Frame & Reference Podcast - 162: "Endurance" DP Cam Riley

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

This week we're talking with Cam Riley, DP of the new Nat Geo documentary about polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, "Endurance"! Enjoy! Visit https://www.frameandrefpod.com for everything F&R https://www.patreon.com/frameandrefpod 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 162 with Cam Riley, DP of Endurance. Enjoy. Are you watching anything cool right now? Watching anything cool? Because I will say this year has really been pretty rough for major releases. Yeah, I think just mainly like recycling old shit, unfortunately. And honestly, I've been on the road so much lately.

I just like been struggling to find the time. to do much but for both both work and personal stuff so well and they promised us with ipads that like oh you know you can when you get back to the hotel you can lay in bed and you can watch whatever it's like and i don't want to do any of that i want to go to bed no i'll just put on something and just pass out immediately hopefully that's best case scenario i yeah i tend to weirdly enough listen to podcast to go to bed. I don't think I've ever finished a podcast. It's comfort.

Comfort stuff, you know? Do you normally look when you do watch stuff? Do you normally try to go towards like documentary or do you prefer like narrative? Do you have like a preference? I don't really. For a while I kind of like I wasn't really feeling doc stuff as much. And then, like, kind of, as of recent, I feel like there's just so much undeniably good stuff out there with just all the new series and everything. It's just like, well, I got to like partake in this.

But for a while, for whatever reason, I think it was like when I first started like working in that space, it's like in shooting like long interviews and stuff. It was just like, I don't want to watch any more of this. I just sat there like a six hour. I've been doing a lot of like interview-based documentary as well and I've noticed that at first I didn't want to shoot there seems to be a trend where everything is like the person is framed real tiny in the middle and like they're just showing

and that would like piss me off and make me not want to watch stuff yeah the visuals can be that well but now I'm getting asked to do it so much because it's popular and I'm like Fuck, now I got to watch. It would want to field of space. We paid for it. And I, don't get me wrong.

I mean, in all my commercial stuff, I just love shooting wide focal lengths. But like, I don't know, a lot of times when I'm setting up, you know, talking heads, stuff like that, I'm like, I'll try and do it. I'm like, oh, this is what I need to do. Like, that's what everybody's doing now. And then I just, I'm always like, it's just never like designed enough for it. Like the set isn't like set up for it. you're like there's just too much stuff in frame that like bugs me whereas like on a commercial I can be a little bit more prescriptive and like yeah so are you would you at that point just

put the fucking lens on and go uh director this looks like shit do you see we can't do this yeah it happens but sometimes we'll just do it anywhere but i think that's actually interesting because a lot of your commercial stuff at least stuff you put on your website uh is very what I would consider like that's shit that's getting you jobs you know and it's I wouldn't say it's trendy by any means but it certainly is like

that is a high end commercial is there kind of a something you lean on to to continuously get that look not just the like VFX or drone shots but just like in your sort of basic setups is there like something that clients keep asking for

um nothing to pertain i mean i do a pretty wide range of stuff um yeah whether it be comedy or like the outdoor stuff or just like the high action sort of um stuff so i mean i'm i'm constantly having to switch it up a bit for sure um but yeah i mean i think i think like in general like when I got into it like my basis was you know being able to do that high energy stuff and move the camera quickly have some like dynamic angles and you know shooting wide focal lengths making everything look fast when the camera moves so like that's definitely like a device that I've used a lot to make sort of work that's a little more more fun to watch or you know client friendly yeah but then you know i go back to like it's just always fun to like work on like different

stuff like i'll shoot a comedy commercial and it's like more like narrative style coverage and just normal lensing and that sort of thing but so it's fun to bounce back and forth and keep it all in perspective in that way you know did you did you go to film school i did in uh in colorado oh no shit we're at yeah in boulder no get i have like a couple friends who went out that that seems to be a good place to go be yeah i've said yeah the experiences that i gained adjacent to my school process were the most beneficial i mean i i went there with um you know a bunch of my buddies that i'd now work with and the film world and we were doing a lot of stuff in like the ski world and that's kind of what

brought us to colorado but like you know my time there and like sort of learning filmmaking both through like school and then also just like going out and shooting stuff it's super valuable and then yeah we just eventually made our way out to L.A. and decided to focus solely on the film side of things and yeah yeah yeah I run a college ski trips every winter so I'm in Summit County all the time oh nice and the company that has me doing that all the time because I ran the ski and snowboard club at ASU. For the longest time, they were like, oh, you know, you're doing video.

