Frame & Reference Podcast - 145: "Masters of the Air" DP Jac Fitzgerald

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

This week I'm proud to welcome Jac Fitzgerald, DP of "Masters of the Air" to the program! 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 145 with Jack Fitzgerald, DP of Masters of the Air. Enjoy. I'm doing a project for Amazon's and our reference is heat, 40 hours, the original drive. And then there's a bunch of very obscure films that the showrunner has put up in his favorite movies, which don't always necessarily translate to what we're up to, but just to get in his headspace. So, yeah, I've been doing that as well as, you know,

getting on with work. So, yeah. Yeah. I haven't been watching too much of anything. What's currently coming out, unfortunately. Yeah. Well, when he's giving you those references, Are those more visual or tonal?

Can be both. I think for him, a lot of them are tonal. And again, like I said, it's more just to get into the mind. Right. It's the vibe. Yeah. Yeah. And then the directors and I were,

then we go into our own, you know, little corner about what's visual and what's tonal for us for this up coming project. When you're doing pre-production on anything, do you, are you like kind of the type of person who's like just point at what you want me for it to look like, or do you like to come at it with kind of some pre-dispositions of sorts? Definitely come at it with a predisposition for sure because it's, you know, they, I mean, for this project, it's working with the directors that I worked with on lasters of the year.

So we already have a short hand for a short hand in a friend, you know, collective. We know what we like of each other's tastes already at this point, which is a great thing. And so a lot of the, you know, for reading the scripts, the scripts are based on a graphic novel. So in this instance, it was already kind of heavily visually oriented or, you know, for the get-go. So it wasn't any great surprise that when we, you know, started having conversations in earnest that it was, the visions were aligned, you know, already for a huge degree. These directors, they, they're very visual themselves. And so they, you know, definitely, like, love this shot from this movie. You know, I love this lighting from that movie.

So we do incorporate, you know, we trawl through a big. amount of reference imagery being it, whether it's, you know, stills, photography of paintings or from movies, documentaries. Yeah, so we definitely are influenced by what's around. And, you know, sometimes we also just have a reference that we love and go, how can we make that kind of thing work into a particular scene? So we'll actually turn it the other way and go, actually, the visual comes first. and what the scene is, you know, a guy on a phone box.

Like, there's a million ways to shoot a go on a phone box. Right. So. And then you use the movie, what was it, paycheck is the reference? Who was it? I think he was like Ben Affleck or someone was stuck in a phone box for the entire Josh Hartnett or something like that for like the entire movie. Oh, no, it's called Phone Booth.

There you go. Paycheck and a phone. Yeah, so it depends. You know, it also depends on who you're working with as to how much of, how much they want to dig into the visuals for reference and how much influence they want to themselves. Yeah. Yeah. I like it when everyone's coming at it together, you know, because that means you're already halfway there instead of having to kind of start from the beginning. and you know push

something onto someone who doesn't necessarily know what they want that's a that's a big hill to walk up you know but I think most directors would never be in that position anyways yeah they have an idea of what they want to what they want their film to look like yeah it's funny I was talking to uh Eric Mezershmidt a few weeks months ago and he had I might be like Miss Corey him a bit, but the gist of it was like, he was like, you know, if I could just do pre-production the whole time and not shoot the movie, that'd be great.

Do you kind of feel that way where like pre-production is kind of the fun part and then production is where, even though that's what our job is, like, that's where the, everything gets worse. Because, you know, that's compromise time, you know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, pre-production is the dream, the dreaming, right? And then you have what seems like infinite amount of time to wormholes through every possible angle of what could be the best thing ever. Every phone box conversation can have its own mythical beauty to it or, you know, or dirty reality. And then you go on the scouts and you're like, yeah, okay, yeah, that's cool.

I can still retain a bit of that vision. And then you come to the shoot and you're like, oh, shit. Yeah. You know, it's, it's poor with the rain or all that's good or, you know, whatever. I mean, things definitely do. You learn to temper your expectations when you come into the shoot. And it's, and it's, you know, often you're really surprised as well. It's like, oh, my God, this did all come together, you know,

from all those crazy meetings that we had in pre-production when no one was quite ready to be 100% committed. or committal, you know, this is the actual final, this is the line in the sand, this is what we want. Yeah. Yeah, things just show up. They're like, that's really great. Yeah. And they really did put in there 100, 120%. It's interesting how, I don't know if you've experienced this on like small, when you were doing smaller shoots, but certainly from my experience, pretty, production seems to be the least valued thing for a lot of indie thing or like commercials. For instance, you know, you'll get a call like, hey, are you available tomorrow? And you're like, what are we doing?

And they're like, we'll tell you when you get here. And you're like, I know, I know, wow. Like it's like pre-production is not, but it's like, quote, unquote, free. You know, it's free to dream. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, this is the dreaming and, you know, the budget reality crunch. happens somewhere in there or you're dreaming and you're imagining all these great shots and then you're told that the Yachta can't thrives they're like

yeah okay so there's you know and there's many things and there's many workarounds of course as we all know but so long as the pre has already established

that that's the dream and this will be the workaround yeah so they always have to have that A and the B plan just thinking case. I mean, the first AD that we were working with at the moment was like, you know, rolling his eyes, going, well, it's better than we know now, because on a job not so long ago,

he had a particular actor who said they could drive and come the sunset shot that they were wanting that actor to drive in. And at that point, the actor decided to admit that they couldn't drive. Like physically or like the government would be upset? physically could have never been before even though it says you know clearly in the discreet driving right you know through the sunset

he's like I thought this was going to be volume up to the house into the into the into the close up so you know I mean it's like yeah you want to you want to mitigate as many of those surprises as possible without trying to crush the dreaming

so I always feel like a praise okay let's keep let's keep the dreaming alive but let's also be really practical have a real practical page going on side by side so you repent for both yeah no that's certainly a hard thing that I struggle with which is and not just with filmmaking but anything where which is like my brain automatically I can't say I say no but my practical brain jumps in very quickly Someone will come at me with something they're very excited about, and then I'll start overthinking it and giving them roadblocks to not to tell them not to do it, but to be wary of, and I know that comes off as annoying as hell. I mean, I think early on in films, you know, when I was a focus puller, I remember watching a director, people would be like, oh, you know, this is going to be really difficult, this is going to be really challenging because of this and this and this reason, you know, in all valid reasons.

And watching him just go, yeah, but it's not just a court if we do it like this. And he was right. And so all of the things that people had built up all these like, oh, God, oh God, there's going to be so many reasons. Oh, God, there's so many things that will, you know, take time and money and blah, blah, blah, blah. He had already preempted a lot of that and knew his workaround, say how to make it efficient. and quick and or just work. And that was Peter Jackson. Yeah.

You know, I was going to say. So, you know, learn early on to be like, all right. There's many brains involved in this business and many brains have completely different ways of working and seeing how to solve a puzzle. Yeah. You know, I've had the privilege of interviewing a handful of Kiwi folks. Callan Green was just on the show. Oh, crap. I'm blanking on his name with the production designer from Lord of the Rings,

who did Power of the Dog. Oh, God, now you've done that. Well, it's, no, I'm the host, and I can't remember his name. Yeah, yeah. And Ari, Grand Major. Graham Major, yes. Yeah, he's best. And then I had Ari Wegener on him.

Besides her, all he all worked on Lord of the Rings. And it seems to be this ongoing joke that if you were alive in the night, 90s in New Zealand, you happened to work on that film. Of course. I mean, that industry was, you know, it needed every single body available. We started out with one unit and Pisa Jackson and Andrew Leslie saying it was a one camera shoot. No. To seven units.

About 50 cameras and people running all over the country. So what got you to be a focus puller on that series? because I imagine you, were you just pulling focus beforehand, or were you freelancing? I was freelancing. I had met and worked with Zaday-a-camera first, who came over from Australia with Andrew, and we had done a big commercial together where I was seconding for him, and he asked me to do it. So I started out on Lord of the Rings seconding, and then, you know,

because I, you know, we had four cameras. in the main unit track and I was like, so we're running these other cameras. And day one, we pull out two cameras, you know, day one shot one, two cameras. They second shot two cameras. So I was, and I had focused on and off before, you know, more indie projects and stuff and myself. So I wasn't afraid of it and knew how to do it, but definitely a huge learning curve. But yeah, so I, we just, we kind of bopped around like that for quite a while that I would just step up and do big camera when needed.

And then as things started ramping up, then officially I got big camera. Yeah. That's a good thing. Yeah, that's rad. I mean, you know, just looking over your CV, like, I think you kind of have the more enviable position of often doing second unit. because I personally think second unit's the most fun unit. Yeah, no, it's good. I mean, it's nice to continue on from someone's vision

and make sure that it's an interesting thing to be coloring in this exactly the same. You know, I mean, everyone's got a slightly different stroke of hand, but so it's nice to do that well and also, because at the same time, And then you also get to dream of how you'd do it differently if you would just, you know, fully in charge. I mean, second unit's great and it can be a lot of fun. It can also be, you know, tricky in that you get half the resources and half the talent, you know. So you're definitely trying to cobble around, a couple of things together that may need that have this kind of half abandoned and, you know, here you go. You can't shoot this corner

because all the rest of the set's been pulled down. I shot second unit on this one film and it's the only feature I've ever worked on and I had to double as the driver of this ambulance the passenger gets shot so the driver has to pull him in and it's my arm and I still have my like COVID safe bracelet on

and like my tattoos and stuff it's so obviously but no one noticed no one cares I know that's no one cares. Yeah. What was, you know, I was, I got to meet a few people who worked on,

again, I was just bopping through your IMDB and you've worked on so many cool projects. I got to meet a handful of folks recently who worked on Rebel Moon, so they were giving me some BTS on that. But I was wondering what your experience was, I didn't even realize there was a B-CAM. I assumed for like the action stuff,

because I always thought, that Snyder kind of just, at this point, rolls his own camera. Yeah, that was a cool job for me, because, yeah, Rebel Moon rang up and said, hey, we've got this, you know, giant film starting. Do you want to come and do it? And do, you know, do work on the main unit

and then split off and do second unit. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's cool. I had a little indie movie that I was, meant to do and that was started to the date started shifting there and I was like oh okay um so I ended up calling back Rebel Moon but saying I will take this but be known that I'm going to go and jump off and do this other project when it solidifies and of course the other project just kept pushing so I had a huge amount of time on Rebel Moon which was fantastic

because the team of Zach and Debrainer around them yeah lovely, super lovely people everyone's really dedicated and working and but having fun you know so so again like

when I got higher they were like oh you know Zach always likes to be on a camera and I'm like Zach why don't you just sit down and watch the monitors right you're going to miss otherwise you're going to miss what the A camera is doing

I'm here there is a C camera shot on this at the moment so I would want out always and I think it took you know took a couple of days for him to be like

he totally let me but then it was like kept on kind of he kept on trying to think he needed to initiate it like Zach sit down right be the director

you're the director the DP the producer the writer I think you've got enough hats on, you know. Right. And so, yeah, after that, first few days, yeah, I was just doing B camera and then, yeah, split off as much as we needed to go and do second unit. When you're doing, you know, because you did what, Inan Butter Falcon, which I loved, true detective, well, no, road one. When you're doing these second unit things, is there anything that comes to mind that you've sort of learned from? maybe the DP that you're, for lack of a better term, copying or matching, or any, like, tricks that kind of, you were like, oh, that's an interesting way to think about that, or is it all kind of, like, using your own mental tools to replicate something that maybe you don't know the setup for or whatever?

I mean, I do spend, you know, make sure that I've watched a lot of dailies and or, you know, had to. a good amount of time shadowing on set just so that I'm well-versed in the language, obviously, stylistically and how it's achieved, you know, speaking with all the heads of departments.

So not only the DP, that, you know, the gasser, the grip and just preempting the team with them that I all need. And again, like the resources left over because often you're sharing, you're being a,

borrowing and stealing from from Maine yeah I mean and you just do once you kind of get into what the tools are being used and how they're being used as board strokes then you can kind of figure it out

from seeing physically how it's done and then watching the rushes and seeing yeah I haven't felt like there's ever been a case where it's never been a case of like go off and just do what you want because it's, you know, obviously sitting so tightly in the script. Then like True Detective, we ended up doing, I was also not only doing second unit,

but when Nigel would go and I would prep the incoming director and go and do scouts with that person. And then Nigel would have like two days or, yeah, generally like two days, with the new director going through the scout. So then I would go and take over main unit. So it was kind of a elite frog situation. And then more and more towards the back end of that schedule, I would do second unit full second unit with the main characters doing scenes

that main unit just hadn't had the time to shoot. So yeah, it definitely became a kind of like spread out the resources and everybody just hands on deck to get it all finished. Yeah. When you're working on a show that has like multiple directors and multiple DPs and stuff, how, you know, especially like, well, I feel like Masters of the Air probably was a little more because it was like a mini series, but like especially on a longer show. How are you keeping everything consistent?

What are those conversations look like between sort of the heads of department that, is there like often a Bible that y'all are looking at? Is it different for every show? I guess all the shows that I've worked on have been anthology and that, yeah, it hasn't been back to like series, series, series. It's been like True Detective was, you know, season two was its own storyline, right? So it had its, yeah, and every series has had its own lookbook and all movie has has had its own lookbook to work for. and not to say like for masters of the year we you know there was a lookbook created and but our episodes five and six were the beginning of a departure so the characters were

you know we did the last big battle in episode five so so from then on the characters weren't as tied to the military basis they had been in the previous one to four episodes. So although there was this Bible, we got to create our own from thereafter, and then the episodes that came after that, of course, had also had a much broader world that the characters were, you know, moving through. So, yeah, Bibles can change. You know, the Bible that was created for masters of the air was good up into a point

and then it springboard off from there and always staying within the same world because we, you know, none of the directors or the DPs from the other blocks wanted to change that in any considerable way but it certainly gave us more scope to experiment and play around with this week And I had very, very, you had new characters and we had different locations. Yeah. One thing I really love about the show is how it really, I think, straddles the line in a, in a gorgeous way between modern and not vintage, but, but period.

You know, it's, it's not the classic like, oh, let's shoot everything on old diffuse, you know. Obviously, you got Dan Zazaki making your own lenses, which is probably the, secret. So whenever anyone asks, like, why doesn't my movie look like that? I'm like, well, they probably had Dan. Yeah. I was actually reading, you're in this, this guy, the April edition of the ASC magazine. And it mentions that and stuff. But what were kind of the touchstones for that look? Was there a conscious effort to make it feel a little more? Like in my head, I feel like all the Apple stuff has a similar look, but everyone I've spoken to who, has worked on an Apple show, it's more so that they just pick high-quality stuff,

and it all just looks high-quality. It's not like there's a similar look. Yeah, I would think it was similar-looking. In fact, it started out, it started out being one thing and ended up being quite different. Which was, there was many kind of conversations that led to its final look. and there was, I mean, I think there was always the understanding that, you know, it's a long-run, I think, you know, nine episodes, it was going to be 10 originally when we were filming it. So, you know, 10 episodes of World War II had to keep a modern audience engaged, you know, because a lot of, you know, many people were well aware that the audience

who are really going to tune into this initially were Bander Brothers Pacifica fans and beyond World War II veterans who are dying dying breeds so then it's then it's the okay how do we keep this interesting for an audience modern, a younger audience

and there was the idea to kind of make it more vintagey feeling you know dove into all of the reference documentaries that had been made and were taking a lot of cues from from there. But, you know, it's incredibly polished up. Yeah. And incredibly beautifully composed.

So. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, it's definitely written a very nice line between feeling modern and accessible and of the period. Yeah, because like when I think of, for instance, like saving Private Ryan, I don't know if it's just because I'm older, but I imagine a younger audience thinks that looks vintage. But I remember when it came out, it felt very modern.

You know, it wasn't a sepia tone kind of thing. And obviously the tight shutter angle and all that was brand new for us. Yeah. Bleach bypass, what? Actually, to be fair, bleach bypass was kind of new then. Or whatever it was, um, E and R. Right.

Um, who, who gets to decide what those Frankenstein lenses look like? Like, is that a group effort or does, is there like a main DP or the, does main director that goes like, all right, I want these because I think in, in the magazine it says it's like they're like pets full and like, they're like pets full and like, they, it's funny because in, um, And carry out those on, and I think all of their, all of the work that they did with them got cut out. Yeah, I've got, there's in five, in six, there's a bunch of, I was in a five, sorry, I'm losing my memory now of when they fit in. But there's a bunch of kind of a montage of relating to the amount of people that didn't make it back from the battle.

and the loss of and the perks and other items and such and destroy planes and things where we had the pets fails on and and that's yeah it's definitely like okay we want something to be emotive and odd and ethereal so that's why we use that's why in our episodes we use those lenses And at the moment, like this show, I'm just about to start on. We've got some vision moments where a character's been shot and they're basically on their way to dying.

And so again, you know, we're experimenting with some lenses that are not what you normally, you know, run of show kind of lenses. And then I've got a bunch of flashback sequences. And again, so I want to have a different. set of lenses for those. But there was in Panorician the day and Dan Sazaki was coming up with some old crazy, great things to put on the front

of the run-of-show lenses. So that may be that we're going to experiment around with those and see which is a better look to go for these kind of adapters that go on the front and move things around and colour-biased

the image a lot or go through a couple of different sets of lenses so it's I mean and that becomes a collective decision you know between myself and the director's to say yeah does everyone like this look for the flashbacks

does everyone like this for the visions you know and you can do it in post you know you can do a lot of that work in post as well but um a you know time of money you know and not being as in control of that potentially

Yeah, that's actually something that, speaking to Mezzer Schmidt, he turned me on to this plug-in for Resolve called Scatter, and it is, as far as I can tell, a pretty accurate diffusion simulator. And the thing that I like about it is, you know, when you're backlit or whatever, obviously, sometimes the diffusion, like, the diffusion looks great for the subject, and then there's like a window that gets all great. You can just key it out and then, like, tune it down or whatever. and it's really like you you pick which one you want you can choose strength and choose your focal length like it seems to be mapped to like actual lens it's really cool um but yeah just from what you told me about the references of this new show i think it might be something that i'm into so i'm looking forward to that um what else was I going to say oh just um the uh lighting in the show feels so natural

and I was wondering is it one of those things where it truly is just natural and it looks like that or it was super difficult to make it look that natural and you've got lights everywhere yeah we do have lights everywhere

yeah it's definitely I mean Adam Huckapawazia and he's got a beautiful beautiful eye for minimal naturalistic lighting

and there's a lot of work that goes into that. Yeah, sure. And I like that approach too very much. So, yes, there's lights here. What does like an average setup kind of look like if we're talking just like, not in the plane, because I know that's like a whole, we actually, I'd love to get into that in a minute, but just like all the kind of the on the ground stuff, you know, interiors.

I mean, on that show that we had, we used the sky panel. 90% of the time actually because it was that thing we didn't want screaming hard light screaming back light going in there so it was more about just softly filling the spaces and I think the English

you know light is often you often get that even in the summertime there's a certain softness to that to their sunlight there's a couple of shots in the series that

where the sun is just like super crisp and it really stands out because most of the time there's just a certain amount of kind of gentle haze that's in the sky and so there's a couple of shots

like what the hell it looks like someone's just dialed up all the it looks like you've walked into a hotel in a TV in a hotel suite you know right but it's just and it was just particular

two particular shots that the sun just really peaked. But, yeah, no, the main, and again, it was like, you know, it's World War II and they didn't have a lot of lighting going on and have a nice exterior where all the shutters were always meant to be drawn and the curtains always were meant to be closed on anything. So, again, it was that thing of not, we're not necessarily relying on. what you know out of light

it was more just okay this is it and it's a somber it's a somber um storyline and so you kind of you know it's keeping it all very calm like and yeah yeah I actually

I didn't forget but it skip me real quick I was I actually just recently spoke to your production designer and he was telling me how what's that? Chris. Was it Chris?

Oh, no. Chris Seagos. Was it someone else? Who was I talking to? Let me look. This is why I said this is the casual podcast as I have time. Oh, no, is James Philpott?

That's a different show. Never mind. Any who's old. Who was I talking to? Anyway. Yeah. Someone about something. Somebody about something.

Well, now that I don't want to reference the show that isn't yours. Sometimes I do like six of these in a row. And then I'm like, ooh, who is that it? But yeah, anyway, that a lot of the, to the point that I was getting at was when you're talking about that somber tone, it is just, I was fascinated by how a lot of these, in all the episodes, not just yours, there's like this ability to keep every. everything, especially in these interiors. Exteriors are interesting as well, but these interiors have this like base level and soft contrast that still has like depth to it and doesn't just look like, you know, log footage or whatever, you know, because it could easily go just kind of washing. And so it just, it does look like you guys have a really like a depth touch at Keenan. How much of that was in the grade or did you like pre-build the let I imagine and then just work with that? Yeah, it was pretty. Yeah, it was pretty. built, it changed a lot actually in post Apple

wanted to to shift the look of it quite a lot and not to say that that was in a bad way they just wanted something they wanted it a bit more polished up so

things did definitely get it's not like we need needed to add more in post and tweak things that much. It was just a different colour palette, basically. So I think regardless of what we had shot on the day, it lent itself to both. The original look was going to be a lot bluer and cooler at all.

But, yeah, it was decided that to push more into the browns and the greens. And it's a good choice, you know. It's just, you know, there's so many opinions in the end and that's the way I went. So be it. But I think that, I think, you know, one thing that Chris Segus, who was our production designer, did, you know, he gave us these locations,

interiors that did have a lot of depth to them. And they did often all kind of feel dusty. And, you know, there was already a patina in there, of course, when, you know, he ages everything beautifully. But interesting because, like on the military base, for example, and all of that stuff's brand new. You know, it gets erected for the war, and it's basically stuff that's hot off the shelf, as it were. So it's a kind of delicate blend of things that have just been come out of the box. but in your mind's eye, making them aged so that they, it doesn't, nothing feels new and squeaky. And of course it doesn't because it's period.

So anything for us now looks older, that they were also making sure that there's a lot of reach to everything. Yeah, because that was something that kind of took me a while to figure out that, like, a lot of good production designers will, design the room with sort of, I suppose, not tabloes, but like frames in mind. Did you have, were you able to have a discussion with Chris about what you needed for your episodes or were those kind of pre-built? The bait, all the base was pre-built. Yeah, well and underbalance of me arriving. And even like the, even Chris said on an interview the other day that the B-17 had been decided even before he, joined that they were going to pre-build two of these planes.

So there's, you know, all these decisions that happen along the way and whether you're on the project or not at that point depends. And then when we got into leaving the base and going to the flat house and going to Oxford, I mean, those locations, they are what they are. I mean, gorgeous and they're right. And so, you know, we're happy you just, you can't go wrong because we're just so beautiful. Yeah.

When, was this your first experience using the volume? Because you guys used a big ass volume too. Yeah. It was. Yeah. What was that learning curve light? Because I've, I've heard from multiple DPs who have had to use it. And it's, it does seem like the dream of this will make everything easier was maybe a little

oversoul. I think it often is and I mean knowing that like even the Mandalorian was like yeah we did everything and it's like no you didn't you know there was lots of work

that needed to be done in post and that's fine and I don't and it's just everyone needs to know that like it's not it's not a soul ball and it totally depends on you know how picture ready

the assets are. Right. Because if they're not ready, then you're not ready. You know, effectively becomes a giant blue screen or eyeline machine, you know. And it was invaluable to us for so many reasons like that. We could use, you know, I could use it for lighting. We could use it interactively. The cast members all love to have any, being able to track the planes and the missile fire.

It was going past it, you know, an accelerated rate. So for so many reasons, it was incredible for us to have. Stephen Rosenbaum, who was RVFX supervisor, had a huge amount of work to do in post, to make it picture ready. Yeah. And plus, because also the main cockpit of the plane we had on a gimbal that was 30 feet in the air, 25 feet in the air, And so we had to rig as many cameras in as many places as possible, often through windows, and knowing that he would be scrubbing out. Right.

So we're also, in order to get through what we needed to on a daily basis, it was like, okay, we're sacrificing now, what is out that window, which would normally be, okay, we're using that asset on the wall. We're going to put a camera there now instead. Well, it does feel like the two things that the volume are great for, which, as you kind of mention, is like, you know, if I think about the Mandalorian, it's like his helmet is going to reflect everything if you use a blue screen. So it's like perfect for that. Cockpit, very reflective, cards, very reflect, you know, for that thing. And then also, as you said, actors.

I imagine other things might be, you know, less ideal if you're just using it. Oh, we could just shoot. instead of being outside, it's like, maybe we just go outside. But then, you know, things like, and there was a scene in, we shot, which never made the cut, but one of the crews who goes down in one of the episodes, I did some work as well on Adam's episodes, but so one of the ones was a plane that everyone had to bail out of, and they landed on the ocean, and then we see those cast members. And a nice raft, rubber dinghy, floating out in the ocean, not knowing what the hell is going to happen to them.

And we shot that on the volume. And it's like, that was great. Because had we, you know, there was no way we're going to, in our type production schedule, going to be able to shoot that. Right. Or build a tank, you know, like build a tank for one set up. So, one scene. So in that instance, we wouldn't have been able to shoot that. I mean, it didn't make the cut, but we wouldn't have been able to shoot that scene if we hadn't had the volume there.

Sure. Easily, you know, it was, it was a, yeah, it looked, it was beautiful, the water at night, and it was like, yeah, it looked. How do you, right? Was the, I suppose, touchline between the dingy and the water, was that going to be, be affectsed in? Yeah. Yeah. Because that would have been interesting. You just get like a baby pool, put the dingy in the baby pool.

and be like, close enough. Yeah. No, it was a big boat and it was a big deal to do what we did because we had to take the cockpit off this huge gimbal and put the dinghy on there. So we had, yeah, it was definitely a thing. But it worked. And I mean, the other thing that was about the volume wall was

so when Anna and Ryan, who were the directors I worked with, when we were in pre and we're working out, the battle sequence work and what, you know, what was important for them to see their characters go through, meant that the post, you know, they just, there wasn't enough time to pitch perfect the assets that they needed of that plane's up there, now it falls down here, you know, there's just so many tiny details of, you know, when that plane's falling this one over here is exploding so you know what was important for Anna and Ryan to get their characters involved with visually wasn't going to be ready I mean this was you know

you mean the assets in unreal exactly like the assets were never going to be ready in time so and I think that's a thing about the volume is like how you can you know what you want to do but being able to be, you know, so much in pre-production, it's that dreaming's this stage again, right? And to be to be perfectly locked down for everything, to give those people enough time to go and create the assets. I mean, that's a huge, that's a huge timeline in between. And it's not a couple of weeks out from shooting. Yeah, video games aren't made in a day.

No. So that's the kind of thing that I'm. I wish people were more aware of that it's a big lag between the reality of what is needing to be built for the assets to what's actually, you know, when you're in the stage shooting. So were you just using sort of like stand-in planes? Like that might have been like an F-16 or whatever. And you just had to replace it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. But yeah, I think that it's very education. What, so you, I read that you guys had like. Like, how many cameras, like, Rialtoed up in the cockpit? Up to nine, eight or nine. So you were just running this, like, a play.

Just, like, do it again. Well, it was interesting because when Anna and Ryan and I started, a block one was Adam and Carrie had been doing the volume for only six weeks before we jumped in and started. And we got given this, like, roadmap of, like, Like, these are all the rigging points to get, you know, cockpit angles. And so we're like, okay, let's do it. Let's, you know, put all the cameras in there and do it. And then we were like, after day one, we're like, it's not for us.

It just didn't give us this, what we wanted from our characters, which was the sense of this battle going to be the last for a lot of them. We really felt like we needed less angles and concentrate more on movement or with the cameras and getting closer to the actors and being with them a lot more. So we created our own roadmap of what to do. And you had said in that article that a lot of these angles were built on are sort of inspired by documentary footage you'd seen, not other films. necessarily right.

Yeah, it's actually, you know, five-camera is a beautiful documentary of great filmmakers and great camera, you know, watching cameramen going and being in these planes so people were really understood composition and light and, I mean, terrifying for them, you know, and they had also done some super cool rigs where they had, you know, put the planes and put the cameras

and positions where you're just like, oh my God, how the hell is that little camera holding on, you know, on the wings as it's taking off and flying. So you know someone's got a remote someone sitting inside the plane, drunk to turn to roll a little bit of footage. Yeah, so it's very impressive, the beautiful angles they got. And also the fact that the military was like, yeah, go ahead and put a camera on the wing.

That won't affect us at all. I mean, when you realize that, how being in those planes and realizing, because I built them all, you know, as per spec, there was nothing to them. It's terrifying. It's terrifying how sin that metal is, you know, and that really a bullet just rips through it like paper. Yeah. Because it is just like sheet metal, right? It's like sheet metal, gap, sheet metal, right?

And it's, I mean, it's thin, it's thinner than my finger. Yeah. And you're like, that's flying with all these people on board. And it's tight, too. It's like tight like a tank. Like everyone's just kind of mushed together. Yeah. And, I mean, the only place that there's some room is the waist that nearly in the radio

room, but they nearly everywhere else that's, like I, myself, I got into the tail section. And I couldn't, my shoulders were too wide to be in there. I got into the ball turret and it's like, and I'm five foot six, you know, I mean. So, and I didn't have all the leathers, you know, the big huge leather jackets and the big pants that they add on to keep themselves warm. So, yeah, being out. Oh, that's the other thing. There's no insulation in those guys either. No.

No, it's like 50 degrees below. Celsius, I'm talking about, yeah, I mean, it was staggering what they put themselves through. Now, what was, because you guys built the planes, what was the reasoning behind not doing the classic kind of like just make it 10% bigger to accommodate the crew? Because, yeah, it was just early on, again, this was decided that, no, keep it to the reality. And they went to any wild walls and there, you know, it's like, no, you get what you get. When we had the cockpit up on, so when we're in the stage work,

we had the cockpit up on a gimbal, which was the cockpit and then below was the Bombadiers area. And we would take windows out. Sure. To get cameras in to help with their reflections. But other than that, there was nothing. There were no wild walls anywhere.

What was your average focal length there then. Is you're shooting full frame on the Venice? Yes. We I mean we were 20, 25, 27th, you know, 35s? We didn't often see the whole thing, you know. Right.

Actually, 25 is probably too wide even. It's a while back now. Yeah. Yeah, when did you guys shoot this? I didn't actually look that. 21. 21, really? Wow. I'm losing the plot now too well and you had mentioned a couple of times that you had a compressed schedule

how long did you have to shoot at least your two episodes gosh when did I go there I went there in May we had a very unusual thing because of COVID was still obviously a huge factor and then it launched into the English summer and they opened up all the restrictions on going out.

So block one ahead of us had, they started getting snagged with shutdowns for COVID. And so when we started, Apple said, we don't want any, we don't want any risks anymore. So we're going to PCR every single person on set before you're allowed to start shooting. So sometimes in our day, we wouldn't start shooting until like three and a half hours. was into the day. It was an absolute nightmare. But it actually made us able to keep rolling. We never shut down because anyone who got pinged was not allowed on set automatically.

So, you know, it wasn't like a couple of days later we found out they had COVID. So, yeah, that helped us keep going. So in terms of days, I can't actually tell you because, I can't remember. Because it was very protracted because of this COVID, you know, protocol that Apple had insisted on. Yeah. I mean, it's three hours a day delay is probably better than two weeks compressed, you know, getting shut down.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And we got lucky. We never really had any, none of our cast members. got COVID while we were shooting so we were good there had been you know some pretty significant

stand downs and block one and you know because the cast is predominantly like mid-20 early 30 year old men you know and it's like how comes the English summer do they're going to go out to the pubs I was going to say it's pub time yeah

especially oh yeah we're in we're in a we're in a Spielberg film but you know ladies yeah hello yeah they couldn't they couldn't pull that card

until we finished the uh did you shoot um out of order like because I had read that you you went back and helped with the first block was your block shot first or were you just doing them simultaneously um

so when when we when block two started working block one was doing their volume work and And then they were meant to, they basically ran out of time on location. So then we came and started our location work, and then we went into the volley work and finished, yeah, essentially we finished our two episodes before Block 1 had got through all of their work.

And then Adam needed to take off for some family reasons. So then I went and filled in for him and completed work for Block 1st. one that needed to be finished off and at that point so at that point there was yeah block one work and block three work had already had started by then as well so it was you know there was definitely leap-frogging going on of for the actors and locations but um most of that was ended up being on the volume that we did satam did you where did your uh relationship with adam start because I had read that you were interviewed

not interviewed suggested he got you on the shoot basically yeah we knew each other from he actually came out to New Zealand from Australia

Lord of the Rings days he contacted Andrew Leslie and said can I come and observe for you know some time and check it out and he did

and that's where we first met and then the New Zealand and the Australian film industry is pretty tight and a lot of

there's a lot of crossover people and so yeah I'd go over to Australia and work be working over there and run into Adam and yeah kind of connections through work and

friends are friends and such so yeah we've known each other for a good chunk of time yeah and I was absolutely over the moon when he's you know said we come and do it And I had an interview with Anna and Ryan, and that's like, I really bores that up, the interview with them. And then I went back and I was having a look at some interviews that they had done with people. And they made mention on an interview of saying they thought they didn't get a job that they really boresed it up.

And I was like, please. Maybe they have some sympathy for someone who feels like they really boresed up. their interview and um and then a few days later i get a phone call and i'm in a supermarket with my son who's eight seven or eight at the funds and they're like how quickly can you get to the uk you're like son get the kayak get kayak on your phone yeah we're going so um yeah no adam adam had pushed me and and then um anna and Ryan, you know, they interviewed them a bunch of people.

Yeah, I got lucky. They got really lucky. Sure. You know, I should have asked this at the beginning, but who are the sort of DPs that you look up to and kind of maybe have shaped the way that you shoot? Who? I mean, it was funny because, you know, growing up in New Zealand, you know, Adam was doing beautiful work and so was Greg Fraser. You know, we were well aware of these, you know,

great people who had amazing eyes. Yeah, I always saw when I get to this evil last moment, you can guess all the usual. Yeah, sure. I'm a big, you know, Deacons, because you know, the world of where things don't get too complicated, lighting-wise and structure-wise that, yeah, that's, That's my jam.

People would keep it, honest and natural. It is so fascinating how, at least for me, I went from, you know, obviously in the indie world, you don't have access to a lot of gear, so you're doing your best. And sometimes that remains your slicking shit. And then you get finally access to stuff and then you overdo it. And then you go back to using one light, but it's just a little bit different, you know, maybe just a little bigger or something. And it's so interesting how sometimes, like, the best-looking stuff literally is just, like, the diffused window.

Yeah, for sure. They're sure. And people who, yeah, yeah, they, I know, I think that's what I really appreciate with Adam's work is that, you know, people are like, oh, the masters are there, you must have him care, everywhere. It's so much. Like, we didn't, really. Yeah. And the work that I did on the king with Raham, when I did second unit on the king, as well, it was just like, you know, there was a, you could have gone really over the top with it. And he certainly used a lot of light, but in a very natural way with very mega resources.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it's all about motivation for the light more so than, because that's where it starts to look like shit, right? When you start like back, back lights come out of nowhere, like, which unless you're doing like a 50s, you know, kind of send up or whatever, sure, like, you know, old studio look. But, yeah, it's not about the number of lights. It's about how many of them go past here, I guess, you know. Or how many of them you turn off? Yeah.

Yeah, it was at the Gordon Willis interview where he's just like. you see that one where he's just got like a light bulb and he goes I think this is good and then he like turns it off and he goes that's better that's good I like that yeah I mean that's in the show that I've got coming up I'm constantly reminding myself to to be bold with yeah like turn it off well I'm very much looking forward to that show whenever it does come out and I hope we can have you back to chat about it but I really appreciate appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about matches with the air for the past hour. Oh, and other stuff.

And other stuff. Yeah, well, that's the goal is hopefully we talk about a bunch of stuff. But, you know, since the PR people are here, I have to mention it. Yeah. No, no, no. That's great. Yes, we're excited to see. You know, it's been really nice hearing from people all over the globe, how much they enjoyed it.

Yeah. Yeah, I look forward to picking it. Cool thing, and I wish actually that I'd been a bit... Oh, sorry? Oh, no, no, go ahead. I was saying I look forward to picking it up on Blue Rick because I just collect physical media. But you were saying something more important.

Oh, no, I was just saying how I wish I'd actually been in the UK because I think from people over there, it sounds like it's just had such a huge following, I guess, because, you know, there's mainly British actors in it. so it's and you know shot in British soil so it's been really hyped up over there sure well I'll go go ahead and let you go but again thank you so much for spending the time with me hopefully we can chat about the next show cool okay nice one take care take care bye bye frame and references an owlbot production it's produced and edited by me Kenny McMillan and distributed by pro video coalition if you'd like to support the podcast

you can go to frame and refitpaw.com and follow the link to buy me a coffee. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening.