Frame & Reference Podcast - 152: "Prom Dates" DP Bradford Lipson

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

This week we've got the wonderful Bradford Lipson here to talk about his work on Hulu's "Prom Dates", as well as shooting "House", the HD revolution, his time as a gaffer, and a bunch more! Enjoy! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.frameandrefpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for everything F&R ⁠⁠⁠⁠You can now support Frame & Reference directly on Patreon!⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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 152 with Bradford Libson, DP of Prongates. Enjoy. ostensibly it's all about cinematography but sometimes yeah oh yeah especially i'm i'm all over the place um actually i did it's been a it's been an ongoing theme on accident but i had uh larry fong on on ostensibly to talk about magic because he and i are both magicians and then marcus forder was on and he was like oh yeah i was a magician too and then i just read an interview with you that you were also a magician when you were younger.

And still am. I actually am a Magic Castle member. Oh, really? Yeah. Hell yeah. Are you a Mexico Council member? No, but I have shot for a bunch of magicians there. So I have an open invite, which I abuse quite often.

But yeah, a lot of the magicians have been like, oh, you should just like join. And for the longest time, I was always talking like I didn't really have like a routine. Like, I didn't have a character to build around the tricks that I do know. Right. Pretty much everyone was like, yeah, that doesn't really matter for the tryout. Like, do the tryout and then figure that part out later. Yeah, you know, I think you probably could. I think that as long as you have a routine, you know, what, so I know that throughout time,

the Magic Castle changes their requirements, their auditioning requirements. So at the time when I was joining it was just come in and perform three tricks. because I performed way earlier in my life and and did performances with routines. I was like, I had this doesn't feel right to come in and do trick one, trick two, trick three. So I like cobbled together what I was going to do and to be ready for the audition. And really, like, this is what's really funny.

So I signed up, I took refresher classes with Mark Wilson, who was kind of one of my childhood heroes, if you can believe that. So like to sit with him in a classroom and chat with them and hear his stories, you know, with him on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Like it was just, it was awesome. But anyway, I kind of was brushing up on magic and then he sponsored me. And I signed up and they said, well, it's about a six-month waiting period for the audition. And so I was like, okay, no problem. And I kind of had in my head, I think I know what I want to do, blah, blah, blah. And they like casually just said, and you can also sign, you can just sign up like if somebody cancels, we can call you. And so I was like, okay, yeah, put me on that list.

Well, I was getting ready to go down to New Orleans to be the rotating DP on astronaut a wife's club. It's like three or four days before I was leaving. The Magic Castle calls me. It was like, hey, come on down tonight. We have an opening. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm not really prepared. But I basically just threw all my stuff in my, in my childhood magic case. And kind of was like, okay, I'm going to wing it. But I mean, I knew the three tricks that I wanted to do. And I knew how I could kind of tie it all together. So that wasn't really. the problem, but I just really hadn't practiced it much. And so my whole presentation was that I, in my performance was that, hey, my mom called me to tell me she was cleaning out the closet.

She found this old magic case and here it is. And she, you know, like, do you want it? You know, come over and get it. And I figured you'd want it. And so I set it down on the table and I click open the little latches and I open it and I go, to you all. know what it's like when you open something from your childhood and all these memories come rushing in so that was my routine that's a great setup yeah and i'm like pulling out i put a bunch of props in there from from my childhood real stuff from my childhood magic days and one of the things i put in there was this ridiculous it was like this cheap little plastic frame with a newspaper cut out of harry blackstone junior and his wife coming to denver to perform and i had gotten there

their autographs. And so I had their autographs in there, him and Gabe Blackstone in this thing. And I, and I, and I, and like, oh, like, here's one of my favorites. And I pull it out. And I'm showing it to them. And all, all the whole auditioning committee is like this. And I walk around the table to be, like, right in front of them. And I go, guys, I'm not, I'm not making this up. This is real. And this older woman in the front row grabs my hand and pulls it, pulls the picture to her. and she says, I know that's real because that's my autograph. It was Gay Blackstone.

That's incredible. That's awesome. And then I was nervous after that because... Right, yeah, she fucked up your whole thing. Anyway, so that's my audition to the Magic Castle. That's pretty good. Yeah, I've had to stop just doing table shuffles under the mic. Because I'll go back in the review, like the audio.

I'm like, you can just hear. so card magic we'll have to exchange information and meet some time card magic i i struggle if i used to be okay with it i i've worked coins for such that i'm like really adept with coins but i like kind of all over the place with cards yeah well yeah we'll definitely have to trade i uh coin magic is one of those because like carrying a deck of cards on you is kind of can be a little antiquated depending on the group you're with

if you're at a bar or whatever but like you know even a big like I have a pretty cool a few of them actually like these Liberty Head dollars and those

you know having one yeah this is a lucky coin and going for it I feel like that's more acceptable you know to people it is

but even coins are like you know like I'll pull out a coin for younger people and they'll be like Yeah, what's that? Where did you get your liberties? Because I have been trying to get some liberties for a new routine.