Can you do video for us? And I was so, like, narratively locked. I was like, I can't. And they were like, well, just film it. Just get some hot chicks. Just, look, you film it. And I'm like, I need, first of all, I had like a C-100, you know, which it's not huge, but it's hard to snowboard with.

And yeah, yeah, not the most ergonomical. Yeah. And I was just like, I need like a vision here. And they were like, nope. And then they ended up hiring some other company who I now consider good friends. And, you know, they were doing the classic social media, you know, the whole thing. Yeah. Flashiness.

And they were like, hey, if you don't buck up, you know, these guys are going to replace you. And I went, no, no, no, do that. That's what this should be. Why do you don't need? deserves yeah yeah yeah interesting stuff were you at were you always an outdoors kind of guys that would brought you to colorado because i saw you're from boston yeah yeah originally from boston from the boston area grew up um yeah mainly like the ski side of things i grew up skiing all around new england and then uh yeah mean ice skating in new england yeah exactly well i grew up i

I grew up playing hockey and skiing and doing all the East Coast things. And then, yeah, me and a group of friends, we'd like been going to high school together. We've been doing all that stuff together and slowly got into filmmaking through all those activities. We, yeah, we packed up and moved out to Colorado, went to school there for a bit. And then after our time was done there, we took it to L.A. Yeah, I find that, you know, I think, I feel like most of people our, I'm 34, I don't know how close you, probably close enough, but yeah, are you sex? We, we seem to all have come to it from some version of, you know, skateboarding, snowboarding, action sport seems to have drawn a lot of us to, and not necessarily narrative. Yeah, yeah, it shaped a lot of our, it was a, it was a golden era for it.

When they were gone up, I feel like, and just like the video aspect of it. And yeah, I remember the first time I got my hands on a camera, just like a handy cam. Yeah, I was just like filming everything, every activity, you know. Were you watching like all the Warren Miller films and shit? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think prior to that, that was like kind of, yeah, that sort of introduced me to the idea that you could like go out and like film. skiing and that sort of activity so like my parents showed me those like all growing up when I was a little kid and then yeah definitely had a had a good collection of those films and was

fortunate actually to like I got to work with with them as a I skied in one of the Warren Miller films no kidding yeah I've had like footage and a bunch of the ones since got to meet Warren was amazing pretty pretty legendary a pretty legendary guy that's so cool yeah yeah no it's they had us uh run a uh what do you want to call premiere uh when i was in college oh yeah and that was as close as i got where did where'd you go to school uh Arizona state oh oh yeah yeah so they so we had this big um theater you know right by the art storm and and they let us take it over and we filled we packed out the whole house it was it was it was super would show up for those things. Yeah. I think they like still they still do a premiere tour. There's not many ski movies

left. There used to be like a bunch. You would make one every year. It stepped and that was like yeah, back in the we'd fill fill the classroom auditorians and see the one. This is all over the place. But yeah, that kind of era has come and gone. And there's just a few remaining. I guess Orrin Miller being one of them? I have found running those college trips that back in the day, I feel like skiing and snowboarding, you know, in the 90s was definitely separate. And then throughout the 2000s, it was just, I hate the phrase of like-minded individuals, but like-minded individuals together like, there was like a lifestyle kind of element.

and now it is just a vacation. Yeah. The lifestyle element's gone. So I can see how that like the watching a snowboard film or a ski film doesn't hit the way it used to because the people watching it don't identify with it. And it's also so expensive. You know, that lifestyle is not for the people like it once was. It's gone through an interesting transition, that whole world. And it's Bales fault.

Huh? It's Bales fault. People else fall, yeah, corporations. I think it'll come around again. Everything's, comes in cycles. It'll get not cool for a while and then. Right. So not cool that becomes cool.

