I think it was one of the most challenging things to shoot was that ISS set. But I think we really, I was always fighting to keep the set intact. You know, like usually your big films, you pull a wall to stick your crane in and, like, that you get this sense of claustrophobic sensation that she must go through, right, being alone in this,

even if it's quite a big station, it's still a very confined space. And I'm personally, I'm super claustrophobic, so I'm really leaning into how can I visually express my personal and how about claustophobia, like, and you lock yourself into, like, So use caps like I could never do that. Yeah. The, uh, what, how do you make something, something like the ISS? Cause I've seen footage of it, obviously we all have, you know, uh, how do you

make it the set look appropriate for the, I was going to say cool, but, you know, because other, because the real one is everything's just white and bright because it's a science station, you know, that's for scenes yet, not for contrast. So how do, how do you, uh, keep that looking real? realistic while still kind of staying true to the eyes or did that's a good red fine balance like in research you always there's all this real references and nowadays with in what it's on YouTube there's like amazing 4k and like NASA is amazing what they're sharing now 4k high res flights through the ISS so you can

do we do it also with VR goggles you see doing day and night especially I was trying to find night footage because that's really usually all we see is the bright, white, that's especially when they do like a live broadcast, they make sure it's very bright, right, to see everything. How can we find mood and it's also scary at times, that can't be super bright? So we obviously started with building all the lighting in the sets, it all feels like it comes from there, but it's all controlled, obviously, from a demo board, so it can do like flicker effects or turn off certain lights to shape the face.

And it's also with Scott was amazing to have them on. set so he was there for most of the ISS shoot and he would say like yeah this looks pretty believable i mean it's a bit dark darker than i remember it but sometimes especially in our story right she's fighting the clock the she's running out of power so every time the iss goes into the night side of the earth there's no solar power right there was quite fun to play with that having power come on but it's always the strike right how do you make something I think it's clearly a story. I feel like myself, as an audience member,

when I watch a film or a great show, if it looks one-to-one like a documentary or like real life, right? There's something fun finding a cinematic heightened version that you're into, hopefully, that gets grounded. And it's sometimes hard to say what's, I don't matter of taste, what's too much, but so we shot with anamorphic lenses, that's already very different how our eyes see

and controlled lighting. But I think especially for this, with the Cal, like the science experiment being, I feel like there has to be some presence, even if you don't see it, or that there's something going wrong because there's so many scenes later on Earth, which are like two people talking on their kitchen table, basically. How do we find a presence of this something larger than life going on, right, which is causing some of this interference? And that's where I think the anamorphic lenses came in, but also some of the lighting choices.

And I was actually inspired by the Northern Lights when we went scouting for all the Sweden scenes. They actually shot in Finland, which is right across the border that looks identical. It's a beautiful landscape. And we went there scouting and I saw the Northern Lights for the first time. It's unbelievable, right? And how can you capture this? It's almost impossible. it was 24 frames all we know online or Instagram this amazing super jacked up images they're like long exposures and and everything cranked up at Photoshop so by eye it's very more subtle I did ever see the northern life no it's somebody I've actually always wanted to do yeah it's really amazing at first like because it's so dim and you look up and you think like am I making this up is it really when you're waiting so long you hope it or does it happen and like I think it's I'm seeing it or not it's like bioluminescent sometimes

I saw one's bioluminescent waves and look out in the... That's the other one I really want to see. And they're like, is it really happening? I think I see it. But when it really happens to you, there's no more question. Like you, oh my God, this is it. Like the universe falls on top of your head. And so this cyan, blue, green light,

there was kind of something we carried through different scenes to give a sense of that greater presence of something. that mystery if it's not in a frame that my nerdy ass would have brought my color meter and waited for it to get real bright and then just be like what is it you know what is it? I think it's a way to dim

probably yeah probably color meter yeah but yeah we shot some real plates which we could use and that's amazing and we like some crazy lighting rig and that was the big thing in these cabin scenes the exterior

by the lake right it's all it's a real snow. We shot some of the interiors on a sound stage, but the exterior is all shot on location on a real frozen lake in a very remote northern area. And like, how do you light that, right? Like, you cannot, like with conunders and backlight. Like, it would all look artificial or you feel like a street lamp, no matter how big you go on such a scope. So I figured we have to do day for night, but then in that area, the sun, at that time of the year, the sun never comes over the horizon so you get this long blue hour oh interesting but when the when the sun is gone pitch pitch black you cannot imagine because the there is no other cities or anything

around and the sun like with the shifted earth it's really black so i knew with that couple of hours of blue hour like a regular blue hour and magic hour lasts like 30 minutes 20 minutes usually up there it lasts if you're lucky a couple hours which is very luxurious but I knew we had to extend that with working with children and complex stunts. So we built this massive moonbox that lights up thin air. Something I've never done before, like we

experimented with and I was an interesting conversation with producers like, what do you want to put that X amount of lights in a tower and light up the air? Because I didn't want to light the set or the actors because it would have felt lid so we we had like a scissor lift behind our main set we could shoot up and then it would light on top off like shoot out very strong focused beams

or LED lights in all directions got it above the frame line and then we had snow and slight fog so there was a slight layer of haze and snow or frame that gave you this super gentle soft top light for miles that was really magical and then we could for scenes where we wanted to give the present for the Northern Lights,

we could run some slight animation because of all LED lights to fanned out. There was quite a fun thing to play with. But also risky, like, it's never, I think it's never been done before like this. And like, I put everything on this one card

and then like, let's go with this one corner. Because there's no way, like I said, to hide like, you need in every direction we need like five, six different contours and put it out in a frozen lake. It's super complicated. So I said, let's go. very simple and try something new so instead you're they're not what what light fixtures were

they were they like c o b just it was uh vortex eight oh okay perfect so they're very they're like i think 12 degree focus speed they're very fairly focused yeah um i got vortex four back here no i love that we we needed color control because we knew we would start in the true blue hour where it's very blue and then as it gets darker we gently, every couple minutes, my gafer would measure and we would adjust to keep

the level consistent. So we had to adjust not just brightness, but also color temperature because it shifted dramatically. So with the traditional HMI or something this would have not, an HMI would have looked like the warmest golden sunlight in comparison to that blue sky. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you had all the vortex is essentially in a square aiming out, but not down. Yeah, all out, straight out into the horizon. And how big was it? Like how many units? That's big. I think maybe 60 units. 6.0?

Yeah. Damn, that is big. Yeah. We had them in two rows to get the power we needed. Now it's exciting. Now it's technology, right? Like NAP coming. And there's still LAD technology.