eBay. But I have. They're not. It feels weird because they come in like, you know, plastic case, but I got two of these. And I got one more that I actually carry around with me. They're all from 22 and 23. But it's just one of the prettier, like the Liberty Head, I think. we just need to bring that back with the spiky yeah yes do you know dany goldsmith or no up

yeah i bought uh last winter this is so stupid so last winter i was in france running a ski trip for um what was it like yale business club and harvard business club and uh so i'm in france and i'm talking about being a magician and i didn't have any cards with me so i go on danny's website and i download a few of his tricks and i'm like sitting there practicing them and i couldn't get any because he is one of the cleanest coin magicians I've ever seen in my life like he actually is doing magic and yeah I couldn't get him down in time to entertain anyone yeah his routines are really um his lights are are really involved so like just recently maybe three four months ago I downloaded I paid for one of his routines I because I kept kept popping up on my

feed and I was like how the hell is he doing this and so I bought it and I started trying it and he recommends the liberties and I have like a bunch of the 50 cent pieces you know that they both the what are they the walking live though the um what are they the um oh my gosh the older coins uh it's not a liberty it's a I want to remember the like big ones that it's a it's a It's a 50 cent piece, but it's not, both the Kennedy half, but there's another one that is really nice. I want to say Walking Liberty. Does that make sense? I just got those because I really liked the, to be perfectly honest, it's the coin that Two-Face has in the Tim Burton Batman's. And so I just wanted one. And then I bought three.

I'll also I reached out to do you know Roy Cooper who Roy Cooper is sounds very familiar yeah he he's in Vegas and he manufactures all like the shells got it and all of those things and so I had reached out to him to ask if he had almost like a matching set of liberty and then I hadn't really followed through with him so I don't know whatever came of it anyway I think I picked him up for like 30 bucks a pop they weren't like two I got him like five, six years ago, but they weren't terribly expensive. But it does feel, like I said, it does feel weird getting them like, they're in like a plastic shell. You know, they're all shiny and then you're like, get out of there. I'm going to use this. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome.

Well, Roy Cooper has a routine on his site that I don't know if you ever mess with, you know, any, any gimmicks. But, I mean, I used scotch and soda for. a decade that was just easy to carry on me all the time right i spent mine once unfortunately oops i always i always flick them just because you know you can hear the dead one so i'd always be like all right so don't not that i i was not smart enough to do that i'm trying to think what the name of his route what this routine is i'm i'm blanking my magic's just right there i'll get it i'll get in a little bit i can you know but it's just it's an amazing routine where it's basically a matrix that you just use your hands.

Instead of putting cards over. Yep. And it's awesome. It's one of my favorites. So I highly, if you like coin magic, I look into that. It's really fun. People just go, what the hell are you doing? Because the beauty is you get to rate, there's moments where you can raise both hands

when you're doing it. And then people are going to think that you're like you have, you're covering something up, but then you raise your hands and they're like, oh. and then you keep doing it and it's like oh my god how is he doing this yeah did you see i'll definitely have to i took a note here because i i've always wanted to get more into coin because it just feels more carryable you know um uh but also um that reminds me i was at nope that thought's gone oh did you see uh it was like two years ago marcobey's like uh was Is it fizzdom winning card performance?

I didn't know it's look it up. It's fantastic because he just plays like a schlub so he's like it's incredibly messy and great. But there's because he's doing it for like, you know, all magicians, he has a few fake out. When you're talking about being able to like lift your hands and showing it, he has one where he, it's one of the best lights I've ever seen where it's like he goes like that and then hold, you know, as a joke is like holding his chin and is like pick a card and they pick it and he goes, do you want to switch and they've already got it in their hands and everyone just. like come on give me a break like right right that's awesome i'll have to look it up yeah his name's marcobey he's a french dude do you do you go to magic live or any of the no pretty much just the castle there's a um uh theater over here in santa monica that i'll pop into every once in a while but um well i mean like the big convention like magic oh no no i've never been i yeah i might be going

this August if I can. Where's that at? It's in Vegas. It's huge. Write that down. You didn't go to that. I went to my first magic convention a few months ago. It must have been January in San Diego.

It's the West Coast. They call it the IBM, such and such, west coast or western half the United States. And it was rather interesting. It was an eye-opening. experience for me because I didn't expect like is mostly retired people yeah that that is one thing that's kind of so I actually a few I don't know if you were there but like two weeks ago when Richard Turner was at the castle I've seen him up quite a few times yeah I did last time but he's impeccable yeah that was uh because I you know my my sister goes with me all the time

and uh it was funny because you know she's seen enough magic to kind to kind of know like at least where things are headed not how it's done but kind of you know sometimes you'll see repetitions and i she just at when she left i was like how that fuck like how does he know where anything is how i'm like you practice was for 12 hours a day for 60 years like that's just what that looks like right that's exactly right and that's my big problem is uh kennedy i i just don't practice i mean same and and i you know and i go through these weird spurs like all all practice really heavily and then other things come up, you know, work stuff and whatever.

And then it's like I just, I should really just even if it's a half hour a day, but I just like put it aside and then I have to kind of, it's not starting over. Some of it's like riding a bike. Yeah. I learned the hanging coins. I don't know if you know that routine. Yeah. And I learned that a while back.

And I pretty much am to the point now where when I do it, I could almost, I could maybe just practice a little bit, but it's it, you get that muscle memory going up. Then it's like, okay, I kind of have it. Yeah. Anyway, that is the one nice thing about card magic is like you can be watching a TV show and kind of just at least practice, you know, practicing palm shifts or, you know, air shuffles, whatever the hell, you know, it's a, it's a very therapeutic. It's the original fidget spinner.