I've found that most of the college kids are asking for these two things kind of the same, but one of them I think you'll find funny. First one is Euro style apprey. So like 3 p.m. People getting after it, you know, outdoors in their ski gear, you know yada yada because that doesn't really happen at the u.s i was like okay the second one i've heard asked a bunch from these students is millennial style house party they don't do they don't do that they don't do it that's like a novelty yeah and so they're like could you guys throw like

a millennial style house party i was like no you have to do that that's not just do it you just show up to someone's apartment or in this case hotel room what is everyone doing these days dude i don't know i think we're getting the tail end of the kids that were like indoors during not the tail end of the kids that were indoors during covid yeah so they just they never were together that's insane yeah i don't know to anyone listening who's like 20 21 just go to your friend's house and start drinking it's fine yeah get a bunch of people together yeah it's not that hard get in trouble for it you're going to be arrested

he's fine there was actually I turned a few people on to this but I'm going to recommend it did you do you do you hear of a snowboard group called Eisen 7 or Easton 7 yes they had in my opinion

some of the best ski snowboard movies yeah in the early 2000s I'm trying to remember I for sure know the name they were a German group German yeah they were all snowboarders And they just had, you know, they had, I think they had like an HPX 170 or something.

So it was ever so slightly better than, or no, no, no, X, X, 3. I know they had an X3. And that was like a huge deal at the time. And they had a jib arm. And so that was like for snowboarding. Yeah. When you introduced the toys, it was always, that was the identity of the, of the film for that. And they had access to after effects, which was a huge deal.

and all that but oh no yeah i definitely watched watched a bunch of their their shit over the years yeah they've released for anyone listening they've released it all on youtube now so you can just nice i wish i owned physical dbds of it but they don't they never sold them in america as far as i was aware oh yeah yeah we have like we're trying to like get rid of all the stacks of our old DVDs we have like we have a storage container at our studio and there's probably a couple thousand DVDs of our old ones and people we've been trying to push him out like hey come grab them we're going to get rid of them

I'll take you I'll take it as many as you want I got you can see I got a bunch of oh yeah oh yeah I'm a big physical media guy DVD man well now all of our players can up res stuff you know it's not going in 480 it's coming out like at least

HD yeah yeah and the streamers can't take it away from you I know that is a I have heard that argument before it's like everything it's like you watch like always sunny on Hulu now

and you can't watch all the episodes because they've deemed some of them inappropriate it's hard to actually fucking go find them unless you like had the DVDs or they'll edit it from under you yeah you know they won't take it away completely

but they'll change it you know yeah I couldn't swore this was different there there was actually um the one of the guys bfx guys at uh ilm his names todd bziri he had this great sort of philosophical question because he was saying that in terminate or uh aliens i think or terminator two there's a scene where you can see an actor's cut in half and you can see the hole that he's physically laying in to make it look like he's cut in half and in the 4K, they digitaled out the whole. And he was upset about this.

And everyone went, why, why are you upset about this? And he goes, are films a living medium or not? And I was like, that's a great question. Yeah. Because like, I don't, I, now that he's put it that way, I don't think so. I don't think films are a living medium that you can just continuously futz with as time goes on. Oh, well, yeah, the South Park, South Park guys did an episode about that where they wanted to update George Lucas and Steven Spielberg wanted to update all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones

and stuff and the kids all protest today. I didn't see that one. It's a real it's a real argument. Like you can't just like to make a few more bucks change the thing. Well and it's like that was so great to be in with like and also there are certain things like the guy laying in the hole where you can say oh it makes it objectively better because that was a mistake but at the same time did seeing that hole make you want to get into filmmaking yeah yeah i mean there's some some value that's into the bigger picture of this whole film and like yeah like some films are great for like the little flaws yeah like in like early like p t p t Anderson movies and you can see like the reflection of the camera and like the in like some glass or something you're like oh

damn I don't know it stokes me out like I would I would have left it into like yeah yeah you shouldn't shouldn't change it yeah I think I'm fully on team don't change it well and you can't change things and then call it the same thing right yeah yeah but even calling it I think the main issue is like if you have changed it, making that the only version that you can get on Blu-ray, I think is annoying. You know, at least give me the full version of the, like, there's some Blu-Rays I have where it's like, criterion usually, where it's like, not only do we have the restored one, but we have the original that was on DVD and the one that was on television with ad breaks

and shit. And it's like, thank you. Thank you for just giving me all these versions. They know they know that there's a market that appreciates that level of detail. Are you a letterboxed guy? In terms of Do you have letterboxed? No, I don't. Oh, all right. Well,

I'll ask you anyway just because I, it's honestly, I haven't done an interview in like four months. I was backed up until this is going out tomorrow. Oh, thank you. Yeah, unless they tell me not to, but I don't think they said not to. but I've never asked but you know letterbox you have your top four

so for you what were the the four that kind of got you into filmmaking four it's also a weird number because it's not five and I like it um yeah the four I mean definitely like

I'll say it's interesting because two of the top ones on my list are like very adjacent in no country and there will be blood obviously there's a controversy and you know shooting simultaneously but like first it was no country for me that was like one of the first like when I was like really deciding like I was going to be a filmmaker that was one of the first like films that I was like lapping and like just watching over and over and just like couldn't get enough of like just all the compositions and the style of the film and everything about it and then like I'd say I almost did the same thing with there'll be blood like shortly

after right I was like this they were released epic time in cinema yeah yeah those are those are two good ones I don't I'm outside of that I'm saying I should have this list more like with ready to go that I mean at least it's not what's your favorite yeah that happens always fucking ridiculous um and then like and it's hard to put a finger on but like if it's outside of that it's like because we grew up in an interesting time like the rise of like vimeo and like staff picks and stuff like just watching all this like independent content that was being put out and that prior

we didn't really have access to seeing that was like our like past time every night we'd like throw on like we wouldn't even like put on like a movie or sports or something we'd throw on like Vimeo and just fucking cycle through everything like

be like what's what's the new dope shit out right now like you know what's crazy is I don't think most I mean Vimeo was because they've really gone downhill. But for a little second there, Vimeo was like the heart of independent cinema. Yeah. It was, it was real. But I don't know if a, it was so niche. Like, I applaud you for actually being there because there was only like maybe a thousand of y'all. Like I certainly, I would

watch, you know, the staff picks would pop up. But like the staff pick, yeah, that was one of it. But yeah, we were doing a bunch of that and like, I don't know if that counts. Is a, I think it does, 100%. Yeah, I mean, it definitely shaped how, like, we approach filmmaking. We'd see something. This is when we were, like, 17, 18, like, just sort of, like, first being able to, like, actually go out, get a group of people together and, like, make, like, something half legitimate or not really legit at all.

We would, not on TV. It would inspire us, like, go out and, like, get a crew together and, like, make something just for the sake of making it because we saw something cool that we wanted to try and it was just like such a good way to get exposed to so much stuff that was achievable because it was

all like a bunch of independent filmmakers doing stuff and they're like well if they did it I could probably do something like that and so we were we were using that as like big time inspo and yeah just stuff to get about and I'm I'm stoked

that you actually say that because I think the thing that's kind of that's something that is missing because now it's all YouTube and YouTube is just talking about the FX3 you know there's there's no there's no creativity on there necessarily no there's a few people who do gear reviews that are created but but yeah no and and like don't get me wrong like there's still like a lot of creativity going on but it's like so much more focused in that like in that like TikTok world and that like that's what a lot of these young up-and-coming kids are like doing they're trying to like go after that which makes sense because that's like what people are paying to see now but it doesn't have the same

I struggle to see the same link to like cinema and like in that way that you know I grew up watching movies and that I was seeing like young people or people that are you know just more independent trying to do the same things that we watch growing up and now it's like this whole new wild thing a lot of it i i i'm getting too old they even understand i i certainly have found that tic talk is uh i finally just like a couple years ago acquiesce and i was like fine let's see what's going on and it is a lot of fun and it was something that does make me happy is like you can see the average person if they're not always funny or whatever does have something in them that is either creative or funny or interesting.

Maybe it's only for one video and the rest of their stuff is kind of, but they have a moment. And I love being able to see that moment out of people because it makes them happy. It makes other people happy. However, I think you're 100% right that the nourishment isn't there. And I think people only are only seek to achieve what they can see, right? My constant example is, is Tony Hawk doing the 900. you know at first we were just doing kick flips and that was you know whatever and then tony hawk does

the 900 now you have 16 year olds doing you know 12 80s yeah it's like sports in general it's just like it i've always you know being somebody that came from that world and was always like trying to like push what you can do it's so it's wild to examine like how things that seemed impossible at some point once you see somebody do it how much more possible it is than you've ever thought and then just the natural progression of things like everybody like just says like yeah nobody could ever do that or maybe there'd be one person that it turns out one person does it and then it turns out most people could do that yeah it's just needed to see how like yeah the the mental side of things comes into play there yeah but that i think that exact thing is is

is what makes me nervous about most people, younger people watching, like just YouTube. Yeah. Because they're not striving. It's all consumerism based. You know, it's all like we're selling a product. We're selling Squarespace and whatever set of lenses I was just sent. Yeah. No, there's, I mean, yeah, obviously, like we grew up watching TV and stuff.