They're getting bright and brighter. At that point in time, it was the bruce. right is that's reliable at that temperature because we knew it would get really cold. There was off of like quite a challenge we had our production was amazing. They rented a cold truck for one week while we were still shooting. We were based in Berlin like this like Studio Babelberg. We shot all the space stuff there. And so for one week we had a cold truck in front of the set and every department could bring

their gear to test it. would handle that cold. So the sound guys were bringing their mics. The props would test their props. And at some point the camera department was scheduled. In the lighting department, we brought our lights or lenses and cameras. And some of the lights, for example, wouldn't work at a temperature. We had to swap them out. But the mortgages were great. And the cameras and lenses, like, I mean, we had little heating, like the heating blankets you put on the lens to keep them. Oh, like the hand warmers? Something like this. It's something custom that. Oh, you plug it into the camera that slightly keeps it just, otherwise the, you know, the fluids to keep the mechanics working would get so stiff that you could not pull focus anymore.

Right. But we tested it as all in it was actually worked quite well. Yeah, what gear doesn't work at that temperature? There's some Helidilis, some, let's say, no-cost LED lights that didn't work. I don't want to mean that, but that. Gotcha. And all, like, battery life, right? It's really challenged.

The camera department, we had, like, cooling boxes with the batteries, and then there's heating pads in those boxes to keep them warm. I think, like these hand warmers, the chemical hand warmers, just throw a couple in there. That helps already. Otherwise, if you walk around with a bare rig battery, by the time you go on the camera, you lost, like, half of your capacity. see like that's a that's something I wouldn't necessarily have thought of like yeah yeah not

not the batteries thing but just like having to put everything in an insulated box just to like try to get 10 minutes out of something but it was so worthy like the Michelle McLehran our director she was always pushing let's go there for real and not fake it with the screen I do to show this scope and that's was the then like the pressure on me like and knowing she wants to see the scope but how do we show that depth at night like most of the scenes are like all in episode one and two which I shot are night scenes if you would shoot a true night

you could also go on a sound stage and shoot in front of black duvetine right and at a couple of big trees or something but so that's why that day for night was so crucial and it's always like as a cinematographer it's very stressful you feel the light levels going down and you know like you know everybody

especially in the temperatures like maybe somebody has to go to the bathroom or you discuss something or hair fix you have to like be on your in game and everybody has to work fast and to maximize the real magic hour yeah

I actually had seen in a different interview that you were talking about like the importance of keeping technology invisible for the actors and I was wondering if you could expand on that but also in a situation where there's so

many technical considerations because of the weather, like, did you have to compromise in that goal, or were you able to find solutions to make sure that idea is stuck around? I think this is so important. Like, as I learned from a filmmaker I work with early on, like, Mike Hill, who's like very, comes from documentary. And that really shaped my whole mindset of because there's so much, we know, like, as filmmakers, there's so much gear and technology that you can bring on a set to shape a shot. But then first of all, you lock yourself in and you're like, you don't have, not just the actors have no flexibility where to go, but also you can't pan your camera when there's a light stand or some flag standing in the room, right?

So I always try to keep the technology as invisible as possible. And that's also how this moon rig came up because it's, we could just, it's a scissor rig, go straight up behind the house. The actors would not even notice, like, and it just gives this Jen for glow and we could shoot 360. even weirdly it's like a right as something like maybe you don't want avoid front light but we're basically we're front lighting the air but then it kicks back

like all these snow and ice crystals in the air they kick back backwards at the subject so then it becomes this ominous glow and the same with like we didn't bring any cranes or dollies and we went to so northern Finland there was this

big exterior scenes and then we went to Morocco for the landing side the two we said let's shoot it all handheld that it can very small and then we utilize drones as much as possible this new red Inspire 3

drone we had the first one before it came out with like amazing drone pilots bernand dynamic is like the drone team and this thing is like a game changer like it's we literally we didn't bring any

even for which effects plates where you have to lock off a camera and maybe shoot a 360 the tile or something, we would just hover this thing at like four feet and it would not move. No matter how strong the wind, it's like GPS stabilized somehow like it knows exactly where it is and stays there. Or you can program a path and repeat the path. It's like a motion control system in the air. It's really amazing. That's cool. I haven't really gotten into it because you know, obviously you need like a pilot's license now and everything. And also anytime I ever used a day you know you get like a client i don't do a lot of narrative right now but like

you get a client who's like oh we want to do a drone here and then i end it ends up just being an establishing shot you jack it up 30 feet you shoot a building or whatever and you're like there's that's it's it's it's so happy we did that yeah and but that's the thing right with if you go with a traditionally with a heavy lifter drone right to fly a cinema camera and your big lenses the effort it takes like safety and and cost and the time and you have to calibrate focus and you know it is then you want to fly maybe at like golden hour or magic hour and the window is so tight uh that's why this new drone technology is a game changer it's all built in its one system right a camera lens talk to each other you hop on a battery and you're you fly up in no time and the

fly time is amazing uh and we again like in northern finland we flew at such extreme temperatures like chasing this opening sequence in episode one when when numie's character just driving through that soil landscape and we traditionally would have gotten a helicopter for something like this but we used the drone we could fly like the signal strength is amazing

we could fly forever but then because it was so cold and at that height altitude where the drone is flying slowly the drone would start breathing mid-air but it created the best image ever like it was like little ice crystals formed on the front lens

it looked like the best diffusion filter of tapar scene like you can make something like this. Yeah, there's like sometimes fun, happy accidents, which I think is, it's like so many people try to control and plan filmmaking, right, in a way as good as you can, but it's so important, I think, to be open for happy accidents. Like the drone team, like, oh my God, we have to bring the drone down and wipe off that lens. Now this is the best thing I've ever seen and keep shooting, right? Like it's because those lenses are usually very sharp and our main lenses were like Panavision team. series enamorphics a bit softer those are nice so this was the per like the frozen lens was the perfect compliment for the anamorphic land you'll have to hit up uh schneider or someone and be like we need to figure out how to replicate this yeah the fort or frost the quarter frost uh the tell me if this is what you're talking about with the ice in the air because i one of the most kind of like semi magical experience of i had was at i think it was in steenboat colorado and i was

snowboarding. It was really early in the morning. And the air had there, there was snow floating in the air. It wasn't falling. It was just there. And then the sun would hit it and you'd get the full sun dog, you know, like the big circular thing. And I tried to take pictures. I had a film camera on me, tried that, tried my phone, tried to, you know, I couldn't photograph what my eyes were seeing. And I just had to explain it to people. I'm like, well, you're going to have to go, you know, some of these mountains at the right time and just. Was it some halo effect, basically? Yeah, yeah, yeah, off the sun itself.

I can see the photo if I could find it, but yeah. Yeah, I'm so into lenses and layers. Well, you got the database now, don't you? The database, I have heard of it, yeah. I'm a member. I'm in the beta. Nice. Awesome, awesome.

So NAB is going to go live, the big thing. Wonderful. With like hundreds of lenses. The never-ending stories, and every time I, like some filmmakers, they pick a set of lenses and they want to shoot entire life with that set of lenses. I'm the opposite. I feel like after one project, like I get very excited in preparation,

we find a set of lenses we want to shoot with. There are certain characteristics, but then on a film or like a show like installation, we shoot for so long. And every day you see the same style, right? Like Seth get kind of fatigued. So for the next project, I try to find something completely new.

And I always feel like when you look at camera assistants or like filmmaker's something with testing lenses and there was a flashlight in a test room, it's for flares. It's so hard to judge a lens unless you compare it side by side to something and that's how this whole thing came up. We have to shoot this with motion control

so you can really lead side by side. And I feel also the flare. I mean, lens flares are a bit maybe overused by some and can be distracting. But I think the flare, when you flare a lens, it immediately shows its character, right?

They can tell, even if I want to shoot, use a lens for a scenario that I don't want to show any lens flares, But in the test, if I shine a light in, like basically just pure light into a lens, you see how it reacts. Is it very neutral or clean or funky and low contrast, feeling clear, all this stuff? So even without seeing a face or shooting any test charts, you can get a good sense.

I was so like it flares like the fingerprint level of the lens. Like to reveal its DNA, right? I'm very philosophical about it. But that is a never-ending story. And we live in a day in age, right? where almost every other week there's new lenses coming out of the market, right, being re-housed vintage lenses or new anamorphic lenses, all these companies from Asia.

Really exciting time to pick the right tool for the project. Yeah, because I assume you're kind of the same mind as me, aside from workflow stuff, most cameras are a good choice. Yeah. But the lenses are always going to be more fun, I guess. I think, right, at this point in the time, if you know, if you expose properly, most, like, good, decent high-end cinema cameras, they're pretty much the same, like, or you can just start upgrading the lenses. Are you into vintage lenses? Oh, yeah. My secret for the longest time, before China started kicking out, like, all these lenses and people started becoming more aware of it. My secret was my set of Nikon AIS lenses. Because they were up, they weren't as, they're so good, and they, you know, obviously aren't as, like, fudgy. is the K-35s, but they still have a bit of that character. And so I still use those things if it's people looking for something.

They feel more like I love the Sigma Ciney lenses, but they're so neutral. So anytime someone, the fall off on some of them is really nice too. But anytime that needs something a little extra, even though sometimes it's a little harder because they're manual, I use those. Yeah. Now then, not many people have them on their radar, but they have interesting characteristics. And now I'm actually wondering with all, like, red and Nikon merging if actually people will pay more attention to that kind of glass. Maybe.

I'm actually excited to see if Nikon ends up putting the Z mount on because I know people are like, but I already have all these RF ones. I'm like, no, it's a shorter, you can, if it definitely use Z mount, you put anything on it. Yeah. That's probably good. That's exciting times, right? Even, like, I remember when I started filmmaking where I was an intern at a camera rental house

every years ago in Munich. And when you only had, like, professional PL lenses and it were really hard to get. And people back then tried to adapt to a long canon on Nikon lenses for PL. But now you can go on eBay, like as a young filmmaker or even experienced filmmakers, like me too, you go on eBay

and you find some really rare or unusual thing and maybe it's 50 bucks and you order it and play with it and think, oh my God, this has such interesting characteristics, so much more interesting that most modern silen lenses made, right, for 10 times of the price. Of course, the mechanics and stuff is not as reliable to shoot on a maybe $100 million project or that, but the fact that you can shoot a high quality image, I always say to young filmmakers, right, when it's starting and like we all work with the same tools. Like if you do a big, like I say, a hundred million dollar feature, for example,

or a little student film, at the end of the day, you're going to have a close-up with an actor or somebody sitting in front of a white wall. You're dealing with the same problems. Yes, you have some other challenges and maybe more resources from some stuff, but the basics that really tell the story, the performance of the actor, in those close-ups, it's all the same. We all cook with water. You just have to be creative and make the best with the tools you have

and find something that you respond to, right? That's always important not try to do something that you've seen other people do. And it's so interesting, right, it's a whole conversation with generative AI and all the people referencing, like, even, I mean, I think it's super fascinating shot that I use it myself and people referencing other work in a way, the time. The older I get, the more, like in my old days, I too, I would look at other films and screenshot stuff that I reference almost nothing. I go purely off the script and, like, intuition and discussions with the director, and you find hopefully your own

language and voice. Like, it's dangerous to rehash the, what's been there done before, because that's what AI really is going to be great at. Right. Yeah, I'm, I had some AI conversations with Jay Holbin and, uh, and Michael Keone, who does strata. He used to work at, he started light iron and shit. Yeah. Um, and it was interesting.

I had those interviews back to back. And it was interesting to hear how Jay was like all in. He's for it. And I, and I am not, it's, um, I'm on the team that's like, that needs to be. I don't know if I'm being, you know, overreactive, but it's like, why, why are these tech dudes spending so much time trying to automate creativity when I thought we were supposed to moderate, moderate, Jesus, automate tedium? Yeah. You know, which is more Michael's thing with Strata. He's like, why are, you know, there's a bunch of busy work that would that people don't need to do. Like, I'm cool with that. Yeah. And raising the, the amount of time you spend being creative. The idea of type, you know, because I've, you know, because I've.

heard people say like, oh, wouldn't it be great if you could just type in like, oh, Jurassic Park, but with Brad Pitt, and I'm like, no. I don't want that. Like, I want to see someone else's point of view. I don't want to see my, you know, could be, it could be a useful tool, but it's kind of early still. It's, it's fascinating. It's still on, especially from filmmaking and on bigger projects, there is so many things that seem complex and complicated, just because they're on a bigger scale. If you work as like a, one-man band you can do a lot of your effects is now open or but when you work on a sequence which has a couple hundred visual effects shots then a visual effect is very complicated and expensive

and sometimes then not even possible and then yeah it seems tempting right that you just prompt and say replace the background uh add snow and there it is right but we all know at this point in time at least right is you can create some snow at one shot in the next shot the snow will look very different and it may not cut, right? But I'm sure this is going to get solved. But I totally agree, right? I also thought if I imagine if our future so much is going to be automated and maybe most of humanity will be like artists for making music and art. That's how you. That's what I was promised in that from popular science in the back in the day. That's what, yeah. But then again, like maybe you have to see it as the tool we make art with the help of if we choose to read with the

help of assisting tools yeah see the stuff like that but like for instance machine learning being able to roto things quickly yeah select subject you know awesome yeah like no one likes to roto yeah but do i don't think that the roto artists should have their pay cut because their job is easier for instance you know something dumb like that like i just constantly think that the commerce side is going to interrupt i have this weird theory that like any Anyone who's not in a creative field wants to punish artists because they're not playing the same game, right? Capitalism in general is just a game we all agreed to play whether, well, it's not really we didn't agree, but you're born into it and you either agree or you do something illegal. And everyone who doesn't play that game makes other people frustrated.

You know, there are rules and that some people don't like rules. Most creatives don't like rules. Don't like rules. Magicians don't like rules. I mean, we'll see. it's not going to stop that development and it's going to maybe like I said, make

the tedious stuff easier and quicker and maybe we're getting more done in less time. That will be the ideal, right? But of course the system will maybe squeeze it that we're just doing more, hence it will work the same amount of time and you output more. But again, I feel like we're humans we're so trained to seeing

I just saw a video the other day with some famous actor explaining how how language large language models work and it was all done with an AI

actor now weirdly I cannot even remember the name of the actor they used because it was and you could feel it was at first dancing oh my God this is so authentic but then you see the little thing we are so trained to the human nuances and I think we want to see right it's a cultural thing we want to see real people

doing real stuff right and even that's why I think this I mean there's a flagship projects like when Christopher Nolan

shoots on IMAX film something to it is approved this was not Reddit they don't even want to scan the negative

to edit visual effects that's why they're using sometimes a cardboard background extra like to get it in camera and I think

audiences respond to this of course there will be maybe a big market where stuff gets done

cheap and it doesn't really matter but i think in general culturally we embrace that and we want to i think hopefully people want to pay for it to see something real like and see it see tv show with real actors and they were shot on real locations yeah um because over time i think it will be generic right like the making like they all learned from this model learn from what's out there so you can mash up stuff and it's also it's replicating our brain we obviously also only learned from what we've seen and make up stuff in that process but see i that's the i've heard that argument from people who say like oh it's it's no different than you know a person taking influences and you know oh i love this shot here in shot deck i'm going to use

that from a movie but the difference in my opinion is that uh the ai models currently try to replicate a one-to-one example of whatever you feed it more or less. This is inarticulate. But you and I can look at an image and both key on to something different that we like. And if I have like a whole set of maybe like five movies that I'm stealing from, I might pick five different things that those DPs did that interest me than you would. And I think that's the main difference. There's a dirtiness to it that makes it human. That's again the interesting thing, right? Like especially in like cinematography, right? It's an art form. You want to go, you read a script and you have an imagination.

Like I said, every, like five people would have five different versions in the head. But I was tried to go against the obvious, like, yeah, you could light the sprite and show and like this. What makes it interesting and the weird thing again is that these AI learned from great artists who think like that too, right? They might, yeah, I might not understand, but it's just table with a formula to replicate great art. um that's a fascinating shit but i mean like so one thing that was brought up was just like uh you know especially for younger creators or indie people like uh having you know pre-production is probably the most important step in any film but you might not have the ability or funds or uh network to hire a uh storyboard artist yeah so being able to type those in and get a visual

and then maybe mark it up, you know, yourself. So, you know, like, I'd rather do that. You know, that could be beneficial. But it's not necessarily putting that storyboard artist out of a job. It's that person couldn't get one anyway. Yeah, yeah. You know, so there's, there is. Well, it could be, ideally, it would be used by storyboard artists to,

to be more proactive or more refined. Right. Do a couple scribbles and say, give me five more shots in that style, stuff like this, right? But then again, it's only a matter of time that somebody says, now make this storyboard look for the real in a still and now animate that segment. Right. Then again, there's, right? Like, what is photography?

Like, it's really, we're capturing photons in a real scenario. That's why I think it has been animated film forever and also visual effects. That's why sometimes people are getting very worried about AI and stuff. But visual effects are around for a long time. And in the beginning, people saw too, like, oh, we might not be able to differentiate this building. exploding here was this real or fake and usually we can tell right and now it's getting maybe more accessible cheaper and super fast but fundamentally we could also replicate actors right like they tried in Star Wars for a couple of shots right in bad actors than analog around anymore

with traditional visual effects it just makes it easier cheaper that's why it may be dangerous for news and what that means what yeah society but I think for artists and filmmakers like we're capturing telling stories

and I think I totally believe in humanity in that way that we want every tribal group right we want to sit around

the fireplace and tell each other stories we want to hear a story from a really human and value it even more like that's why I think people like Christopher Nolan or

Diny Villeneuve or like they get such a standing because they're great artists and do something unique and hopefully everyone as a filmmaker we push ourselves.

Like the same with like working with Michelle McLaren on this show like she was the first time we worked together and we're almost neighbors but we never met and she worked on every big show

there is like a hundred people starting from the X-Files to like a better call soul and everything and that experience again being trained on seeing these different

genres and but then clashing in a way like with me I come from a very maybe different background I usually shoot feature films and and I was treated like even if it's a TV show like which has the eight episodes but I treated like a mini feature right like and we had obviously this I only shot the first two episodes with Michelle and this two other fantastic DPs like Frank Lam and the R& Sharf and we all collaborated and everybody made their own version of it like I totally embraced it and and told them too.

Like here, a couple of things we established. These are the lenses, cameras, and kind of certain things we pre-lit on locations already. But I say, make it your own. And I think that's the fun, actually, in a TV show, especially if you're watching as a regular audience member, you're not so familiar with filmmaking techniques. You might feel there's a little different, right?

It might not be able to put your finger on it. But that makes it hopefully richer than this, let's say, like a one-dimensional perspective from one person. Yeah, absolutely. That does kind of bring up when you're talking about Michelle's experience and your experience shooting features. Some I kind of enjoy asking people of your caliber is like what, when you're on your $100 million film, your Red Notice, your Independence Day, whatever,

or this show also looks very high budget, but you got stars in there, whatever. What are some of the things that outside of the color grade, make it look high quality like make it look like a film to you because because i experienced this as someone else but like i was second unit on a feature and uh a real one finally and uh it was just literally an alexa with uh atlas animorphics right yeah and i didn't even it was second unit so i barely even had a lighting hit you know and i just shot it and then i see it in the theater and i'm like why does that look i've shot that rig before that camera that lens combo in better situations. And it didn't look like a movie. So what do you think are

some of those things? It's a, it's a, it's really, that's a magical term. So I'm about make something look cinematic. And I'm yeah, right, trying to explore this on every product, especially when you want to mix up techniques because I'm, that's what I'm, I don't want to repeat, right? You don't want to repeat the same camera lenses and work for some people. They find something and then they hold onto it and do the same thing over and over. But unless, until it then is outdated, right? That kind of filming. I think it's really

it's a subjective point of view we're not objectively showing how the room looks, the face looks, the lighting looks. Everything is may I say designed or

the way, like right when we pick lenses and tune lenses the way they fall off and again going against the obvious lens designers right, want to make stuff perfect like even and sharp and flat and neutral.

And I always think like very neutral. What is this in art? This is like the death of art. You don't want to be neutral. You want to be warm or cool. You want to be all straight. You got to be one way or the other to make a point, like right in a neutral scene.

It's like, why do you watch this? Gray is not the most interesting color. Absolutely. But a lot has to do with lighting. And that's, there's people try to teach lighting, right? Like, with important lighting and this and that, or it's such an instinct. Like, I always can tell, sometimes on the film set, no matter how big the film is or the show, you never have enough time.

You never have enough time, you never have enough budget that never changes. So you have to make decisions very quickly. Sometimes on the bigger ones, do you have even less time because of like a big movie start coming in to certain times available. or like in the case of consolation, we had like this wire rigs on the ISS that was very uncomfortable and tough for the actors to be in those wires.

So you would put them in there, two takes, get them out of there and move on or shoot something else. So I knew we had to be spot on. And that's why with lighting, sometimes you cannot prepare for every scenario and you don't know in advance how the actor will really move in that situation.

So that's why it's so important to have like demo board control. Everything is basically controlled by computer. And with a microphone, I can whisper it to McAfro or a board operator. And my wife's actually a board operator, so sometimes we get to work together and quickly communicate and change stuff during the shot. That's the beauty of lighting. People consciously do not pay attention to lighting, right, unless you eclipse the sun, then they notice all the light changed. So you can be very bold.

That's what I do all the time. Mid-shot, I adjust lighting to when I feel like it's not quite what it's supposed to be. as the actor moves, or also just for dramatic effect to heighten the sensation. And I know you can go quite far before people pick up on that. Interesting. That's why I've got to be intuitive. So usually the lighting, but I know what you're talking about. If you can get the same camera, like, you can get the same camera, the same lens,

and it might look very different. Sure, it is also a color treatment, what you're doing, color timing or show that. And that's the, the reason I said without color is because I think that is actually the answer is like certain, you know, when you've got your, uh, Sonnenfelds or, you know, your, your, uh, Jill Bogdanovich or whatever, like they're gonna, they, they've got something up here that they know. Right, you might think, oh, that's a given that, but then you look at there's some projects, you see like, wait a second, just stunned by that big colorist and then all the toys and world, but still it feels a bit, it's very videoish. Sometimes, you know what I'm like, or like, or something. stuff like it and you it's not a given if things were easier and when we were all shooting film you had a certain film look right all free so to say right now in digital it's we have many benefits but out of the box digital at most digital cameras look very boring right like yeah they don't

filming so it takes quite an and I think it helped being that generation right like you probably two you grew up we grew up in a time where most people were shooting film, but we work with video cameras. How do you make that video camera look film like? Yeah. Those lettuce lens adapters are like the Red Rock. Yeah. Those are dark times.

The dark times, I'm glad. With the thing was this long, you lost like four stops light to the adapter. Yeah. Oh boy. That's why it's such exciting times. In our case, we shot Red V-Raptor 1600 A in the dark.

That's a great camera. and super compact compressed raw and like you can just like I say an actor is in the middle of a scene and it's quite intense and you feel like I'm under 50 my lens is not tight enough and you don't want to like

cut and swap a lens and stop the flow and now you can't like switch on that distribution sensor you switch from whatever 8K to 6K you have a tighter crop you still have plenty of resolution

nobody will be able to notice but you have a tighter lens virtually I use this all the time to keep the actor, the energy up and like this is what I mean with being invisible with technology like there's a lot you can do but don't just

there's so many I always say like there's a million problems on a film set like there's so many moving parts don't add your 5,500 problems or make it visible for everybody right try to solve it and then of course you have to communicate if there's a thing you cannot solve

but if everybody tries to manage their things and keep a very quiet focus set I think that's so important, like, for the cast. And for me and myself, too, in the director, you want to have to make decisions so quickly. And you have only one choice, one chance. And then you, I say, like, you committed a film forever, right? Like, if you make a poor choice like this backlight here, turn it on or off, and you decide, okay, let's keep it on. It's kind of be like that forever.

It's always a bit of pressure. That's why I think it's so important to have a focused quiet film set. Yeah. Well, and to your point, like, I think, I can't remember who, I think probably Fincher said it, but like how everyone goes to the movies to see the actors, not your light, you know, not the production designer, even though production designers are rad, so important. But like, no one's going to see it necessarily besides other nerds. And so if you can create an environment where the actors get to remain actors, that's the move. I want to say, though, that's the interesting thing with regular audiences who are not experts in lighting and direction and everything. I think within you watch a trailer or something, within a couple of shots, people can pick up if something, even you can have the biggest name actor, something looks, you know, cheap or... Sure. The magic ingredient is missing, right? It does not look cinematic.

I think you can spend a lot of money on that big project, get big actors and amazing sets. But if I was still like... I feel the regular audience pick up on this and I see it on my family sometimes when I watch something with them. Like, there's some of the big masters, right, when they shoot something, you see one or two frames and you feel at ease that you know there's a story being told and you're in great hand. Like there's people who craft something who know what they're doing or it just puts you at ease to watch it. Yeah. And that's not a given. Like you would think like with all the technology we have, I feel like the opposite is the

case, if you don't watch out footage with, like, you know, all the most workflows of doing HCR and shooting digital and shoplenders and stuff, I feel like if you don't manage on every stop and every intersection to go the right path, you end up with something very generic, digital looking. Yeah. Well, it's like what we were talking. earlier about where like some DPs know like where to put the camera. I think

it also has to do with like I think like that's the Conrad Hall thing right like just one there's only one bolt because that's how it is and we don't need to modify that. Like shooting reality sometimes can look worse but if you can

just put a little spin on it sometimes it looks perfect. Absolutely. And I think it's so important to do how do you find something that's unique like this so many shows out there and movies out there. That's what I thought. Like, when I was inspired seeing the Northern Lights

and talked with Michelle, our director, and she also had this great idea to connect like that we see the Northern Lights from space and that connects Earthland Space and to find like a color scheme or like a look that works, especially there's so many different episodes and it's different cinematographers, different directors, different locations, how do you find something?

That, like, look at the major. like you see one part of the matrix and you see like you know such a class and you'd be like I mean it was a green red and but you could immediately tell wow this is the matrix like if you pull off the visual language that's so unique that you can immediately identify I think it's kind of important especially then for a TV show that maybe has several seasons and lives on if you create visually a universe now as ask myself to it how what is that right how can be, because locations will change faces like the past will change over there. You have to find something with the camera lensing and lighting that makes it unique. Were you able to use your lens database for pre-production on this show? Or had it not

been come out yet? Yeah, no, I actually started this 10 years ago when... Oh, geez. Yeah, in film school I had to do one technical project to get my degree and with a couple of friends, I just finished my first feature film, it's like a post-apocalyptic film called Hell. In the German English film, Hell means bright, and it's so bright, the sun is so bright that you can't go outside anymore without protecting your skin. And that's where in a movie, I did so many tests with lens flares and how to create a sensation of heat and sun. So I thought

like, I'll do something with lens flares. And then that's when it started with motion control. But then in recent years, I think especially during lockdown and COVID and last year with this strike, we really reshot everything in like large format and sits the same camera, the same motion control system. And so every time I discuss lenses with the director, I use it because something like lensing is such a subtle thing at first glance, right? It's hard to put your finger on what it is. It has said with big influence, my opinion, right, when you see something on a big screen. especially how is the out of focus area rendering stuff. So I always use this to first iteration for myself to find, select a couple lenses.

These four or five lenses, I think I respond to subconsciously for some reason for this project. I saved them like now in Cineflarece. You can save your favorites in a gallery and download a PDF and stuff. And then I go to rental house and test those three, four lenses specifically for the project because I believe you cannot.

generically test for every scenario, right? Right. That's where like just the layer is it. And then you test like, or for constellation, we're going to have like this blue hour or we have like candlelight, like the whole opening scene in that cabin is all lit with candles and fire and there's no electricity. It tests something specific to this.

How does those lenses react? And then discuss obviously with your director and creative collaborators and find the right thing. But my first stop is in fact I browsed. Which, and by flare, that's what I'm, I was, this is so important to understand. Like, it's people think of JJ Abrams, Star Trek and crazy flares. But the flare is just, like, the fingerbrae shows you what's going on. Like, is there lots of elements and crazy is it very moderate?

And it's like, when I see this flare, see there's something interesting happening. That's not distracting. Sometimes I say, I always this lens might be distracting, but it's character, right? And then I find out I explore this, this one. more and now it's like a never-ending story because there's so many lenses coming out it's actually testing new lenses and work with programmers and another programmers have a great team that help me get to feature them super accuracy feedback and that's why we also go to NAB and like hear people what

they think of it and what how to use it yeah because I made it basically as a tool for myself like how would I because I feel like that's the thing with When you talk to the director, like, say, you show a close-up or test chart or something, like how do they understand how this will react in a certain situation, right? Like, it's so abstract, but with that Cineflare, you immediately see, and we're working on a, there's a cool update coming, that you can choose scenarios to preview how it would look like in that scenario. It's like super crazy because the shot is motion control.

you can like oh yeah so you can preview where they select you a scene like show me this in a desert day exterior or in a nice exterior interior interior and then it will show you preview how it would look like and then for which effects it's super

important like I mean consolation we had like I think incredible visual effects team and and we were obviously pushing hard because we built real sets like the even the exterior of the ISS like it was something I think that's all CG but

We had full-size modules. We don't have the space to attach them all together. It's a little module sometimes. One thing I call the Sprite cans, like this big silver thing. It's like the size of a truck or a train cart. And then we have our actors in a full spacesuit on wires floating in a pitch black environment. And I had just one single light source as a sunlight. And you get real flares.

You get it in camera. Of course, the effects seem to amazing work to extend it. But we use real visors. That's something that... That's a choice. That's hard. Usually, the facts about they say, like, no visors, no, they don't want to deal with camera reflection and stuff.

But real, I did some research in like the real spacesuit. We had this incredible team they're building, they specialize in building spacesuits for films and television. And they're very, like, super experts. They did look so intricate, like one-to-one, like the real deal. it's big and heavy and quite extensive but the real space suit has

three layers. The real visor has three layers of glass for redundancy and protection right as they would hit any space degree or something like that. And when you look at most TV shows or films, they have no visor and they put in CG one single reflection

when you look at constellation, you will feel like Nomi is going along to trust and you see the real environment reflecting in triple layer and you see the dust and scratches and i feel that all adds up that you hopefully are more engaged in what she's going through yeah it's i mean it's so i think undervalued especially with the effects like the idea that the costumes and the set design in not only inform the character but like how you're supposed to feel like like you were saying like

like that feeling of being at ease. Like if all that blends together and matches the character, then you don't think about it and you're more willing to just buy into the script, you know, as it were. It's so important, like I said, like to find the magic collaborators, right, where everything clicks and, which is tough because there's filmmakers, right? We were like nomads. We work on different shows.

And it's like in the last years, I rarely worked on the same continent back to back twice. usually Red Lank and based in L.A., but then Constellation, we was based out of Berlin, and then we went to Finland, Morocco, and my next project I go to the other part, end of the world. So how to find collaborators. And luckily with Andy Nichols-Lap direction designer I had worked with before on Red Notes, and we had a great shorthand, and you know each other, and sensibilities, and you can early on in pre-production, you have to make some choices very early on, right? what you build physically, what is maybe impractical

and you meet with the effects help to make those decisions and with the director. And in this case, also our stunt coordinator, Martin Boris, he did an amazing job and he's very unique. He's also the special effects supervisor. Usually that's different people doing this. But she has a big team, like he has special effects, people that she's the mind behind it.

So when he comes up with a stunt, And he doesn't just have, let's say, the accident on the ISS, he doesn't have just the actors bumping into stunt-med in the mat. He plans exactly where to put an air motor to blow up debris as it's all those hand-in-hand and like this, there's this deep-ressurization, right, with the physical, like, CO2 stuff floating and fortified as this fire scene, like, real CO2, and obviously it's interactive If lighting, we couldn't set on fire, so real and then zero gravity, flames behave very differently. But the collaboration between stunts, special effects, cinematography, lighting, costumes, visual effects,

and obviously the actors, they have to sell it, right? And again, talking about magic tricks, like we, in that scene where they're trying to put out the fire and, like, Nomi is propelling herself with a fire extinguisher. One, we wanted to, like, I know how intricate the CO2 looks. Like I said, we have to use the real deal. It doesn't cost the world. It's just CO2. You can spray it interacts with the real environment and the light and everything.

But the problem was then the Fyxinger was really heavy because it was real metal. You couldn't use a dummy or something. So, Anumi had to almost like pop a tear and make the Fyxinger feel super light. Oh, right. eventually while hanging in a wire rig performing, delivering your lines and doing all the stunt work was quite incredible

what our actors pulled off. Yeah, that's athleticism. Yeah, that's a great all workout. And sometimes right with wire work is so, it's really tough and also in practice sometimes it takes a very long time to set up. So we were always looking for

ways again coming back to like a magician's background, did the best magic trick is like you, constantly change your technique, right? If you do something twice in a row, people might be able to spot how you've done it. But with film, this is an illusion, right? We didn't go to space for real.

We want to sell it. So we constantly mix that there might be one wide shot on a wire rig. The next one, like, when we had like amazing core strength, she was like an athlete, she trained like crazy for this and could balance. We did like, it does like special like medicine balls to sit on or just floating, like standing in an awkward position and miming for men and then having Scott Callion's

who would be there is a great resource and correct if you think like hey in this like what's a fun fact is in many sci-fi films and shows you see people floating in like this what's called Superman pose flying like this but if you look at real astronauts they don't fly like Superman

they Scott Kelly almost always said like we are homoerrectorous like a homo erectus like we are upright we're trying to be upright so they float also upright even if there's no upside down in space you want to keep for your head a sensation of worth up and down which is right so you stand upright you push off and you throw it forwards like this so we try have there's a couple of in the in the accident where we had a couple of superman moments naturally that's something hopefully audiences can pick up that this is

feels more familiar and well and they use the like they're constantly bouncing off the walls and stuff because if you get if you get stuck yeah you can't like swim your way to the side yeah that's great terrifying that could really happen in a big space yeah you got to wait for a buddy to come by uh michelle is such a brilliant director and she was always pointing out how important it is to right educate the audience and it's like we all let's think we know how zero gravity work But especially if you do show performance, emotions, you want to be close, you can't show full body all the time, so to not forget that they're floating. And Outdoors always showing feet, how they're bracing or pushing themselves off is so important. And that's sometimes in like the filmmaking process, you know how it is with you have to, sometimes you have to cut down scenes to hit a certain runtime or a scene.

And then these shots are easy to throw out because my people don't think, oh, it's like. like not an important line or something, but to fight for this. And because sometimes a small, even like a little insert, right, can become so important. Like, Christopher Nolan says, like, everything ends up big on the screen.

Like, it's not just an important line. Like, it's cinema and television, too. It's like, nowadays it's like cinema on a, I have an amazing, all that screen. Like, you can ask the best home cinema experience by watching some of those shows. and the technology came so far with streaming right in HDR. The quality is so good that you really have to like artistically fight for these important beats.

But what do you feel that important, right? Yeah, I'm a big, I'm still a big Blu-ray guy. So it's wild. I've always said this. Like, it's wild how much not clearer necessarily, but just for the sake of speed, like clear the discs still are, like a 4K Blu-ray. is like the 4K of Alien is nuts what's oh okay brul-ray only the regular blu-ray that's already even that's incredible right even a 1080p

where you can see the film grain and I remember when I was younger and like a new camera came out and and a new disfilm was shot on that camera I wanted to buy the Blu-ray to really see the texture like or certain film starts how to react right with with streaming that's the thing it's a cool thing with HG like some filmmakers stunned like at some are really embracing end and we did HR earlier on like from like I think Independence Day Resurgence was the first time I did HR on every project but you always be in this world where there is HDR but there's also SDR and the majority of people still see SDR and how do

you deal creatively with that and consolation was actually the first time I really went for it like now I said like that's usually filmmaker like cinematators like keep stuff dark and moody and I thought this is really an opportunity because we wanted this to feel like contemporary but film like how do you make something film in a high contrast HR well because film film film has great like negative has a great latitude and Diane Grange but film print has a fairly low contrast right you watch it projected it's a dim image in a dark room it only works because we are in pitch black theater and our brain adjust and that's the beauty what I think we associate of being cinematic is I think that's the core of what photography is we're capturing a high dynamic range

scene like a bright sky sunlight compressing it on a picture like a photo print is the best example super low contrast and it's like a painting to us it's pleasing to watch and what what HDR brought in suddenly we have bright highlights like that creates that window to the world effect right

which is a whole different medium almost like it's not photography it's not capturing something on a medium I feel like the medium becomes invisible you write a window and that's why in constellation we try to find that sweet spot between that you still feel the medium that you

still feel it's captured it's not a VR experience I'm there one to one documentary but still go for a really bright highlight like this there's this scene when the sun comes up in episode one in episode two where it really hit the maximum out of the midst

which is fun. You can really blind an audience if they have a television I can show that. And then of course in other scenes you don't want to go that crazy because it would be distracting if your candlelight is like as bright as the sun. Right. There was a amazing

colorist of Zora and Woodsy Martin and we worked for a long time on creating a red show a lot and and setting that up but it's interesting too like with film grain I don't know are you like

are you a grain connoisseur I suppose yeah certainly I mean I learned on 16 and stuff and then it's always like I said with those it's always fun to see especially how older films look compared like the older stocks look compared to 5219

like 5247 is like my thing right alien shot C series enomorphic and film and dark and moody, they must look amazing in a 4K Blu-ray. Actually, I want to see that. It's, well, and they rescanned like the OG negative too, so it's like, well, they did that for the Blu-ray, but yeah, the 4K is like, I think it's, I think it isn't an HDR, like, pass, so I think you really can use that OLED there. Yeah, good. It's great.

I did, uh, like, I'm the biggest fan of the original Independence Day and I was like, really, like, one of my first big studio films was working on the sequel role in America. That had to be fun. And then during post-production, it was the 20-year anniversary was coming up for its first Independence Day. And Carl Walter, Lyndon, the cinematographer, was not available to supervise it. Roland asked me, can you supervise the remastering? And I felt like all this pressure, because I've seen this film 200 times, at least on VHS, in the theater, like in all medium, on DVD and Blu-ray. And then you see the negative, it was 20 years old, like it was re-scanned by photocamp. And you could tell there's some, because it's old, some stuff deteriorated, but then also, I've never seen it get 4K resolution.

Right. And they would see, oh, there's a little wire holding up that miniature plane, which you've never seen before. Right. But then also creatively, because there is no, just one button you press, and it looks like, it looked like 20 years ago before was that film, like print film emulation or something that doesn't exist. So you have to creatively grade it, make it look like it used to look. also maybe refresh it. So that's why I'm always very carefully watching when there's a remaster of something.

I'm so nostalgic. And you know, people, there's a nerd site where you compare the different versions of Blu-Rays. I use them all the time before buying it. That's how I decide if I want the 4K version, if I already have the Blu-ray is I'll go like, you know, Blu-ray.com or whatever. And I'm like, there's one reviewer I know I don't listen to.

You know. Because sometimes it doesn't get better, right? Or maybe it's all right. proper, but then we talked about earlier this, they go through a digital, completely digital pipeline. It was shot on film, you digitize it, and there's no film print emulation simulated. So it does not look anymore like it used to look, and maybe people can say it's sharper now, but. Right. Or sometimes, like, recently I've noticed, sometimes they won't put the special features on like a newer disc. So I'm like, well, fuck it. I'm just going to keep the old one,

especially the only difference is like, oh, this one's got at most and this one doesn't. It's like, all right, well, I'm only got a sound bar anyway. It's not, you know, I don't have this. What I find fascinating in the streaming age now, that this feels like it disappeared, right? The bonus stuff. Like, you would think it's fairly simple to add on a streaming. I hope that's coming more because right as people want to know and I'm curious to see more. There's less.

Well, so two things. One, I've said a million times on this podcast that I want to create a special feature streamer because I bet the rights are not that expensive. Yeah. So you can be a partner in that. Well, I'll be the first one to sign up. That's a cool idea. But also, I think commentary tracks should be easy to implement, right?

English, German, commentary. It's probably like 40 megabytes. It's not going to be a heavy load for Netflix or whoever, you know? Yeah. And you do like we do it now. You did talk for whatever 90 minutes and you sync it over. It's right. It's not that complicated.

Yeah. And it's such a testament for time. Like, I mean, there's so many films and shows created every day now, but some will stand the test of time. And it's fascinating. Like, imagine there would be a proper commentary of Jewelbrick talking over. It's a little weird. Right. There were a few, I know I got to let you go, but there was, I remember there was a few Blu-Rays where they would have, or like, DVDs even, where they would have, like, the director, like, physically, like, walk into, do you remember these?

or they'd have like the enhanced edition. Or short amounts, yeah. Yeah, those are fun. More of those. DVDs used to have such fun, like, menus, and they were really getting creative with that stuff. I miss it. Yeah, I've kept you over time.

Definitely got to let you go, but there's, let's just meet up at NAB and we can just keep chatting because there's a lot more stuff I'd love to pick your brain about, and I'll let you bring the Alien Blu-ray, you can borrow it. I'm so excited for it, yeah. the movie coming and that's after actually going back to like quickly to round that up

with Numi like I'm such a big fan of the Aden franchise and of Prometheus and I remember like watching Prometheus in a theater I know but when it was mixed reactions when it came out but I loved it and I'm still kind of traumatized by seeing it and when I heard that

Nomi would be or indeed and she's so fantastic and has from an actress like her energy but she has such an iconic face like as a filmmaker cinema part of her to light her faith and film like she's unbelievable and

seeing her like in a spacing as a as a sci-fi fan that you get they got total promiscuous vibes sometimes like I would look very different than there's no aliens I think but who knows maybe if there's another scene

it's revealed what's really behind the Cal the uh I think now I have to just add it because I thought about it a lot is when Prometheus came out, I think one of the biggest issues that people had was it was like one of the very first 4K projects, I think. And I don't think specifically I remember the makeup being incredibly visible. And I think it was just an issue of people who had only worked on film now working on a high-deaf thing and not realizing how much you could see. So it kind of, it didn't hit that magic place you were talking about.

where it all goes away. It was brought to the front. And that was my only real complaint. I actually love that film and the sequel. What was the sequel? Covenant. I love that shit. I think for me just specifically, like the way, like Darrys-Wolsky, like, it's genius, like how he lit that.

And it was, actually, I think it was shot on a red dragon or something. Like, really? The time again when you say, like, people like, oh, you can pick up that same camera and, and it shot on a spherical lens, like, and why does my work not look like this? right it's a great example like this is such a world building wow yeah you know they're genius um i just pulled that because i saw you uh you had mentioned that you looked up to him and i was like i have do you have the book i i don't have it no oh that's a good one yeah yeah it's half french though is he is he talking about ellen for no no it's uh all let's see it's seven

james gray he talks about a bunch of um a bunch of his films. It's like a bunch of interviews, and they're half in French, half in English. So the book is actually twice as big as it should be. But there's like good photos and stuff in here. It's not that expensive. They went out of print for a while, but he just talks about his influences and projects he worked on and it gets kind of technical. Like I just opened it up. He's talking about ENR, like 40% ENR, which, you know, the bleach bypass thing. But like you, seven for me was like one of those movies where I was like, damn, this is a movie. This is a movie, right? This is, I'm lost.

But they're talking of texture, right? And I'm actually, I don't know if there's a restored version or an HDR version of it, but... There is not. I think Fincher is allergic to re-releasing stuff, but I think I read somewhere that, like, he was going to maybe redo that. Because, like, even like Panic Room, you can only get off DVD. Interesting, yeah. I know Fight Club got a 25th anniversary release, but, yeah. That's so interesting to see that shift, too, right, from, like,

the seven is such as the texture of film and and today like it's all shot digital right it's a very different aesthetic and then filmmakers also evolved and the taste and um but it's it's interesting film sometimes forces you to they just sort randomness or organic right for that especially i think in this project you make totally sense right with the opening sequence and scratchy some film and the tag dial, they're still, I'm a kid of the digital age, right? I grew up, I shot film at film school and I shot a couple projects on film, but, uh, and I love the look of film, like the man, whatever the magic is, right? But I tend to shoot digital most of the time, but highly influenced by those, right?

I think it's so important like that we have labs around and still people shooting film to have that reference that something feels so cinematic right and I think it's not just a generational thing I think for younger hopefully I mean some people think oh there's a filter on this and now this was shot on film there's not a filter on that image you know like just right um that's I think really fascinating like the tools we choose and how we you bend it some people should film because they like they look a film and that's it right but I feel it also has something nostalgic which might be not a problem like in a sense of consolation I think it would if I like to embrace the modern high-rest

take anamorphic like the pairing anamorphic anamorphic and sensor and so um but then trying to bend it in like it's highly influenced by like a film a color palette and right um that's yeah that was something we talked to uh uh eagle burled about the holdovers and he was like we wanted the film look but when we shot film modern film stocks are made to be scanned yeah so they didn't look like film they looked like the film looked like digital so they just shot digital and made it look the way they wanted you know i thought that was interesting because i figured they just shot on film because that one's a good one um i good we'll leave it there i had another thought and then i was like no we should sure you got things to do i got things to do but uh yeah let's

Definitely link up at NAB and then we'll keep it going. Thanks so much for spending the time with you, man. That's a lot cool. This show looks fucking sick too. And I'm not even like a scary show person, but like that is a good one. I have to say, I enjoy watching right when you work on a project, you know the script and everything it's happening. But actually when it came out, I enjoyed actually watching it myself because it's so,

even if I knew what, what's happening in there, it's so twisted sometimes. And if you don't pay attention, you might like miss something. And especially when you know what's going on, going back. and re-watching, especially one and two where you, there's so many Easter eggs, like, what people might think is a slight continuity area, but it's actually switching between

realities very early on before the audience knows. It's going to happen. There's so much on stuff to discover so hopefully because it lives on a streamer, people are going to re-watch it again and see what's going on. Yeah, I hope so too. All right. Well, thanks so much, Kenny.

Yeah, I'll hit you up. I'll email you about this weekend. Perfect. All right. Later, buddy. Frayman Reference is an Al-Bot production. It's 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.