Right. And it's the same thing with coins. Yeah. You can do the same thing with coins. So I should be doing it more with the cards now, though. it's a fun i've got over here this whole upper section is i think it's like 60 decks so you can have some of mine if you need the new ones um i had to have the same thing i have a whole i have like a little practice area with cards and uh you know all the junk throughout the years if i would

be around to me i i let's see i don't know if i can bring it over my some of my old magic oh yeah oh yeah pretty good. Yeah. I don't know why I leaned like this. That's stupid. Let me get around the iPad. All right. Well, I guess that's the end of the podcast. You know, when I was when I was when I looked at that up, I saw something that didn't occur to me at the time because I remembered and then forgot because it's been a while. And it's roughly more gear talk. But you shot Wilfrid on DSLRs. and it doesn't look like that.

It looks, you know, like any. I mean, obviously, at the time, the shallow depth of, you know, your 5D 800 look was unique. But nowadays, you know, it would be kind of commonplace to shoot something on a mirrorless or a DSLR roughly. Same thing on like House. I know you worked on House. They did that one famous episode on the 5D. Right. And I was wondering what for like newer people listening, what were the challenges of shooting a show on like a

the 800 versus not you know like what what upgrades have made those irrelevant now you know what unique challenges were on that show okay so it's funny that you say this because last that it was at a dinner with automits and in many other dPs and and we we were talking about this about justice and so the 5d and the d 800 back then I think what the two biggest challenges they were, I believe, I think the 5D was 8-bit. Correct me if I'm wrong. Sounds right. Unless you had magic lantern.

Yeah. And I think the other part was the dynamic range wasn't that great. So it was challenging on that show in particular because we shot both directions at the same time. We basically had three cameras going. So we'd shoot a master. and overs at the same time. So if you're at the front door,

on season one, we were on 5Ds, and when we were at the front door of, what was the main character's name? Elijah would. Well, yeah, Elijah would. I don't remember the character's name. But anyway, we'd be at the front door, and one camera would be shooting out,

the other camera would be shooting in. So the camera's shooting in, I had to do the opposite of whatever I was doing, shooting out like i would have a 4k chimera you know to shoot towards the outside on whoever we were shooting and flagging that all off the actor in the doorway and you know then shooting into the house i had to kind of like almost take away light and take away like from out you know what i mean it was yeah yeah bizarre kind of like uh you had to design the gradient between outside and inside Yeah, yeah. And then season two, I believe we went on to stage and then season three. So it kind of made parts of that easier, although we'd always shoot the out, you know, obviously on location. But it took away some of that issue. But I think it was just the eight-bit aspect and the dynamic range were the two biggest parts of where that was challenging.

to make lighting work and like, okay, how can I make it look like there's a lot of latitude when there really isn't? And, you know, how can I stretch it as much as I can and and hold the highlights and hold the blacks and all of that. That just kind of was, I think it's biggest challenge at the time. And then I'd say the second big, the next biggest challenge was just, and it got better through time through trial and air, but it was still always kind of hard. It's like, you know, they're DSLRs and they're not, they're not cameras they'd overheat and you know map box would fall off in the middle of a shot and you know kind of like or the um the focus motor would disengage and you just slide right on yeah and just

I just remember stuff like that was kind of um because there weren't cages for these cameras back no it was it was the very beginning of that so it was kind of like okay um you know how do how do we do this. So it was, it was a learning process for sure. And, and, uh, and then over time, you know, it just kind of kind of worked out. Then I left, I think, season three or something, and went on to do other things. Yeah. Because the, when I think about, because that wasn't terribly long ago, but, you know, for younger people getting into this, that, that might as well have been the stone age, you know, but I remember in college, you know, the five D coming out, college for me. The 5D coming out and kicking the DVX 100 to the curb. But my film's cool.

We all had to fight over the one. Otherwise, you're shooting on DVD. But yeah, I think it had like, what, eight stops, a dynamic range or something like that. Yep, that was about it. And, you know, the crazy thing is I won an ASC award on that. Nice. Oh, yeah. What was it was, was the reasoning just because it was allowed, allowing you to really selectively choose your depth of field? because I know like the show is ostensibly in Elijah's characters head the whole time but like were there any other that was really

no I think I think it was like it allowed and I didn't do the pilot so you know and so this choice was made by the show creators and showrunner and everybody they made the choice because they liked that look and I think it was a good choice I think the right choice for that show so it worked and now you could turn around

and go out and have You know, you could do that on almost any camera now. You could go pull frame and get that same vibe. Yeah. What was the D-800 offering you that the 5D didn't? Because nowadays, especially Nikon, you know, their Z-Series, the Z8, C-9, insanely good. But for video, most people don't think Nikon. I had a D-90, which was 720, maybe six stops of dynamic range and jello like that.

That jello effect was the number. other thing we had to be careful about, when you pan back and forth. I would say, if I remember correctly, it was really just that the HD in my port allowed for us to see full HD. Oh, yeah. That was the reason. Yeah, so you could actually monitor it correctly. Yes. Yeah. Other than that, I think they were pretty much neck and neck. Sure. And when I won that word, I think Nikon didn't really, you know, they didn't really care. They didn't feel like, yeah, okay, whatever. They didn't, they didn't see the relevance.

And it's not their niche, you know, they didn't set out to get into Hollywood as a production camera. Yeah. Well, and it's funny, too, because when they released the D90, they didn't even mention, it released at 24P. And then they were like, hey, you can use this for news gathering. And I was like, wait a minute, like, 5D came out at 30 and they're like, come on, make a film with it. You know, they had what, Vincent Lafrette out here, like making tons of videos and Nikon just went, eh, that's a feature, kind of fun, you know? Right.

Yeah. No, it's interesting how they responded to that. And I remember it was like the, they came to the award ceremony. It was kind of like, you know, shook hands and congratulations to the left. And I think we did one on their website. We did one interview and they left it at that. And that was it. Well, now they bought red.

So they stood out. Now they're in. Yeah. I, you know, I just realized I just, I had forgotten about that. Really? Really? Yeah. That's the, yeah, they did it.

I think they bought it for like 85 million. Wow. Like, that, that was shocking. I thought it would be in the upper triples. But like now, now it makes sense why they were kind of like operating on a shoestring or like, you know, just everything. that kind of came about their company was they needed to get bailed out. Wow. I did not realize that. Yeah, they just released that number like last,

like two weeks ago. But I'm excited. I think that that's a good acquisition for both companies. Absolutely. I did want to know, you know, I was not a office person. Most people are. I just can't like anything very long. I fall off immediately, you know, but I did want to know. You know, you gaffed, what, 56 episodes of the office. What's the difference in a show that is ostensibly not lit, you know, quote unquote, not lit. I was wondering if you could run through maybe similarities and differences between gaffing a show like the office versus house, which similarly, quote unquote, not lit, but a little more dramatic looking and, you know, like without a trace, which is probably on the further side of that drama. Right. Oh my gosh, you're really reaching back. So all, you know, the whole not lit, but obviously they all are. It's more about how they were shot. So and what the requirements are because of how the execution of the show is done. So the office was two cameras handheld, a lot of moving around. Cinema Beret, obviously, you know, the new, the documentary crew is. always there. And so the lighting requirements had to be such that it allowed for that.

So really the lighting of like the office set itself was really just all practical. It was like fluorescence. And, you know, we could control them. We had everything ran to a breaker panel. So I could turn off any fluorescent at any. It's funny to think about now, I just have to say this, because now it'd be like you'd have a stairs in there. iPad. Oh, my God, you could just like really go to town, which is I'm sure how they'll do it on the reboot. But we did what we had with the tech.

We did what we could with the technology at hand. So basically I could like turn off a floor. I said really quickly if I had to wear a group of them. I also made these, I made these weird contraptions out of phone cord. that were like a triangle white on the inside that that and and then mylar and basically you could just it how do i describe it it was basically like a like a like a a slanted triangle and the one small part of the triangle was open and we could put diffusion on that and basically i could clip that to the fluorescent basically the fluorescent would bounce into that mylar and shoot the light out

Wow, that's smart. Yes. So the key grip, we had like four or five of them. So the key grip could just like, we could put them on one whole row. So if Steve was walking down, you know, between the desk, you know, all that light that was off camera, not working for us, because it was aimed that towards him. So you didn't have all that top light. That's so smart. So they're basically like little clippable zip lights, essentially.

or, you know, zip modifier. I don't know what you can call that. Yeah. It was just this, I don't know, came up with that as, asked the key grip, like, let's try it. Let's see if it works. And we're like, okay, we have nothing to lose. And we're like, yeah, this works great. It's kind of a fun thing.

And we, so I'm getting off topic, but basically, like I said, that's this podcast. Yeah. So ultimately, and I came up with a few other contraptions that were that went on to serve the production well, even at well after I left from what I understand. but ultimately that that show had to look like and it was the mantra of the show was it's a documentary so it shouldn't really look any more than it should does that make sense like it shouldn't look great it shouldn't like you know it should just look like it should look and so ostensibly I always felt like if I was making something look too good then we were getting out of the realm of what

the show was. So there were times when I know we would purposely, like if we were on a location, like in a townhome or something, we'd push the practicals to be a little brighter than I would if I was doing a one-hour drama or another or even a half-hour narrative. If I was doing something where it was just more controlled, I would bring those down into a realm that looked more controlled. But part of that is when the door opens and the camera goes in, it's like, it would just be whatever it is. So if you made them just a little brighter than they should be, then it kind of sold that.

Yeah. So that's how that was compared to like a show like House or or without a trace, which was clearly, you know, needed to be dramatized and the lighting needed to help. It needed to be part of that storytelling. So yes, of course we had that set and had to make the sets look like the hospital, a real place or the bullpen for without. out of trace, a real place, but, you know, how can we also make it dramatic looking? Yeah.

Because, like, I always think of shows, like, I was just talking to DP of, oh, no, no, no. Well, in any case, I was, I was talking to someone about CSI, how there's like, no, that's on the extreme end where it's like, there is no way an investigative body would be like, yeah, let's just do this with the lights off, you know? So let me just look. I need to look inside the, the microscope, turn off everything and put some. blinkies in the background. I need more blinkies. Right. And highly stylized. That's

that's what that's what those shows are. You know, you're like they're like putting objects in the foreground to dolly through. Yeah. Whether glass bits that refract light and that just look really cool going through or, you know, the old trick C stand arms and you just, you know, light on them and you just go through them. You can't tell what it is. It just looks like, you know, it just looks like, you know, eye candy that you're going through. Those kinds of things. You know, every show has its need.

So, yeah, that's kind of the big difference between a show like the office and where it had that definite cameras had to have the ability to move around with the actors, whatever we were doing. We rarely put lights on the floor on stands. And did that make your job easier or harder? Neither. I mean, you know, it, it just comes with the territory. You know, it's like you're, you know, as a gaffer, you know,

there a lot of shows where this was back in the day where you used green beds and had a lot of lights ringing the set. Yeah. That wasn't uncommon. And so I suppose the office, it wasn't like, it really was just like, okay, how do we, how do we take this on? really a question of harder or not, it was just a different way of doing it. And the key grip came up. He had these great, he came up with this whole, like he had NDs and Bobinette with magnets.

And then, you know, we could like if one of the actors was, we had to have a fluorescent light on for whatever reason, or we could just harness it. We could always like make it less where they were or less like if it was offensive on somebody's head or something in the background, but we weren't seeing it on camera. Yeah. We wanted light back there. We could just very quickly just slap something up and, and control it that way. The magnet. We had a lot of cars sleep.

Yeah, I was going to say that, like, just those two little tricks alone are, I could see anyone using that in an actual, you know, like I get sent to do corporate testimonials a lot. And I might steal both because I, you know, obviously the, the full ceiling gives you the little metal things where you could attach the magnets or like oftentimes I'll use a little scissor yeah a little peggy but yeah just having a magnetic ND that you can go like that's pretty good yeah it was great those were truly good and then I think the last one of the other things I came up with part way through is we used a lot of my god the quino flows um they were the the little rectangular, not like just the tube ones.

They were the, oh my gosh, this is just so bad. The, um, the Dita lights? Not Dita lights. Go, go back a little more. The celebs? Celeps. Yeah. So we started using celebs to like key certain spots.

And we didn't, but we wanted to leave the room for the DP and the camera operators to be able to like not. We didn't want them hanging down. So I made these, I went to Home Depot on a weekend one day and I bought a bunch of PVC pipe and I built these telescoping contraptions that were basically like a U and then with feet. And I filled the feet with sand. And basically, you know, you just have a collapse and then lift the ceiling tile,

put it up, expand it, lock it, hang the light on it and, you know, safety it to something up in there. you're off to the race is it took like a minute and a half to put up that's so smart yeah that i feel like a lot of uh dPs who spend a lot of time gaffing probably have the most efficient ideas for any given setup you know otherwise as if you go i feel like if you go straight dp your whole you know career you think like oh i need a 12 buy over here and put as much like well what if i just put that up you know right just right well you make a pipe I think there's also the I think it's twofold they fortunately got to work with a lot of

wonderful DPs and when I was gaffing so the good part is that you also are absorbing and learning a lot from DPs who know how to light and that are good and you walk away your bag of I call it my bag of tricks you know so in case of tricks yeah so they just keep expanding and there's that and then you create your own because as like you say as a gaffer it's like you know trying to find ways to be creative whether it's out of efficiency or out of just like pure necessity or you know hey i just want to try something new and different you know any one of those things or all of them you know you begin to experiment and then you go okay this worked this didn't work and you just find those things and add on to your repertoire yeah yeah were there any

uh dPs who kind of um you could consider like a a mentorship role that helped you out when you were kind of transitioning sure absolutely like david stockton would be one of phenomenal and i i did a lot of work with eagle eagleson i don't know if you know eagle no that's a great name yeah he's from iceland yeah he directs now he's not not not she's anymore from what i you know we keep in touch but i don't think he's i think he's just directing super talented you know people like that um quite a few of john peters was a guy i worked with a lot back in my younger gaffing days um he was originally from england really talented uh person who what i loved about working with john is he challenged us all the time and he always enjoyed like

Let's not try to light the set the same way every time. It was fun because it's like, okay, you know, it keeps you on your toes. Because, you know, on a TV series, it's really easy to fall into that. When you work with somebody is like, let's try it like this this time. Yeah. Oh, okay, that sounds like, let's that would be really fun. And so I think things like opportunities like that really help you expand as well. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I did. I, I, it's seen when you were talking about in the dark with someone that you kind of habitually have a polarizer in front of the lens, at least for that show. Yeah, on a lot of shows, I'll do this with just like a one stop. If it's a productive one stop polarizer, sometimes you buy, when you get them, they're just like you can spin them and spin them and spin them. And they, they, if it's just depending on the manufacturer, right. leak anything out of it but i i do often do that or i don't necessarily keep it on for every shot but if i go into coverage and and um there's a shine on an actor's face i can spin it and usually get the shine out yeah and then add your diffusion and it it's helpful so it that's mostly what it's for certainly sometimes there's unwanted reflections on other things yeah that are distracting and we use them for that.

And now you could probably, you know, I haven't really tried it, but I could probably just use a two-stop in not really ever worry about it now with the way cameras are. Yeah, just in terms of the sensitivity. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was talking to my friend Johnny Durango, another DP, and he had mentioned he does the same thing.

It's just like always on polarizer. And I don't know why, but the handful of times I must have just potentially been using a shitty one. But, like, I felt like it affected the image too much. Granted, I don't know what the stop rating was. But he's like, yeah, you just kill. It's for killing shine on actors. And I was like, that's so smart.