And we saw that to some extent and everything was getting jammed down, like, thrown at us in terms of like selling stuff. but it wasn't quite the same balance. Like, we were still watching movies and I don't know. Are our kids doing that? So did you, you said you started your studio with your friends then, like from college? Yeah, yeah. So we started stepped when it actually began, like, when we were way young and we were making ski films under that name for years. and then I was my two buddies that I grew up with two brothers Nick and Alex Martini

and yeah and then we just sort of kept doing that for a long time the ski movies like got to a level of sort of professionalism and we started working with a bunch of different like brands and stuff like to support the film right and then slowly it was funny to see as like more like social media and like different platforms for advertising sort of arose we were getting like in addition to just going out and like filming the ski movie it would be like hey can you send like make us some like product videos for our YouTube channels and stuff and then like can you make this video and that was sort of our intro to like commercials right and then eventually we started getting less and less money to make the movie and more money

to make the other videos and then before we knew it we were sort of like oh we should probably just make commercials but at the same time we were doing a lot of cool stuff with like uh branded documentary work and like making telling stories for those brands

and we're still getting that sort of same fulfillment going out and like making proper films so totally yeah it was well yeah it was a fun time well and uh I know we just got done shit talking commercialism, but it does take money to make stuff and when you're lucky enough to have a brand go like, yeah, we'll just give you a bunch to make like a, because I say you did

like an Arcterics short or something. What was that? So that's kind of like those are sort of those brand funded stories that we get to tell. And yeah, that's those are like, you know, shooting big commercials and that side of things is always fun because, you know, they're usually a little bit better funded but like we I think our like real enjoyment is when we get to go out and like tell a story a little bit like smaller crew scrapier sort of back to the roots type of stuff and yeah the architectics one was a super cool opportunity we like as soon as it came through we knew we wanted to like myself and nick he directed it and I shot it and we were just like oh we need to do this it was like in our home territory we grew up in the mountains in New

Hampshire and it was just it was a cool story to tell me as not many people know about that mountain Mount Washington out there and that it held the highest wind speeds recorded on earth and it has some of the most extreme like weather just period on earth and we actually got to experience some of that while we were out there when chill hit hundreds below and that's the stuff that like keeps us going. It's just like making films and the elements in the mountains and that sort of thing being outside. So, yeah. Yeah.

It's what I'm passionate about. So when you, this spur to question me that I'd love to know your take on, but like, when is having a small, scrappy crew great and when is it terrible? At the same time, I don't know. No, I mean, there's just certain, like, I mean, there's just so many instances where like, and Nick and I will say this to each other all the time, we like go out and we'll shoot like proper stuff. Like we did like a motor campaign proically last year. And that was like, we just went out and did that with a small crew and, you know, granted it was outside, but we had full on stuff that we have in a commercial production drone unit, two camera units, camera cars, all that. stuff but it's just like 10 of us right and it just sometimes it just makes things so much easier

obviously you don't want to be like so short short man that you're like running around with your head cut off but i just did an ad there's a four of us oh yeah it's not chill no there is a there is a limit to uh how much support but i just did like a i was down in uh ecuador in the galapagos and we had an eight-person crew and it was actually like perfect we ran four cameras and we were on like little like zodiacs going out to all these

islands and stuff and we just figured out our system but it felt like sometimes like I feel like if we had any more than that it just would have like slowed us down sure you know there's there's benefits to both sides but yeah I kind of I think at this point I prefer

kind of trimming some of the fat I think yeah well and it's just like the less people around the more cohesive you can be with your yeah

not only economy of motion but just economy of vision yeah you know there's not too many cooks in the kitchen no it's easy unlike everybody's sort of oh did you lose me um

oh there you are maybe yeah Yeah, I was just saying I think it's a lot of times it's easier to find a rhythm when everybody's sort of on on the same page and like everybody knows what's going on everybody's just there like sometimes on you know bigger sets and stuff there's so much like disassociation from what's actually being shot that you uh yeah it it takes everything a little bit longer but yeah but I mean sometimes that's the way it has to be there when people are spending a lot of money on certain things there's a lot of people that need to be involved again well it's funny

right because like you grow up thinking oh I want to be on big big sets and then the more you're on big big sets you're like I would hate how big this is yeah and you're like this is none of this is I grew up doing everything like just moving so quick like onto the next on to the next but you can't like on sets like that you can't really move them that way I saw on endurance you had there was like

four DPs total yeah I well so I was just responsible for recreations that was what our our unit was tasked with cool so yeah and obviously

I don't know how familiar you are with the story but I read up on the story. They didn't send me a screener, so I haven't seen that. Yeah. No, I mean, I've. It comes out in a couple months. Yeah.

So it's, it's a crazy, it's crazy in that back in the day in 1912 or I forget the exact date, they were actually able to capture somebody documented almost the whole journey. And they almost, you know, they faced death. and they had to sort of evacuate their expedition. So obviously there was parts that didn't get captured. They valued their lives a little bit more than the shot at times. Jerks. So we were sort of tasked with sort of filling some of those holes in the visuals,

which was, it was so cool. Like, I've known about this story, like my whole life, and it's one of the most impactful and, like, crazy experiences that a group of humans has ever had. Yeah. And so it was really cool to be a part of it and to like recreate some of these scenes and do like full period recreations of these like early 1900s, you know, explorers.

And yeah, and then we also, the approach that we came up with to do it was pretty dynamic. We got to like shoot in a lot of different scenarios. It was both, like, on location and in the studio. And, yeah, both sides of it were really cool to, like, flush out and, you know, create, create that look that we need it. Well, and that honestly had to have been the more fun version. Because, like, every time I interview someone on a documentary,

every time I shoot a documentary, I'm in charge of interviews. Yeah. You know, it's very rare you get to go, like, play like that. know, actually go make a, you know, narrative, so to speak, uh, on a dog. Oh, he froze again. There he is. Yeah, sorry. No, it's, I told you, my internet is, uh, it's very well going to be mine's, mine's following suit. Spectron. Yeah. But anyway, I was saying that it's, it's rad that you got to actually like go make a movie, you know, and, and so to speak, quote unquote, go make a movie versus just doing interviews. Yeah, it had, it had more of a narrative.

element to it in that we were just sort of following a script and we were pretty close. But you get the costumes, you get the whole thing, you know? Yeah, exactly. It was great. And no, we, you know, it was, it was definitely on the scrappier side of that sort of things. We were pretty small crew, but we still got to, we still got to play with some, some different, like, capture methods. We did, uh, some of it on an LED volume. in L.A. Oh, wow. Okay.

We shot some of it in our studio. We did, like, the interiors of, like, sort of a boat that they had turned over to sort of make a shelter for themselves. And then we went out to Iceland to shoot some of the on-location stuff that were on the beach that sort of posed as some of the islands adjacent to Antarctica. So, yeah, it was sort of we got to do a little bit of everything. And it was, yeah, I think I'm pretty happy with the stuff that we were able to get. Were you, the volume thing, I read somewhere that you guys had, like, even trained an AI model on, like, their voices so they could read their own diaries.

Oh, yeah. And I just thinking of, like, the future, you know, volumes and that stuff, that's probably one of the more excusable uses of AI. Those guys definitely not around. No, there's some scary potential there. but what were you guys trying to was there like a specific look you were going for and these recreations were you going like all right we're going to shoot vintage lenses or you know

or were you more just like clean let's just get the get the show general it was a little combination of both so like we we use some more vintage glass to sort of dirty the image a little bit and like they were shooting on the actual trip they were shooting 16 and like I forget who is the manufacturer of the camera but literally just a 16 cam that looked like a wooden box

we actually got one as a prop that appears in some of the footage but I'm just like astounded how much footage actually came back from that trip from a box the equipment that they're working with but yeah the it's it's wild but so we're sort of trying to match what a look that wouldn't be similar to that. So we import some like older Zeiss glass and stuff from the 70s, obviously.

Not quite as vintage as what they're actually using, but something that would give it a little bit a little bit of grit. But then in terms of like camera, we knew that we were going to be shooting in a bunch of different environments, particularly in like super low light,

some of the like boat interiors. So I ended up going with the shooting on the A30 sure for to get you know using the dual ISO and so you know some of the super low light stuff wasn't terribly like noisy or grainy and it worked out well and obviously we're shooting like so much dynamic range and you know so much image fidelity but then just crushing it all down to sort of match that that archival look but I think it I think it worked out well I think we wanted to give them more to work with

than less and being like married to something, you know, there was talks of shooting, shooting on 16 and like shooting a Bull X and doing that sort of thing. But we're like, all right, that might just add more complications down the code. I actually need more to work

with. A Canon just sent me the C-80. Yeah. C-400 sensor. Dude. Like the 12,800 is too fast you don't need it I was literally out in the middle of the desert at night so

oh yeah moonlight moonlight we'll do it yeah and I know I had to kill it I was like you know what 64 just be at 64 I'm gonna knock this down yeah it's it was too gross wild yeah there yeah the sensitivity is getting getting wild and just like how it can still it's like I feel like there's been like that super high sensitivity stuff for a while but like you shoot it and like your color fidelity looks insane just not realistic really but it's they're getting they're getting good at that stuff well and also it's when everyone leans on it so heavily you lose contrast like just by the nature of the way you're like if everything's low light or yeah natural light unless you're in the sun it's gonna look flat and then everyone goes

online and complains that how go everything looks flat and boring It's like, well, stop shooting that way. Stop giving producers something to point to. Yeah, we were utilizing it and literally, I mean, I think it was like the first time I shot in this type of environment where I couldn't, I could barely see with my own eye. Like we were trying to like sort of block out the shots and whatnot. And like people were like tripping over everything because like nobody could see anything or any of the props.

And I would look at the image in the camera. like oh we do I bet because we're literally just lighting by like candlelight and then like a few like filament bulb like fixtures like tucked way away to give just like the slightest little glow but like nobody can see shit with the camera cut yeah it well that's the other funny thing too I noticed is at such high ISOs the tally light will expose the ceiling to a degree so now you got to tape that thing down I think I agree I agree actually made that mistake. I'm like, the fuck is that red light.

Yeah. Oh, it's me. Yeah. Yeah. No, but so that was fun that we like, we got to utilize that. Um, we did that on our, our stage here. And then, yeah, that the volume work turned out really nice. We basically built a, uh, one of the camps when they first landed or got stuck in the ice in Antarctica. Um, there was a number of scenes. that we they have the narration for where they're actually talking about like these specific events um and so we just we built a whole camp set with the combination of like practical um you know props

and a set in front of the LED uh volume and yeah we did like a full day there and it worked out really well. It was a pretty ideal tool for that because there were so many elements that we were trying to incorporate like snow, wind, fog, all that stuff. And that's like one of the benefits of the volume work is you can incorporate all those, whereas it gets a little more challenging when you're trying to do, you know, blue screen or green screen work. Right. And I blacked out. Did you say this was your guys's volume? No, it was one in town, um, phantom um yeah they're uh it's like i can't remember downtown or something but yeah just like a smaller stage but it worked for what what we needed to do for this yeah did you did you find like i've

interviewed people who've shot on the biggest ones in the world and the smallest ones in the world and all of them have said kind of the same thing where it's like it's cool but you know yeah i mean I mean, it's just like anything. It has its, it has its uses and its pros and cons. Well, I guess my line of questioning was just going to be, have you found that they've ironed out some of those early, like, technological kinks versus, you know, like, because it seemed like for a while there, it was like, it wasn't even the schedule or the actors or anything that was holding everyone back.

It was like Unreal Engine. The tech, yeah, I mean, we were pretty fortunate. I've been part of some, some shoes. where it's it does not go smoothly and it's a huge time suck but we were pretty fortunate on this shoot in particular we had little to no no issue but it is that is one consideration about it is rather than you know you have to get everything so dialed in and if you're not working with an unreal artist that's super dialed that can be super time consuming like it's it's it's very cool in a way

that you can be like, hey, I want to move that tent over here in the background. And if your client gets a hold of that, if you're doing it as like a commercial or something, that can open up a whole can of work. But, I mean, it's a really cool ability to have on set. And then, but you just need to be really short of it because you're baking it into your image. Right. Or you're causing a bunch more postwork and the idea is to like, away from that. But yeah, no, so there's a lot of things that can bog down those, those productions.

But yeah, luckily on this shoot, we were pretty free of that. It went fairly smooth. And I think that's just kind of the nature of it. It's just every, the technology is getting better. The people that work with that tech are getting more proficient. And I think, I think it'll continue to go that way. But I don't, I don't see it as being like the perfect tool for everything. Like, I feel like when it first came about, people were like, oh, we're never going to need to go to location for anything. It's like that might come at a time, but it's,

I don't think it's, it's going to be a little bit bigger than the, than an LED box. Well, it's that. And even on like the Mandalorian, which I remember being like the thing that kicked it off, I remember watching that first season going,

yeah, this is good. I can tell. It's still not better than being out in the desert. Like, people sort of limit their coverage a little bit. Their dynamic range, too. I'm just in the image. Yeah.

Yeah, the quality of the image, too, gets a little bit. And I think a lot of that stuff has been ironed out, too, as the, as, you know, the pixel to become finer and they can, you know, output more. There's more range. And all those elements get better with the actual hardware than a lot of that. that element of it will go away. But, you know, well, for your guys's smoothness, did that kind of just come down to shot selection, like knowing, going in, knowing exactly what you wanted and keeping it kind of contained, or were you able to play around a bit?

We were, we were able to play around a little bit and, you know, you know, switch up some things on the day and add, add some things. But, I mean, yeah, you definitely want to be very prescriptive when you're, you're in that world. It's definitely helpful. But yeah, I mean, the reason that we did that really was that was going to require, no matter how we slice it, that was going to require a big set build to like build those practical camps and tents and all that. We're like, all right, well, we can go do this in the snow somewhere and get like all these actors. It was also like the most, the most the most talent of any of the scenes

and we're like, this just seems like it would be so like weather dependent and like, are we going to get? Like, because we also, it called for different lighting looks too, there's different times a day. And we're like, how can we rely on this not being like just completely white out the whole time we're there or like we don't get any snow?

Like, so it did offer us that flexibility. and you know all of those things within the course of a shooting day so that you know in that sense we were using it to its fullest potential using the attack so it was yeah that's cool I mean like I yeah like you said I with that technology maturing I think we're seeing it used more like in like masters of the air you know just having it outside the cockpit even though all that ended up getting VFX anyway but like well most of it most of it I just need a level of that. Yeah, stuff.

Actually, now that I say that out loud, that is kind of crazy that people can go to all that effort just to have it get painted over again. And then VFX artists get shit on at the end of the day anyway because, you know, whatever, a shot didn't look great in a different scene. They're like, you don't know how much work we did on the stuff you like. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is an interesting element, too, that you get a certain light quality. and like that feels realistic. I mean, you still need to augment the shit out of it. Like the wall's not doing all the work,

but it gets you in a place where you're like, okay, this is what this would sort of feel like. Now I can, you know, walk stuff into. Yeah, because I think that was the big thing that I didn't believe for a second,

which is when they were like, oh, the environment can light, you know, you just put a sun. there and it is the sun or a big white square and it will just, I'm like, no, if that's not going to look good. We're going to use our lights.

I can guarantee you the spectral output of that LED wall is not great. Yeah. Again, it's all getting better, but. Yeah. Well, and it's cool because I remember at first, correct me if I'm wrong, but like you had to use like a specific camera. You had to use like an Alexa built for the LED wall because it was like a refresh rate issue or something like where it had to be specked out.

and now it seems like you can kind of shoot what you want. Yeah, we were able to, I mean, we've done productions with a number of different cameras. I mean, I mainly shoot on airy stuff, but, yeah, it's just, and you're able to use all the different lensing to, like, anamorphic to get a little funky with all that stuff. But it's, yeah, I mean, they're able to adapt it to pretty much anything that we would want to use. So it's cool. hell yeah well we're coming up on the hours so i got to let you go but even though i was late which is my bad but uh when does the when does the documentary come out november no i think they're actually

it's premiering oh it premieres in like two days yeah in in london this weekend yeah so premieres in london streaming i i i'm not the one to ask about any of the any of those release states but it should be because this podcast is coming out like post-haste uh London Film Festival October 12th and then streaming soon after so if you're in London you can go see it this weekend that's what we got yeah well it was great talking to me and I'm really like the the dog just from like the little stuff I was able to research on it the dock looks really cool and you know they obviously we didn't talk about it but they did like 4k rescans of all that film that they showed yeah it's beautiful it was recolored and all that so it it looks like you guys put a lot of

really great work into it so i'm very excited to see it yeah i was i was stoked to be a part of it it's one of the coolest stories and humanity and yeah it was it was around to be in it cool well uh please stay in touch man i'd love to keep chatting next time you make summer you know Absolutely. Great to me. You too, brother. All right. Have a good one. Frame and reference is 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 directly, you can do so on Patreon by going to frame and refpod.com, where you can get all the episodes and clicking the Patreon button. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.