Frame & Reference Podcast - 144: "Sugar" DP Richard Rutkowski, ASC

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

This week on the program we're privileged to have Richard Rutkowski, ASC on to talk about his work on the Apple TV+ show "Sugar" on top of a whole heap of knowledge. You're not gonna want to miss this one! Enjoy! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.frameandrefpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for everything F&R You can directly support Frame & Reference by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buying Me a Coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coast's leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out ⁠⁠Filmtools.com⁠⁠ for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ⁠⁠ProVideoCoalition.com⁠⁠ for the latest news coming out of the industry.

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and you're listening to episode 144 with Richard Rikowsky, ASC, DP of the Apple TV show, Sugar. Enjoy. kind of like first question usually is just like have what have you seen recently that you've enjoyed we went to a film noir retrospective at a cinema near where i grew up and we saw scandal sheet and then we saw the big heat and then that prompted a reviewing on video of uh in a lonely place and uh these films are revelatory in some ways because of the limits the constraints they were under

and how they creatively enhance the aesthetic to match the limitation. And so that's the most recent viewing. The thing that I think impressed me the most recently was my friend Maddie Libetique's work on Maestro. For various reasons, Maestro didn't hit all the marks. Maybe it could have. Of course, I was also rooting for Ed Lachman's work on El Conde, which I think is just so astonishing that in his 70s

and with his disability, Ed is making the best work I've ever seen, not just for himself, but among his peer group ever. I would say that if Conrad Hall were alive, they would be tipping their hat right now to Ed Lachman. And I also realize now when I think back on Ed's work that, you know, the Limey, Aaron Brockovich,

these are beautifully shot films with a lot of aesthetic lift in the photography. As of course was Carol, as of course was as of course was the one with Julianne Moore, far from heaven. And these were films, neither of those had a great budget. Carol was shot on Super 16, Far from Heaven. 9-11 occurred in the middle of it. There was a point in time where the producer Christine Vashon was, really, I think, unclear about the funds to finish, and yet they had this magic project on

their hands that was aesthetically so pleasing and so important. And I just always witness Ed taking a little and doing a lot. And Maddie on Maestro, I believe he really felt the core story of the female-centric version of a married relationship. The view of the Carrie Mulligan, the wife was more than impressive, it both for acting for story structure, for what Bradley Cooper did in the direction of their scenes together. And Maddie's imagination and realization in the photography is unbelievable. Yeah, and doing a little research, you basically gave him his first job? Yeah, Maddie was going to AFI and he was working in the production office of a, a small production company called Chanticleer Films.

And Chanticleer was mostly an opportunity for actors to direct, but with shorts. But they expanded and they did a film that featured Jeff Goldblum and Forrest Whitaker called Lush Life. And it played to the joy that both of those actors have in jazz. And of course, the fact that Jeff Goldblum can play the saxophone really well. I went to California to work on that film. Nancy Schreiber was the DP I'd been introduced to Nancy by Ed Lockman

and she was you know pulling together this low budget quick schedule 35 millimeter shoot and I was excited because it was my first time going to Panavision Tarzana back then it was in Tarzana prepping alongside like Tony Rivetti and all this sort of stuff

and a young man from the production office came up and said, you know, I'm working in the production office of this show, but my dream is camera. Can I come and see what you guys are doing? And my second I see Laura Colella, who has since become a really wonderful director, said, sure. And then as the job ended, I realized, of course, Mattie's super smart and super motivated. And he'd already been shooting some music videos. And he wasn't even actually supposed to take a job while at AFI. I shouldn't say that. So, but the point is, I think they're going to chase them down at this point. You know, Ed Lachman is a cameraman I work with a lot, and Ed is certainly going to need help in Los Angeles.

I live in New York, and I handle a lot of the logistics of his many camera cases, and he's going to need that. He was at that time storing his cameras at Claremont, and there's a lot of to and fro and repair and prep, and, you know, you'd meet Ed, and Ed's great, and it worked out. And then to see Maddie and Ed sharing not only ASC nominations, but also Oscar nominations this past cycle was just so beautiful. I could almost cry. I mean, it's so proud of them as individuals and as a peer group that we all know. We all kind of consider ourselves kids of Ed because Ed has a very outsized, you know, imagination, personality, force of nature type, you know, work ethic. And he, it isn't just myself and Maddie, there's dozens of people who have Ed Lockman to thank for their introduction and their persistence in the cinematography trade. So, well, and now there's plenty of DPs who get to thank him for helping them nail exposure, you know, right. The EL system, yeah. Yeah, it's way better than that. Well, it's funny, because that's how I got into filmmaking by learning, shooting film first and then,

like photography and then 16 millimeter. And having to the Ansel Adams zone system is buried into my head. It took probably seven different people explaining it to me. Before it finally made sense. Did you read the camera, the negative? I couldn't afford them. I don't think I can still afford them.

But it's funny because I grew up in that area. Resale bookstores often have them. I remember buying mine for like $4.50. Oh, wow. Okay. A book. And it was because they were sort of back, you know, back shelf, not popular at the time. And it really changed.

I think you and I are speaking the same language. It changed the way I looked at exposure because it was so simple to understand 10 zones. Now, the zones may have expanded to 12 or 14. I will argue that I will argue that you're better off thinking in the most simple way about 10 because so what, that there's a couple zones living up in 10. It's still overbright and not where detail lies. Similarly, I don't want to exploit every last bit of detail down in Zones 1, even though the Sony Venice can exploit that low end.

I think it looks rather unnatural. Or, to use a word that, you know, people understand when you say it, it looks unfilmic. It stops looking like motion picture and it starts looking like a digital thing. And I have yet to be asked to make the digital look very digital. I'm usually asked to make it look like film, and nor have I been asked to make film look digital. So I'm always bent towards trying to arrive at those exposures that exploit the range, but at the same time are defined by where you set zone five.

And zone five is not always set in the, you know, if you set zone five in the middle of your exposure range with your meter, you're likely to get what looks like. TV news or something. So you have to think a little bit about what the expression you're after is. And that's where I think those noir films can be quite something because you can see them under-exposing very selectively. But then when you're on a close-up of the actress, her face is up in Zone 8 and the hero is always lit with some favor

to his face, some balance to the lighting. The villain is backlit or underlit or edge. And it's easy to see and perceive. I think that the challenge is to then bring that language to your story and have it work as well as some of those stories work. And I think of films that aren't per se noir, like shock corridor. And I think of the use of that language so beautifully and so meaningfully that when you get done with it, like color almost looks garish.

Right. So now, ironically, I'm shooting now the pilot block for a new show that is all about, you know, up, up and bright and lovely women looking lovely in colors that are enticing, trying to, you know, lay the groundwork for a heroine's ultimate fall. And it's, it's, you know, it's interesting. I like, I like the diversity of it. Yeah. You know, I had seen you mention how it's important for people getting into cinematography to learn the film workflow because that instills, you know, good practice. You know, perfect practice makes perfect and all that. But to your point, I'm wondering, do you, you know, you could light your, get your contrast ratios right. But especially with digital now, it does seem that there's kind of this common knowledge, quote unquote, push towards. getting all of the data capture, so basically, you know, shooting that Zone 5 center and then pushing everything down or manipulating it in post. Have you kind of, does that ring true to you? Or are you still very much like, I'm going to shoot this the way it's supposed to be shot and let the sensor be damned? It depends on the scene and the content. And I'll always start from the page and from the relationship and the aesthetic discussion with the director. So if we're in a diner or

restaurant, sunlit, and you want there to be that range of a bright light shining on a face all the way down to darkness in the cushion of the seat or in a black jacket, then, yes, I will go to the middle of the exposure range and I'll try to exploit the nuances on either end. But I often, between a lutt and a decision in the earlier part of before photography in the prep, I often assign myself the goal of having an aesthetic that is immediately recognizable. Like you turn on your streaming platform, I was going to say television, but you turn it on and you see that it's that show. And I received a very pleasing compliment from someone who was watching the Americans back when it was on FX. And FX was very budget conscious with the

release of that show in the beginning, they only wanted 720P masters, in fact, and I was the one talked, I talked them into 1080, and then later the second season, I said, you really must start mastering to 2K, but it's the future, and you're going to be surprised when the newer televisions come out. But the point is, someone told me, like, even on the version we're watching on, you know, I won't name the cable subscriber, but it, you know, the image was terrible. And they said, even through that, even through the compression and the sort of blockiness that'll show up in certain walls because of the compression and the 720 broadcast, I always know it's your show. She said, look, I just see two images and I know it's your show. And I'm like,

that's exactly what I aim for. I aim for an identity. And there's so many factors to that identity, you know, lens choice, how close you are on a wide shot, or how close you are on a tight shot, whether you embrace a wide shot, how you get into scenes, what your color palette is. So I guess I'm saying that, yes, it can be done that you expose in the middle and let the post handle it. I'm not that, I'm not that guy. You're going to hire me and I think you're going to see on your monitor as a director or, you know, in the photography moment, you're going just see an image that's close to where I want it to wind up, you know, there, sometimes you wind up with some needs of fixes around eyes or like a little something darkened under a chin

or something, but I rarely, I rarely am far from what I hope the final color choice and saturation level and contrast ranges. Yeah, I mean, I will have to agree with the compliment you received because I was just skipping through to like refresh my memory just clips of or the episodes that you shot a Masters of the Air as well as sugar and they both do have a signature I would say like they're I'd love to get into kind of like some of the more I suppose technical details of it but there is this kind like the what did you call it in another interview like the enhanced realism even though they're two completely separate time frames styles everything the I think your um that naturalism does come through in all of it i and specifically i noticed that the way that you have been able to in all these shows achieve a room that looks like it's lit by practicals but if you think really hard you can tell that like there's some other stuff going on those those other stuff are invisible um and it's and it's definitely thank you kenny jesus thank you it's uh it's a very um uh impressive

feet because usually, you know, as DPs, we're always like, there it is. I've even trained my girlfriend. She's like, hey, look, a stare atube. I'm like, yeah, you got it. Like, look, I use gear like anyone else. I just, I just have a singular focus on it not overwhelming the content of the moment on screen or treating the actor like a model full time. And then, you know, a big influence was Robbie Muller. And I think Robbie Mueller's lighting and choices in camera have often been to essentially deliver the best-looking image of reality that he encounters at the moment of photography. Now, is he capable of lighting scenes and creating, you know, I mean, breaking the waves has lots of sets? But his drive is always realism until that moment when you

want to step outside it and it's very determined. So like the scene in Paris, Texas where she's behind glass and Harry Dean Stanton faces the lens and is blue is in blue and she's in a very warm tone, you know, you know that that was all thought about and that the process of the film led you to that moment. And I, that's, that kind of determinism is important to me. The other thing is, I really think context is character. I've always said this to myself, context is character. You see me in an environment right now. Now, I'm in a rental home in Charlotte, North Carolina. But the moment you saw the image, some parts of the toolkit of our visual starts to assign values to that interior image. And it's the same thing with following characters in motion picture or television

or what we call television is now streaming cinema. If I take you on a voyage in a single shot through a large crowd but I'm not on a wide shot but I've moved the camera consistently with an actor I want you to pay attention to you know it's a big space you start to piece it together in your brain

and then we cut out to the wide shot I mean if they'll follow and I hope they will and then you cut out to the wide shot and your brain has already been building the architecture of that room and you feel a sense of involvement because you will

We're given all that information. And now the context is clear and something about the character is more clear. Similarly, how many times have we seen people get into a taxi cab and the cab drives off and that's part of the cinema story, although now and now they're just going to sit on couches and automatic driving cars, which I hate.

But like think of the end of Michael Clayton and how, you know, they're very brilliant. Ellsmaid did this. It was very brilliant. like a static shot in which he just asks the cab to start driving. And Midtown Manhattan, where all of this drama that he's abetted and discovered and created, plays out through the rear windscreen, and we do not need a cut. Nor do we have to a drive-by.

We don't hand the car. There's no need. The context is in his character. His face and the road have a weight at that moment. So that's highfalutin. But it is where I process visually how to make choices about shot selection and also how to talk to even the directors at the very beginning about where will we draw certain moments into the wide frame, into the act curtain that gives everybody 13 seconds, maybe eight, to reflect on what they've just watched, where we're at, and then build a little anticipation of where we're going. And I think that the most dramatic example of that and a good one, although there are many examples of that and they're all wonderful, is in the Menturian candidate, when the flag fills the frame, black and white, and the flag draws up and you see the stage space where there's going to be a nominating convention and you realize that Raymond Harvey's character is there to assassinate someone. yeah it's uh do when you are picturing a scene when you've you know you're reading the script

do you think of like kind of in and out points uh you you write up like oh so this will be the you know yeah i guess that's the question is like how do you how do you conceptualize those more or less establishing shots without being just like and then we stick a wide in the corner that establishes it i often draw lines down the side of the margins of a script and this then the line will come to an arrow and I'll draw a line under the arrow. And the idea is, okay, everything moves forward to this point and now it changes. Now whether that change is we go in to start working with the character closer or we pull back and see them in context, that depends on the script and the, you know, the preferences

of a director, but I'll often draw what I think are the beats, you know, almost like musically rhythmic. And then I'll sometimes make a little double hash mark, which to me means you need something intense right here, be it a close-up of the person's watch or a view out the window that is no longer part of the scene, but then allows you to pull back from the window and find the two characters in chairs, something that identifies that this is a beat, that it has a weight as opposed to over or a two-shot or a single. You know, although singles are very, very impressive. It really, that's where I believe that the value of the cinematographer

and his compositional sense exists in the very wide and also the very close. So I think about, you know, a movie everybody loves, which is Blade Runner, and I think about the brilliance of some of the close-ups. some of the closets are just they belong in museums forever and they're ecstatically enjoyable you know you could watch them over and over but I think about the I think about the work done to make sure that that close up was earned and had the weight it needs to have and sometimes it's a push-up or sometimes the character themselves comes to the foreground in a way that you've worked with now the actor and the staging and you've allowed

them to create their own close-up. This happens in Eastern Promises. And so, you know, for better or worse, I have a long tape recording in my brain of the better stuff I've seen and stuff will come to me. And I try to relate that in what I do. It doesn't always work. There are a lot of television directors who want to give the producers coverage that allows them to always say, I did it for you. You can cut the scene to the performance you want now. There's a cutaway always. like there's like almost like that's a checklist on the director card like I gave you a cutaway always to me the bolder ones and I'm thinking of like on Manhattan I don't know if you've ever seen it but I shot a show called Manhattan Tommy Shlami the director there he would often

as he was plotting coverage just decide to create a oneer that included them or he would say like I don't need that anymore because look what happened during the long take she showed up over his shoulder and he stayed looking at the camera we have both their close-ups right now you know that kind of thing yeah so when you're marking up these scripts are you thinking compositionally yet or is it purely just like these lines are indicating emotions and kind of flow pace and flow i do of course start to draw sometimes unnecessary composition but composition to me uh composition to me is something that you should work out in the prep period of a project You should talk about how the framing is going to affect style or the, or the perception of style.

And there are a lot of cameramen and women who use devices that they think, oh, it's very moderate of me, but it actually goes back to the 1920s. Lots of headroom, you know, because there's a lot in interviews in a big world, you know, things that really. the still photographer Ranshenko and Eisenstein all did. But they think, oh, this is very modern. And then, you know, slowly a show will usually fade back towards more traditional things. I'm always interested in doing an unusual composition, especially if the shot can have a kind of A and a B side to it. So it's like you come into a frame, you think that's it.

But then something changes. Maybe after 20 or 30 seconds, the camera starts to move. You know, and that's like, there's a Polish cinematographer, very famous, who does that, and it's really special. They did it in the movie Ida, but in any case, suddenly the camera's moving, and you're like, wow, I hadn't even thought about it, but now we're in motion, you know. So my, you know, my general goal is to identify a stylistic choice in the beginning in prep that will be unique and also be hopefully adhered to and consistent. throughout the photography because as soon as you start to like kind of step away from that um that adherence uh in general the show tends to then start looking like other shows yeah well and um you know when specifically with masters of the air and sugar you are not the full you know on the

americans you shot everything but you know shot it shot for three seasons all but one episode so it just became a natural outgrowth of my own relationship to the material in the actors. Here on Masters, Adam Arkapaw, who is a very, very good D.P.N. would be far better to talk to regarding this show, although I was happy to collaborate with him and do our part. On Masters, I felt that the material in the POW camp could have its own stylistic bent and feel a bit down, a bit, a bit like suffocating because they were, they were having that experience. And then, whereas the P-51 pilots episode eight, I felt like there needed to be a kind of, you know, a kind of heroes poster of what these gentlemen were like, what they're doing. Then they come together in the POW camp and the story

changes. Yeah. What do we do when the war is going to end? And that's a unique thing that nobody really thinks about. Like people think about, oh, you're in a P.AW camp. How do you tunnel out? How are you going to escape, how you're going to cheat and get stuff around the guards. And that's a story told. I'd never seen a story tell that sort of pent-ultimate moment where your captors are losing a war, getting really trigger-happy, worried for themselves and their families, and feeling the relentlessness of your own forces bombing their capital. I'd never seen that. And I thought it was super interesting. Similarly, the the machine that brings young people into this world, and they've got a 26% chance of surviving

at that point in time, and watching that machine have the nerve-wracking effect not only on young pilots, the sort of shock and panic, but also on the people who had survived it already and were sitting in the base, counting planes coming back, that that was destructive to their psyches as well, but they just did it because that's what you did then. When you were a 26-year-old member of a bombing group, they called you pops. Yeah. Yeah, my granddad joined the Navy when he was 17. Right. Imagine that. Imagine count the 17-year-olds you know who have the wherewithal to risk their lives for a cause. Yeah, it's wild. I did want to kind of touch on because this is where I feel like the looks are vaguely similar and you can it'll be interesting to talk about the differences between them

is the kind of like interiors in um the prison camp and stuff as well as kind of some of the interiors in sugar where they're very often practically driven but sugar has this kind of warmer modern creamy kind of thing going on whereas uh there's still warmth from the practicals in the prison camp but you know i also am i feeling a kind of like overall top light is that's what's giving the kind of general fill or are we really just rocking practicals and we're digging into the bottom of that sensor in the pow camp sets we never lifted a roof off and we never put a light mat or baylight over anything we had read and seen drawings from the POWs themselves that they were receiving the dimest wattage bulb in the entire

German complex of industry, they were given the worst of everything. The worst plates, the worst utensils, the worst woolen blankets, the worst bucket to piss in. Everything was the worst. And the lighting, they describe as so dingy that you just couldn't believe that they would consider this something you could survive a cold night in. And of course, lights out. It was a real thing. We built these small practicals that had some. several light bulbs in them and we'd dim and they were really trim and small and they had a smallish opening like a biggles the gaffer called them letterbox lights like the opening was just bigger than a letter box and we'd set those up into the rafters and get them down as

as hair lights or edges or sometimes a side light and then we'd also sometimes use two foot tubes or two two foot tubes together wrapped up to create a soft source coming in um we tended to use a fair amount of white styrofoam outside frame so that any ambient light would pick up and we were using a bit of mist and the nature of mist even in a small set the nature of mist is it catches light and reflects it it sort of wraps the light naturally physical mist or a filter no no physical mist sphere yeah we also avoided hard light into the windows it was silesia It's a dreary, overcast place in the winter. So it was almost always bounce light coming in windows,

and then sometimes that bounce would be filtered again by a cloth before it made it to the window itself. I would sometimes use this net material called agrocloth. It's a type of cloth that you usually put over vegetables in the garden so they don't receive the full brunt of the sun's heat and helps that grow better. And amazingly, agro can be seen through by the camera without any of the sort of moray or appearance of a net,

like a regular single double net. The agro somehow just disappears, which is why it must be very good for the plants, cuts three and a quarter stops of light, was introduced to me on the show Manhattan by the key grip Pat Daly. And so I'd build these frames of it, and if we have a window in frame,

I'll set the frame at the angle that essentially the lens is pointed at, and then sometimes I'll cheat and tweak it open or open its top or open its bottom so that I'm manipulating how much light is really making it in the window, but then taking down the background. You know, it's sometimes it's just a bare bulb. I have to tell you, sometimes I'm not beyond the old school filmmaking. I'm just taking a bare bulb, wrapping it in black wrap, letting the amount you want out, turning it up or down, depending on how it balances with the

ambience of the rooms. And then like the hallway scenes where they're all marching in the hallways of the P.O.W. camp at night, that's the practicals. That's just spacing the practicals enough so that you have enough light, even as an actor leaves that light and they get darker. Soon they'll come back into it, or you can put their mark so that they will stop right at the edge of darkness. It's nice. Yeah. And then the exteriors of the camp, I assume, we're just leaning into the overcast and calling it a day because there's still some very nice contrast,

even though the images are generally softer. Yeah, especially with that kind of film emulation that's going on. There's a decent amount of... No on the ground. You know, anytime you're in snow on the ground, you're automatically filling the face while any light that comes in.

And we would sometimes wait for a cloud. We didn't always have the chance to, but we would sometimes wait for a cloud to give that somber atmosphere. I would sometimes use grad filters to take down the sky a bit, bring in a little darkening at the top of frames of the sky. I'd do it at photography and then either embellish

or pull it back a little later at the grade. Really good colorist Steve Bodner, who Adam Archipa had selected. And, you know, Adam did great work. He did amazing work, so I was not going to let his locations be arguably different in any way. If I go back to Thorpe Abbott, it should look like Adam's work to the extent

that it makes sense for, our scenes. You know, the briefing room was pretty much a direct copy. The thing that was interesting was the night work in the camp because again, they have the darkest, they have the darkest bulbs in all of the German Reich. The one thing that's the brightest is the searchlight. So the search light has to be the brightest thing you've ever seen compared to all of the rest of the lighting that you're dealing with in the frame. And we really established a very low level. of overall night ambience we had a wendy light quite far away like a half mile away and it gave the whole camp like just enough just enough edge so that then when the search light came

through it didn't feel like oh there's a little more light but i can always see it felt like i'm struggling to see sometimes but when that search light comes through i really feel it and again that's the context as character thing that's the thing of like you you came outside you're all standing in line outside, but you're still in a monitored camp. You're still a prisoner, you know, because you wouldn't be able to read a book in the light that's here in this camp. Only when the search lights on you are you well exposed. And so I stuck to it. And I'm not saying that it always is easy, because sometimes you're like, should I add a little more? Should I just bring up the fill side a little? But you stick to your guns and hopefully at the end, everybody's

embracing it. And I had a very good director for that. I had a director who wouldn't come and ask me, are you sure it's not too dark? She, you know, she never did that, Dee Reese. And she does her homework so well. It's a very important thing. You start collaborating with your director. If they've done their homework and they see eye to eye with you, it's going to be a fun shoot. You're just going to build on what you've already agreed on. You're not going to start to say, oh, second guessing this, second guessing that. Yeah. It is interesting how the approach Tonight photography has changed over the past 50 years or whatever it's been. Because, like, I just recently watched The Great Escape and, like, when they come out of the floor, it might as well be daytime.

It's so bright. That movie's a bit overlit. And we need to touch that. It's a fun movie, but we didn't want our P.O.W. camp to look like that, which is essentially like this isn't such a bad place. Right. I mean, you know, it sets up like the Hogan's hero vibe of we're all just guys having fun together. We really needed to express that this was a mortally terrifying and human humiliation to be stuck for 10, 12, 18 months in these conditions. And how do you come back and participate in a free society?

And yet, a lot of the men that went through P&W camp lives came back and became very productive of citizens, and there was no talk of PTSD then you just didn't talk about it. I had an uncle, tail gunner, and he didn't talk about it. Yeah. Old ask him, your relatives say don't even ask him. Yeah. Well, and I also think, like, the nighttime lighting style of the 80s where you just chuck a massive HMI and everything was blue.

Yes, lethal weapon. Yeah, the lethal weapon Terminator 2s of the world. How can he be having any trouble finding that door? Look, they can, look, not only can you read, but you need sunglasses at night. Yeah. But now it's, you know, because something that's been talked about a lot on this podcast about lighting is how the modern sensors have changed the way people light. Obviously, you can use a lot more practicals, but it can lead to certain DPs, whether it be their proclivities naturally or if it's a scheduling thing or whatever to just kind of, you know, not that it always. is the wrong answer but you know big soft source close up send it you know as long as it matches

with the background is good it looks uh nice because you can use the rest of the room to be your fill or whatever and you and that kind of nice contrast that i personally like has seemed to fall out of favor yeah um there's not that's a much broader conversation we should come back kenny because i have i have plenty of thoughts on the influence of the monitor and the digital in photography i don't I get out day exterior, a meter almost all the time. And then I ask myself, if the monitor is telling me something's wrong, I say, oh, fool you monitor. I believe in my meter.

I've done tests on this camera, and two stops over is two stops over. If you're showing me an image on the monitor and my eyes are all burned by the sun and I start saying, oh, I've got to open up and open up. Next thing you know, I've overexposed a scene. And similarly, and worse, for starting out DPs at night, if your director comes up to you and says it looks very bright, you really need to show them false color and you really need to put the waveform up

because if you don't have anything over 10 on your waveform, it's not bright. It's not bright at all. And usually a lot of night scenes, we don't even get to 20 or 25 on the IREs. And I feel like that part of it is misunderstood because it just seems such a, plus sometimes the monitors have been set up

for a different environment and now you're looking at them and you're in a hurry and you're like, boy, yeah, it is kind of bright. But no, your eyes have gotten used tonight. The monitor might be a little jacked or a little too contrasty. Trust the curve, trust them, you know, get out there and meter it.

If it says your fill is four stops under, trust the meter. It is four stops under, and you might want to have some of that back later. Yeah. Yeah, because building in that contrast and lighting is not something that can easily be done. in post. It can, but then it looks very artificial.

And nowadays, many of the screens, right now we're on Zoom and there's a black border at the top of my screen. So I can go manipulating my brightness. Hold on. I just could, hold on. Hi. You can hear me now, right? So if I go manipulating my brightness until I see a black, it kind of really starts telling me where the true brightness of this is. Yeah. If I leave my screen brightness way up, I don't know that that black is milky. I haven't perceived it, but it, yeah, that's getting milky, you know. Yeah. So, I don't know.

The more you do it, the more you start to understand what to trust and how to trust it and what your job is, which is the, you know, you're the stop gap on whether things are exposed in a way that's going to hurt people later. Yeah. Yeah. Getting into Sugar, I kind of wanted to know what, because the main character is so film focused, were there a lot of sort of overt references that you were pulling from in the look of the show? Because especially comparing it to Masters, like, there's a lot more movement in like zooms and kind of like interesting edits and stuff in sugar. Obviously it looks a little more modern, like I said, kind of warm. and Creamy, but, like, was, were there any films that you kind of used, or was it its own? Well, it was the pilot director's own film, you know, Children of God, city, yeah, City of God.

City of God, sorry. It was Fernando Moreas' own film, City of God, which is, I'm sure why he and Cesar were hired, brought to the States. Cesar had not joined the union, so there was some issues to get him set up to work in Los Angeles and a work permit and all that. It's the sweetest, most interesting guy, most bold filmmaker, really fun, really fun to get to know. And some of their stuff is way out there using iPhones and multiple hidden cameras, being

very experimental with a Hollywood product. And you either like it or you don't. There are sometimes when it seems a little unsettled, but there are sometimes when it hits home really well. The basic idea was like you're making a self-referential noir story about a private investigator with a secret, with a deep secret, and also with a mysterious mindset. And you want it to both reference films like LA Confidential, we share the villain and the long goodbye or trying to think of another color noir, you know, but L.A. based, you know, super, super. L.A. based stuff. And then you also want it to break away a little bit. And the interesting thing in Sugar for me, and Adam Arkin, who was the director, was that sometimes if the acting

was hitting its marks and involving the audience well, they wound up not editing all those jump cuts in. But sometimes the jump cuts are fun. They're just fun. You see a shot. shot from an older noir film, and you realize that there's that almost, you know, modern, you know, media savvy internet-connected sensitivity to all those things that are flowing through your brain when you watch anything, when I watch sports or when I watch footage from the Middle East, you know. And inevitably, stories start meshing in the in the part that processes them, stories start meshing.

And if you can visually represent that, that's pretty cool. But we found that sometimes, sometimes like scenes like when Shudder goes to the film screening of the, you know, Lorraine Everly or whatever, and we went to a Warner's theater and started doing shots in the lobby and walking in,

you don't need to cut away to things. You just pace it to the drama. And also, let's be honest, he's a fantastic actor and he holds the screen incredibly well like you're anytime you're on him you want to know what he's thinking what he's going to say next it's an enormous gift to have that on camera with you and he helped the story in many ways as a producer and sometimes even like having editorial and writing suggestions but the main job he did which was done incredibly is being a gifted leading man so i think about even the scene at the beginning of the

Which episode, Richard? I think it's the beginning of three where he's at a doctor's office. Yeah. He's trying to explain to his friend, the doctor, Vickers, that he's fine. Don't worry, I'm fine. You know, Ruby was worried about me, but I'm here. I'm fine. He carried that just so beautifully well as like just a casual scene in an otherwise bland room

that you kind of keep leaning in for more information and then he's struggling with Kenny Taya's tie, and you realize this was the payoff of the scene, including its reference to the thing and everything like that. Yeah. I did want to know about that doctor scene, because I like asking about this, asking DPs about this,

because it's the situation that I think younger filmmakers constantly find themselves in, which is, I'm in a boring room. Right. But that boring room does not look boring in your shot. It still has some interest to it. What was the lighting set up there? How do you avoid when you're handed a boring room?

What do you try to do to class it up a bit? Start by turning stuff off. And start by turning off overhead lights. Start by taking light off the walls. Start by collecting the focus of your lighting at the characters. Set a key and determine if that key is the key you want. Set a fill level that you agree with. Match it on other shots within the room.

Try to avoid things that are text-based. in the background because text often stands out to the eye and takes your eye off the character, try and get rid of the super shiny tops of cotton balls or something like that, cotton ball container. And I usually just am putting either a little Keno bounce or maybe a KinaFlo Direct with a bit of opal or if I need 250 or sometimes I'll just strand a light in the ceiling and bring it as a little, I wouldn't call it wrap, but it's like it's just a little embellishment so that you're shaping the character's face for the scene. And then sometimes you have to allow for more freedom. When you need to allow for more freedom, a person's going to walk you 180 around a room.

In general, you're winding up having to collect the light on one side and live with that, or you'll collect the light overhead. And these LCDs, these little egg crates that you can put onto things now, including the light mats of the tubes, are super important because it's not just casting a light, it's also containing a light. And then, like I've said before, styrofoam bounce. So if I'm seeing a character getting a little shadowy here, and it's important that at that moment that, you know, they're best photographed, I'll find ways of sneaking in the soft silver side or the white side of a polyboard,

and I'll even like lay it down on a table there in front of or something like that so that they get that little bit of uplift. And it doesn't so much change the overall light. scheme, you haven't changed where the fill is or the key, what it does is clean up a little. Yeah. Well, it's, how do you, if that bounces a little too hot and you can't move it back or is there anything you can do to bring it down half of it with due of a team? No, fair enough.

I call it white schmata or black smata. They're always now these days leaving it in an egg crate right near the monitors because I'll always look at it and they'll say, okay, let's hang a little white smata right over here. And what about the kind of like office interiors of sugar? Because a lot of those, again, look great. Even the apartments, the whole thing looks great, man. But I'll tell you what, the best thing about Ruby's house and her office where she works at her computers is that hanging just to the left as you look at the computers with her is my wife's artwork, Betsy Kenyon's artwork. and there are these abstractions

from a series called Contact and I just was so thrilled because I was showing the production designer Tom Foden some of my wife's work he's like

he's a British accent he's like oh that's interesting should show these to the decorator the next thing you know they're in the show that was a set

it was a nice set done by Tom beautiful classic Hollywood set I love the greens like walls you know that's great

oh that's great We talk about all that. We talk about color palette. The main thing we needed to do there was sell the connection to the outside because there's a house in Altadena that we matched. And it needed to feel like that interior existed at that location with its bright, almost overbright sun. Altadina is higher than the rest of L.A.

So it gets a very clear sun. And that the outside windows would often be very, very bright, bringing in a light that felt like LA and that you know inside it was smaller instruments really it was small like a sky panel or something through a frame but it's sometimes just bounce light or something like that the party was challenged because there's a party at night we had to flow around her in a 360 steady cam move uh beautiful work a fellow also named Kenny did that and um i just think you know you just solve problems on the fly be it a chinese lantern or a um a set of tubes that you you've skirted around or a light mat mixing with a little pepper light back on a hair.

But I think, you know, you try like you were stating at the beginning to bring a naturalism that is heightened to allow the characters to look their best and also to focus the attention of the audience on who should we be watching. Yeah, it's because you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it does seem that your, that heightened naturalism is kind of just like giving, this is going to sound like an obvious statement but i'm trying to make it obvious for new listeners and you know old alike uh that you just leave the practicals as they are and then bring in just enough to make it photographic without drawing a tent and not um fashion yeah well what yes and what i try to do too is not have

the practicals go too over bright um which sometimes means endy around the bulb inside or putting diffusion material at the top of the lamp shade or on the facing side but then leaving the back open. These are old tricks. I mean, in the olden days with film and, you know, 200 ASA or whatever, they'd take a little 150-watt peanut bulbs and they'd attach them to the back of a lamp's base, a ceramic base or a metal base that could handle the heat. And they were wired up the leg of the table so that the splash of light on the wall behind the lamp was expressive of the lamp supposedly being bright in the room. In truth, older sets, a practical lamp was very low compared to the key and fills that they were pushing in from the rafters.

But I can tell you this. I enjoy the process of trying to shape the light to be believable, but also aesthetically pleasing. And like you say, without it turning into front source flat fashion, although Harris Savitas did a great job with some of that, like birth and everything, he really made fashion light out of set lighting. And sometimes, you know, obviously just that's what you need to do and it looks great. I think that as regards the house and sugar,

there's one thing to point out, which is sugar sees his handler Ruby upstairs and then goes to leave the party. And we had a very interesting dilemma, comes up a lot, which is the location was a location, and we were allowed to shoot right up to the threshold of the door but not go inside.

The location had the cars parked and a house across the street and light coming down from, you know, lampposts, but you couldn't open the door and see in. The stage had all the interiors and a porch and some greens surrounding the porch, but you couldn't turn away from the door and look to the street.

There's no street. So we had a big dialogue scene that started with people coming out the door on stage and then continuing on the location. And these things, you know, a little bit of the OCD in me, The things that I hate is when it's like, oh, look, and now we're on stage. You know, I don't like that.

I want it to feel seamless. And I'm very proud of what my Gaffer Tracy and Key Grip Dave Dono did to sell that. It's very subtle. Like we'll put little bulbs 20 feet away as if they're attached to a house. But there is no house. There's just a net in front of the bulb to give it a little awkwardness, a little more realistic. and then there's some greens in the foreground of that, and you look at it, and I'm telling you, you just don't know.

Are we on the location or are we on the stage? A lot of that conversation took place on the stage. And I was, you know, I was concerned that there be zero interruption of the believability of the continuous action from one place to another. Yeah, it sounds like you, I can't remember who told me this, but there was a DP who had said that, like, the light should always feel like it has to fight its way. to the set.

Huh. Uh, no. Yeah. Well, it's, it makes sense, right? Like, because if you just put a light here, you feel it. But the second that it bounces off something or in your case goes through a weird little net to give it some. Right. Oof.

It then just feels natural. Yeah. You, you, you mediate the source. Yeah. Um, what was? Oh, there was, so, like, you said you hadn't heard this podcast. I jump around a lot. Uh, your, your, your memory.

I wanted to actually, uh, give you uh uh some credit i was listening to a bunch of interviews you'd done and the fact that you're able to pull out very quickly everyone's names and give them credit i think is commendable a because it's nice to give people credit but b i can barely remember my parents names like that's a that is a good skill to have well it's ken senior right uh no it would be uh rob my uh i was after the granddad went in the Navy. So that's why I was second. But, oh, I guess you didn't know I'm the second.

But there you go. We stumbled across some facts. But any, who isle. In the going back to Masters of the Air, there's a scene that you had shot where they're in like a planning. I'm having trouble remembering it fully. But they're in like a planning room. It's like very green and dim and this light coming in. Yeah.

Are you talking about the briefing room before? they go flying. Yes, yes. They all get told where their destinations are. Yeah, I was wondering if you can walk me through that lighting setup, because it's fantastic. Oh, you're so sweet. Thank you. Well, here's the reality, which isn't perfectly explained by the lighting or the situation. These briefings were at the crack of dawn. So if it's June, the crack of dawn is 5.30 in the morning in London or 545. And they were taking their briefings while the earliest, coolest light of the day is coming in, arguably before a full sunrise. And the briefing room, like every room in an air base during World War II, would have heavy curtains to allow them to black out

their base. Essentially, they want to black out the evidence of that base from enemy bombers or fighters. So you notice when you're in the officers club blacked out windows, no view, no, no, chance that the light of where you're drinking transfers out to the lawn. And so we just had little amounts of the opening of a window shade or window curtain. And then in comes this cooler source, which mixed very well with the warmer source of their overhead lights, which was what Adam Archipod set up. But what I hadn't thought about till I was there filming it is the balance of the map on the wall where they draw the line in red of what they're roots going to be, and how that had to be believable tungsten light for the time, a scoop

light of some sort, a kind of just a normal fixture with basic tungsten in it, and that had to be bright enough for them to observe and also, you know, remember, follow. And I liked that we later in the series sort of contrasted that with, that Thorpe Abbott's base, that briefing room, with with the Ramateli air base in Italy and the redtail flyers who were based there, the P-51 and P-40 red-tail flyers, they're in a much more Mediterranean light. We did it with a lot, we did it with lighting, but they're also sitting with all this like more window light coming in, you know, helpful to the faces, but they're also observing a tungsten-lit map on a wall because the armies would standardize those things.

You know, your base here and your base there would all function the same. So I liked doing, I liked coming up with that sort of logic and changing the color balance and everything like that. There's actually a really beautiful scene right at the beginning of eight where a flyer gets brought out by his superior into the yard and the brightest things are like these burning trash cans and there's very little backlight on them, very, and the brightest light is on the outside of the door. and I thought that was also like a nice change up, like showing that, oh, this is a different base.

These are different flyers. They have a different pride and agenda. And you know, when you do a show that's so historically based, you start reading about the stuff. And I was blown away. I was blown away by the Red Tails by the Tuskegee Airmen generally. You know, they were, they were the most effective fighter pilots in the Army Air Corps at that time. They were getting the most kills. They were saving the most bombers from attack. It was, it was, uh, and they were just insanely brave. Yeah. Well, and, uh, sort of stupidly anecdotally, it was fun to see, uh, shootigawa in Gatwa in something, because I'm a big Doctor Who fan. There you go. Now that he's the doctor, I'm like, there, there is. It was great. He seems like, I'm very excited for his, uh, doctor. Um,

I know we're coming up on time, so I do want to let you go. Uh, But there was, feel free to answer these as short as long as you'd like. I only had two follow-up things. One was, what was your experience like shooting second unit on Iron Man 2? And if you learned it. I mean, you know, that's a huge project. These things are like battleships. So I was assigned, thankfully, by Maddie, some stuff to do that needed shooting tandem with his main unit.

Not usually with the main actors. There was one thing we did with Robert Downey Jr. where he's driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a brand new Audi fancy sports car, and he has the model of the Expo from decades ago. And so we did that with a Russian arm. And then we went to New York and we filmed things that became essentially building blocks

to the visual effects creation of the Stark Expo. And then we filmed some of the stuff where flying manner attacking and blowing up enormous windows. And back then, you know, it's not a visual effect. I mean, we had pyro in the windows and fake glass was falling among all these partygoers. So what was it like? It's everything's a meeting, almost every sequence, never mind every shot or not, never mind every scene.

Almost every sequence involves a meeting with different departments because they're complex. And then you have stunts and then you have visual effects and then you have onset special effects and then how many cameras do you need? And I just started a film with such modest, like modest indie films in New York that for a production manager who just finished like Spider-Man 4 to say, well, you're going to have a technocrate every day. I was just kind of blown away. Oh, okay, well, I'll sort out to use it then, you know.

Yeah. Were those? I mean, it's a great aesthetic. Those films have a great aesthetic. Matt, he did a beautiful job. Yeah. The reason I did want to ask about that was just because, like you said, most of your films are a little more subdued.

Right. And I was wondering if you, any lessons you learned from shooting such a big, you know, marble wasn't really huge, huge at the time, but it was still a pretty big. They were, they were doing a big thing and they were, they were aware of what their power in the marketplace was. What can I say? I believe the aesthetic lives in the prep and Mattie showed me his printing lights and he showed me sequences and we talked. about the aesthetic and it was very clear. This is not a comic book show. The colors weren't comic book. It's slightly more, you know, tastefully sedate in its color tones. But it's an up show, you know. It's an up show. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Works on Iron Man One also as an operator for some of it. Yeah. I still think Iron Man One holds up as one of the best looking films of the Marvel. I mean, they all look pretty good, but that one specifically just has something going on with it. he killed it i mean what mattie brought was a tasteful sensibility and he was no uh stranger to lower exposures and he wasn't afraid of them so when you're in the cave and the gentleman you know is is uh helping uh tony stark recover it's it's a zone that looks so different than when you get to california and tony starts back at his malibu you know layer it's so different and that matters

yeah really beautiful work And then the only other thing I'd say is, you know, these films, they don't, at a certain point, you start to wonder, like, well, could I be anyone? Because there's so many decision makings that are just a complete, you know, Lego kit of like, okay, and this has to be in, and that has to be in, that has to be in, that has to be in. So you're doing that. But I was, you know, proud and happy to work on it. My gosh. Sure. Final question.

I saw you had done, like, one of your first gigs was video portraits. Well, at first gigs, it actually comes after I'd been in camera for like 10 years or so. I started in 1989 in a very rough way and then I got in the union in 90 and then was a second and then a first and then operating. So a very traditional union ladder to climb. I was always shooting smaller things at the same time. And prior to that, I had worked for years with Robert Wilson, this very, very, very amazing theater director, an artist who is really, you know, one of the great artists of the 20th century, and he certainly changed the impression of what theater or opera could be forever. And he got this idea with his collaborator, Noah Kochman, that they would create video portraits, which could very easily then be traveled around the world and hung in different galleries. And the idea of the video portrait was, we're looking at a wide screen. If you turn it vertically, like most people post with, that's the classic.

portrait mode of painting where you paint a portrait of a lady or a gentleman either head to toe or from their knees up. And Bob, who's ingenious, had this idea of doing both celebrities and animals and people from the normal walks of life and wealthy donors and create galleries filled with these that it moved very slowly when you watch it and it loops. So you kind of don't know where it starts and where it ends. So they called me and they were just starting this thing out. I believe it was like the Sony 750, not even the 900. And they were, they were a little astonished that I, the first thing I said was like, this is easy. You just get a plate and you put it on the tripod and you're going to turn the camera exactly on its side. They're like, oh, really?

And I'm like, yeah, that's all we're going to do. We're going to build a plate, handle the base plate of the camera and then the exact 90 to the tripod. And then if the tripod needs to adjust slightly, on one leg or another, we'll get a perfectly, you know, vertical image for you. It was fascinating to watch him cycle through his inspirations, his ideas. And there's one that really, because you mentioned, Iron Man stands out, in that it was taken from a Rembrandt painting of an autopsy. And the subject was Robert Downey Jr. Now, this was roughly the year 2002 or three somewhere in there.

But I will say this, my gaffer was Eric Messerschmitt. I had worked with Eric, I had worked with Eric as an electrician. I had worked with Eric as an electrician in the year 2001. He moved to L.A., became an electrician and then a gaffer himself. And he worked on an early film of mine while I was there with him. But he came on and gaffed these video portraits did a great job. And the one of Robert, you know, his all the agents and everybody was saying, excuse me, you're going to, because he had had had. some troubles. You're going to photograph Mr. Downey dead on a slab with a fake arm that's being opened by an, you know, an undertaker? Yes. Well, he won't agree to that. It's like, well, have him come and, you know. And Bob is very convincing and a very forceful creative. And he described it. He showed Mr. Downey Jr. the painting from Rembrandt. I think it's literally called the autopsy or something. And there was a velvet. curtain behind and a man stood with forceps on this, you know, fake arm, you know, Mr. Downey

hid one arm. And it was fantastic. It came up fantastic. And he couldn't have been nicer. He lay there on the slab for hours. He just asked that someone be able to bring him some water or something to drink with a straw. And he was very cheerful. How long were these loops? They run about 20 minutes. Oh, wow. Longer. Yeah. But imagine. it's all slowed down to a glacial pace. Right. We didn't over crank the camera that much, but they in post slow this down to a very, very, very slow pace, which is referencing Bob's early work where everything on stage happened

at a very, very slow pace. He had a performance that would last 12 hours, then he'd had a performance that lasted seven days in Iran and all this sort of thing. That happens. Yeah, it was just, it was fun to see because now, like at the time, It, I'm sure it felt like kind of out there to do that. But now it's like, that's every, every phone's got a million video portraits on it more or less. You know, especially in advertising, there's plenty of that, you know, for clothes and stuff.

They're in, in such a way. Well, but these are, these are works of art. Yeah. Not a pretentious thing to say related to these. The one of Wynonna Ryder is taken from Beckett's Happy Days. Samuel Beckett wrote a one person, straight, no intermission, performance. And famously in Paris for years, it ran with an actress named Madeline Renaud. And the idea is the curtain goes up.

A woman is buried up to her neck in a hill of earth. And just out of her reach, her arms are out. Just out, she's holding a parasol over her head to protect herself when the sun it's zenith. And just out of her reach are things she might be able to use, but she can't reach them. So, you know, this gets very existential. And curtain goes up. It's dawn's light and pulling this parasol. And the first thing she says is, oh, what a happy day. Enigmatic. And then you go through a very convoluted set of, you know, Samuel Beckett-like, you know, dialogue or monologue. And she goes through the monologue it takes an hour and you've seen the sun and the effects of light

sort of tell the story of an entire day over the course of the hour and just as the sun's going down and once again darkness is like finding the backdrop and shadows on her face right before the curtain comes down she looks back at the audience and says oh what a happy day so interesting no that'll work on you. And of course, Winona Ryder had her problems just before that. So the idea that there's a gun, a toothbrush, an open purse, all just out of reach. Yeah. That's what I hope. Is there a record of any of that? Like, is there, like the video portions or anything? You can go to Robert Wilson's website and you can look at video portraits. And if you go to my website, see noevil.

dot net, which is also Richard Rutkowski.com, under art and doc, you'll see both some stuff with Harmony Corinne and some stuff with a wonderful artist named Christopher Knowles when he was quite young, and also a couple of the video portraits. Well, and you also have a photography website, right? Which is just your name. I guess that's sort of an offshoot. There's Richard Rutkowski stills, but I think, I think the, yeah, that all links if you just go to see noevil.net. S-E-E-E-E-I-L dot net, or whatever it's worth. I think I people watch the videos once a year or something. Yeah, I mean, that's every website, right? Well, thank you so much for spending the hour with me. It's a fascinating conversation,

and I'd love to have you back to keep chatting about, especially like you were saying, like just the impact of digital, I think we could fill a whole app full of. So, yeah, whenever you're free and get a chance, I'll have you back. If you happen to watch Manhattan, which was on a thing called WGN, a very unfortunate network for it to be on, it belonged on AMC or something like that.

WGN stands for world's greatest newspapers and was a Chicago-based station devoted in the earlier part of its existence to Black Hawk's games or things like that. Sure. So Manhattan would be worth a conversation because there were some really interesting that the first, the pilot was shot by John Linley

and he shot like another episode and then I came in and I have to say aesthetically, let's just put it this way. You may rethink the, the massive, the massive falling over itself approbation for Oppenheimer.

Watch Manhattan. I was gonna, I was, I wasn't going to bring it up, but I did see that and go like, damn. But yeah, I'll give that a while. watch, and then we can go from the... Boy did a great job. I know that because he looked right at the color scheme we had and used it.

Hell yeah, that'll be a great chat. Yeah, man, thanks again, and have a great rest of your night. You as well. Take care. Thank you. Bye, bye. Frame and reference is an Alabod 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.