And I don't know why I only thought of it as using it for reflections and always thought that the skin of people. Like, I always thought it looked too matte for my taste. But are you saying that you could, how do you like for that potentially? because obviously it'll it'll the contrast ratio might change by spitting that thing around i you know i don't really ever feel like the contrast ratio changes and i just mean like the highlight you know if you kill that highlighted yes if you yes but usually it's an unwanted highlight so then it's obviously okay yeah yeah yeah yeah so then so then clearly you know you're trying to light it really depends on what it's for and and so like if i'm lighting to something dramatic and and somebody has like

say a shine here that's i can't seem to get rid of but i still like the half light but this is maybe coming from something in some other place or they're picking or something up on under their eye right i can spin and get it but it'll still you know you can still you're right maybe you have to push the key light a little bit stronger right if if it takes too much away but i i find i usually don't have that problem that's rad yeah i'm i i'm the only reason i'm i'm pushing you on it is like I got to start this is one of those little bag of tricks things I'm like I should probably start doing this is a great little idea you know saves you some time too absolutely yeah I love shooting in the dark that was a really fun show to shoot yeah it's a yeah it looks I haven't

seen it but when I was looking through like clips and stills and stuff it looked very very pretty and dark thank you yeah it the content allowed for that and the show creator was great about like let's push this more and change the look up a little bit little bit, season to season. And it's just when the story, the story itself just needed that. And the main character and her friends were going down this rabbit hole. So, yeah, it was fun. It was great to do.

And I did a lot of, because the main character is blind, I did a lot of, like, wide open, here you go. You know, I shot on the lights, some of lexie lenses. Oh, those are good. wide open 1.4 or whatever yeah yeah i'd open on her and to give like her world is you know falling away around her and then i did a deeper stop for everybody else and it was subtle but it was kind of a cool thing we had we kind of have like a little roll book of things to do and and and rule book's nothing wrong like a a bible of guide book yeah guide book of like

like, hey, let's do, let's, these are, when we're into this, let's do this, let's do that. And I did a lot of wide angle closeups as well, which was really interesting. And then I would use the macrolux, you know, which is basically a diopter made by my lights. And I would, so instead of, you know, instead of using a diopter to try to focus on something close, you know, normally how people use diopters, I would use it kind of in the opposite. that I would put it on and then focus on Murphy, the main character, and then everything else would go really crazy out of focus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, like this much depth of field on her. So it was like, my focus pullers, which I, Brad, which I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it really kind of made, and I didn't do that all the time, but there was just, there were sequences where that really made sense when she was really in her own head or when she was going into a flashback. You know, when mine, she was going to go into a flashback, we would do, we would do that effect. Yeah.

Yeah. And you shot that on Venice? Yeah. Sunny Venice. With the, the, the, I saw in reading about that that you rated it for its higher ISO, but then dropped it down. Was that just to save on shadow detail? Well, you're shooting at 800, but the camera was set to like 2,500? Or was that a different show?

No, that's that show. So $2,500 be the low light level. Right. And so when we were shooting, you know, clearly in low light, I'd set it for the $2,500. But then incrementally I could bring down, you could go down in this, that would be the, how do I say this? That would be the main setting. And then you could incrementally come down from there to, like if you had, too much light.

I see. But what I found is that if I went to $2,500 and just use the, I ended up doing this most of the time. It's like if I ended up just using NDs, that's what seemed to work best. Yeah. Because where the Venice, where they set the gray scale when you go into that higher ISO for that low light level, it's just amazing how it opens up. Yeah, sure.

spectacular. So it really can lead you to a lot of creative. It can open the creative doors even more, I think. I don't know. I found it to be really awesome and fun to work with. So I'm trying to remember all the variables because it's been a while since I shot that show. So I'm trying to remember all the things. Yeah, the only reason I wanted to bring it up is because I, you know, a lot of times people with the Alexa will rate it at like 1600 because the grain structure looks kind of quote unquote grain structure looks kind of nice. But I hadn't really heard anyone kind of off speed the Venice, you know, so that was, it was just like a, yeah. And I think that I found that if you go up from 800, it just doesn't tend to fold up as well. I mean, it depends. I mean, it depends what you're doing. Sure, yeah. It's the right look, you know, so I don't know. Yeah.

On, I saw just some terrible news about prom dates, which is that you were restricted from using twinkle lights a lot. That sucks. That sucks, man. It was the director, Kim, who's absolutely awesome. I enjoyed every minute of working with her. She was the best. But when she first told me that, I was like, oh, okay. And she's like, no, they're just so overused. They're in every damn, you know, adolescent movie.

And she's right. Every party scene, yeah. Every single party scene. And I enjoyed that challenge. But, you know, she was open, like, clearly like, and this was obviously the production designer was really helpful and heavy-handed in this as well. But like that opening sequence when they're when they're young and they sneak into the prom. And there's a lot of twinkle lights there. And that was, you know, she was fine with that.

And then there was an overuse of twinkle lights in that in that house. Yeah, the front house. that yeah that really cool giant wall of twinkle lights which was awesome so I think that but I think overall I kind of pick up on what she's saying like let's find a different way to do it let's find other things and so I appreciated that and enjoyed the challenge to be honest yeah well the the thing I really liked about just the way you got you lit it was it's still like first of all it's been a while since it like a has to say raunchy comedy but you know like they're few and far between these days like you know 2005 either every other

movie was kind of but the when I think of your kind of will feral type comedies they were more lit you know whatever like the office you know they weren't necessarily that whereas this has a very stylized look while still looking very natural and uh were you pretty much like just churching up practicals and using that or just maybe like one LED because I know you guys had kind of a slightly more limited budget

so like how are you getting that really cinematic look while still keeping everything both affordable and like practical based so I think it was a combination of things I think part of it's the look that Kim was wanting to achieve with keeping it grounded

and being it feel grounded and and not over the top in any in any real way and the production designer and her created a great lookbook that was a wonderful guide to go off of so you know like colors and and just kind of the vibe of the whole film or where we were going what we were going for that's the base And then from there, I would say, yes, we did a lot of practicals, and Julie Drek, our production designer, I mean, our set decorator was so wonderful because we would talk practicals and they would always make, and we would say, can we put one here, if we put one and we're going to draw them out on the set plans and she would have more than that. So I could always take stuff away. But the idea being that, yes, let's largely let practicals drive. the light and then you augment as needed and then of course completely clean it up in coverage so that's basically that's basically what we did and i also think it's the the we use the sigma sinny primes those are nice and they did a beautiful job i was so pleased with with those lenses they um i just felt like they had a really nice look i felt the contrast was nice i thought the skin tones and colors, looked really bang on. And they just had a really good vibe to them.

That was really pleasing. And I think the first time, like the first, I feel like it was maybe the first week we were shooting. It was all kind of starting to become a blur now. But we were in Jess's room where she's at the computer looking at the, she's watching a blog on makeup. And I just remember we had the camera behind the computer and the practicals and everything and I went back to the monitor and I was like oh wow this looks really this looks

really nice this has a really good vibe to it now I at that moment really appreciated those lenses so I think it was kind of a combination of it all but yes I would we used a lot of um astera titans and helios I mean it was all the entire show was location except for the stripper room right And so ultimately it was like putting in as stares where we could and softening them. I had the gaffer put white basically pool noodles. The pool neuters are really popular right now. I've seen them everywhere. Yeah.

So that worked great. And yeah, we just did a lot of that kind of work. So figure out where the lighting could go. and then where the practicals can go and go from there to to to to augment the light. And clearly there was like the frat house, we very much wanted a particular look in there. I used a lot of hysteries in there, out of frame rigged up on the, in the hallways and in various places. And so that was a lot of fun.

Yeah. A lot of fun. so were you primarily using the tubes to augment your practicals or did you have like light mats or anything that were kind of also coming in I had both I had some um light gear mats I had some keynoes some I I maybe slabs the LED kinos no I think we oh me presence oh god I'm so embarrassed this is terrible that I can't remember all my I mean this was what you filmed this like a year ago. You're not supposed to go.

Yeah. Everything. So Matt Nardone, my gaffer, his East Coast based, is an officianto when it comes to all this LED technology. And so I relied heavily on him with like, I would say, here's what I want. Here's the outcome of what I want. You would say, here's what I think we should do. And I do use the sky panels, so we had a set of sky panels that we were using often. camera when, you know, anytime we went into close-ups, I would, I would, you know,

bring in a form of my diffusion with an A crate and, and, you know, I'd either run something to magic cloth or some heavy diffusion. I also like shower curtain. Yeah. I love how that actually puts a sheen on the pace and it makes skin look healthy. So yeah, I like that. Or I'll, I'll double it up. I'll, you know, have once the diffusion and, um, and then I'll all do, uh, I'll just do a whack flag of shower curtain, you know, just out of frame. And so that kind of stuff, that's what we did a lot of. I've literally started using just for speed's sake. Like I said, like doing these corporate interviews, I tend to do a lot of recently,

is just bringing the, I have a vortex 4, and then I'll just tee bar literal shower curtain. And the guy that I work with every time, like the first time I did, he goes, what the, what is that? And I was like, just trust me, just trust me. It'll look good. Ignore the shower curtain and the cheap pole it's on that I got from Amazon. It'll look good. I think Roscoe makes what they call shower curtain and you can buy it. You can buy a roll of it.

And then you can make your own wag flags with it or frames or whatever. That's cool. I grew up old school. So I call it shower curtain because that's what all the old timers called it. So gosh, were you using the, the Sigma Classics or the regulars? I used the, for the majority of the show, it was the Cini, the regular Cine primes. And then for the beginning, we used the classics. The flashbacks when they're young was all classics.

Gotcha. Yeah, those look really pretty. But they can be flary. Yeah. Oh, I loved it. I loved the way they looked. I wish more of it was in the movie. Right.

Sure. What, let's see here, talk about that. Oh, what made you go with the Cigna? as opposed to like sticking with the, the likas, because, you know, the, the syne primes are fairly neutral, as are the likas, you know? So was it just like a budget thing? Because they look, in my opinion, they look relatively close. They do. And it was somewhat budget. Terrell, it was a, it was somewhat a budget thing. I certainly was interested in trying them. And so it was a good opportunity to to play with them and and give it a go and see how I liked him.

Yeah. Yeah, I love those things. I did want to know about your pre-production process because you had how many weeks for pre-production on this? Three. So what were you doing? Sorry, trying not to sneeze. What were you doing to kind of stay efficient in that process and make sure you got everything

you needed? Every damn thing we could. So, well, to answer your question, the week, so the week, so we had three weeks of prep in Syracuse, New York. Week before, Kim and I, Kim asked me if I'd be willing to jump on some zooms or FaceTime, whatever they used, and look at locations. So basically, they would be the production designer. and the location manager and the line producer and a couple other people,

they would go to a location and they'd have the phone and Kim and I were still here in L.A. So we'd be looking at it and it's like, hey, hold that. And they'd, you know, we'd walk through the set with them and we'd like, this works, this doesn't work, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we were able the week before to eliminate, I think three or four locations that would just would have been a waste of time for us to go see while we were, once we're, boots on the ground in Syracuse. So that was really helpful. The other thing I did was Kim and I had a lot of discussions and going over the lookbook and just talk, you know, having, getting ourselves

to the point that by the time we got to Syracuse and, and we hit it day one going to look at locations and work, we could, we could really just start diving in and talking about blocking and that kind of thing. So basically how it worked is we would pick our location and maybe see two or three locations in a day, whatever we had to do. And then Kim and I would go back and we would through Artemis, we would stand there and block it all out and take notes and then go back to the office and I transfer everything over to I use shot designer for just overheads. So I would just basically create, I would just input, I just would import the, whatever the plan was of whatever set we were doing. And I would, I would basically create my

setups until I had what I wanted, like set up one, set up two, set up three. And then we could, and then that would list, you know, our shots. And then I could decide if, if we were going to if we were going to overdo it and we couldn't like it would be impossible to make our day right so you know and then her and i could sit down and go okay maybe we could get away with this shot turning into this instead and we would just like work together collaborate to get our shot list to a reasonable point and then i could also attach photos from artemus onto that and i also had him on uh on a google drive and then i like the gaffer in the key group If everybody could access all that.

Right. And the first AD, I would send him everything like, you know, like the day before we were shooting, I would send him a final shot list for whatever it is we were shooting the next day, and they would distribute that. So basically, that's how we spent our prep. And I know Kim was stretched. It sounds easy for me, but I know Kim was stretched as the director in a thousand different directions. I mean, she was dealing with, you know, choreographing the banana dance.

and, you know, making a million different decisions and props and wardrobe and this, that, and the other. And so I tried as much as I could to help in any way I could, but there are just things that, you know, the director has to decide on. But I tried to take as much responsibility for the blocking and helping with shot efficiency and working with the first AD on that as well. We had a really good rapport. And so that by the time, we started shooting, we really knew what we were, we were doing all clearly with the Gaffer and the key grip. So we did, we did pretty damn good, I thought. Yeah, just three weeks. 20 days of shooting. That's it. That's, see, that's efficient. That's, that's getting

it out of there. That's fun. Talked about practicals. Talked about that. trying to get through my nose before I got to let you go. Yeah, you talked about the tools. What else are, what else do you? Oh, you know what I could talk about? Because I never, I was usually I asked this at the beginning, but this might be a fun way to wrap it up.

Have you been watching anything that you enjoyed recently? Oh my gosh. Let's see. We've been watching Outer Range. That's a good one. We just revisit, well, an older show. that we just finished up was the Americans

I watched like the first few episodes of that and I was like this is like when it came out and I was like this is cool and then never got back to it but that's like been on my list for a while

because I know that really is we've been watching let me see what are the other ones Palm Royale sure we just finished that yeah we watched

we seem to watch a lot of shows we just started season two of out of range but you know because we because we had finished season one recently so we're like let's get let's get on that um yeah um gosh you say this and i'm like what other shows would be watched my wife would be like come on we watch this this right right yeah it's uh it's funny because you know a lot of times i'll ask dps like you know if they're watching anything and uh especially if they're on a job or about it they're like i can't i can't look at one more screen so the fact that you shoot tv and

also are like, no, I'm going to continue watching shows is like a commendable because that's, you know, that's, that's an investment in time. It is an investment in time. But you know, I like good, there's so much good television. Yeah. And I just love seeing everybody's work. And I, I, I just appreciate, we all know what it takes to get through a day. And we all know what it takes to do all this. And so when I watch shows and I see what they're doing, it's really fun for me because I get to enjoy, I get to enjoy it on a different level. And so, yeah, I take away a lot from watching the shows and I get a lot of enjoyment out of it. That's why I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be a filmmaker. Yeah. It's not just a cinematographer, but try to approach things as a filmmaker, not

and try to have a wider view of things. Yeah. Well, you just directed a short, didn't you? I did. It'll be in Cine. It'll tomorrow I'll be screening at Cine Gear. Oh, no shit. Okay.

It'll be the finals competition. So all the screenings of everything is like 1130 to 3.30. And then I think they said the short films are two to three 30. And I don't know where in that block. Ours is a 20-minute film, so I don't know where in that block are. falls but it'll be it'll be screening tomorrow okay cool i'll definitely try to again my my coverage is pretty loosey-goosey so i can probably cut away for 20 minutes and not find you guys yeah yeah i'll be mostly at that theater tomorrow i i don't know how much i'm gonna get out saturday i'm gonna really

hit it hard yeah i feel like that's most people's playing friday is like oh hey oh hey and then saturday everyone just pretty much parties yeah it's the idea Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for spending the time with me, man. I really appreciate it. And it doesn't always happen that I learned quite a bit, but I actually learned quite a bit instead of just a bit. I feel so honored. Thank you so much for having me. And I'll look forward to meeting you in person. And maybe we can hit the castle together. Yeah, absolutely. Frame and reference is an Albot 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 do so on Patreon by going to frameendrefpod.com, where you can get all the episodes and clicking in the Patreon button. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening.