Frame & Reference Podcast - 165: "The Old Man" DP Jules O'Loughlin, ASC, ACS

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

This week I'm absolutely honored to have Jules O'Loughlin, ASC ACS on the program to talk about his work on the Hulu show "The Old Man" (among other things). 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 165 with Jules O'Loughlin, ASC, ACS, DP of The Old Man. Enjoy. As a DP, I should have lived this better, but I'm in a, I'm in a rental in Vancouver. Sure. But you tell me, like, if it's, you know. No, it'll be fine. I think people like it when it's a little, you know, I said this actually on yesterday's interview that Bob Richardson called in from Harris.

And he was in just a hotel and it was like midnight or something. So he was only lit by like the screen. Yeah, right. so no you know there's no expectations here and all that white right the white hair yeah yeah yeah you probably couldn't even see his eyes yeah he was just popping off the background yeah yeah you should i mean like this whole it's not even really a set up what i did i just took some two 51 and just stretched it across my window oh yeah nice and i have like the little slatty blind so like depending on how bright it is outside i can control it with the little yeah yeah well you're looking good bro i was

gonna say you've been beautifully lit it's you know what's funny is when i started this the c500 had just come out yeah and uh and i got serial number eight like i was the first one to have that thing and then covid happened so it ended up being my webcam for like two years yeah yeah it's got it's got like i don't know a thousand operating hours and maybe like four shooting hours by the time i actually pulled it out to use it i love it yeah it was quality yeah i was i you know what i was actually just uh hanging out with uh my friend nathan uh how guard and uh he do you know him I don't know, Mason, no. So he's about my age.

He worked on a couple of the Avatar films in the like 3D space. And I had saw that you had shot a documentary with James Cameron on a 3D red one rig. Yeah, that's right. Well, in fact, not only did I was I at seeing with James for three months on The Mermaid Sapphire, Because I was shooting the 3D documentary for Deep Sea Challenge. Right. So my executive producer on a 3D action film that I shot some years ago in one of the brothers studios in Queensland.

And we shot with the PACE fusion system that they'd used to shoot Avatar. So I'm well versed in in 3D shooting. And, well, I hadn't done that for us. while. I was going to say, they put so much effort into it and we're like, we're going to do that three times. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Well, of course, he's still doing it now, right? With Avatar, yeah. With Avatar.

So he's still a big proponent of it and does it so well. And hey, you know, the numbers, the numbers don't lie, right? The box office numbers. Well, and like, watching like Avatar 2 specifically, like almost, I don't know where the

VFX or whatever that like the digital ends and the live action begins like I don't know how much of it is actually because Nathan was saying I don't want to put words in his mouth but like a lot of it is reference like his job was just the reference stuff yeah they'd be underwater or whatever but it's not like none of that's actually being used yeah it's just and um but I just thought it was fascinating to do all that work for a doc when it's like documentary is all about like speed and efficiency yeah and then you're over here like let's make the most encumbered. thing possible.

Like I remember there were days where I was in a zodiac you know and and shooting with a bit 3D like an over under or bean splitter

rig which was really heavy in a Zika and I remember this one day we were shooting and and the T-Grip said to the gym because of course we're on this

expedition chip that's normally used for mining or see oil exploration or something like that and we had the sub on the back of the ship and they'd lift it off and plump it in the water and then we'd jump in zodiacs and had cameras on board the main ship and had an underwater camera

and the whole kitten caboodle and there was this day that we were doing a test launch and so they put the sub in the water and the seas were really heavy and one of the hairy things of course is going from the expedition ship which is this really big bloody ship into a zodiac

when the sea is doing this and he grip says to me in front of Jim listen the sea's too rough you know we can't get the we can't get the 3D rig into the zodiac and Jim's going what are you talking about

he's like I'm worried that we'll drop it overboard and then it'll go I don't give a fuck you put I own that tree rig you put it in the zodiac i don't care if it ends up the bottom of the marriotta trench right one of the things i used to love that jim was that uh like nothing gets in the way right the shot do you know what i mean like i don't give a damn i own that rig put it in the bloody boat you know because of course i often find this on a on a on a movie set um where my a scene might be a bit precious about the gear you know and um and i'm like

always like, listen, I mean, what are we shooting on? Remind me? Oh, it's an Alexa LF. How many do you think there are on the planet? Right. Like, this is not the only LF. Okay, like if, listen, this is a super important shot. I know it's a little, you know, putting it out. I know we might scratch it. Right. But let's just be really careful. Okay. And, but let's get the shot. That's what we're here for. So it's that, I mean, that 3D rig. that was the only one above the Marriana Trench on the right so if that had gone to the bottom of the trench that was it that's a separate documentary

recovering the rig oh my god that's a separate yeah that's right that Jim dives on the Mara 10,000 he goes 10,000 meters to reclaim the red one right we did eerie you know but it was but that was an interesting time shooting that doc oh wow there was we did some pretty full-on stuff. You know, I came up as a DP operator, so I've always operated on the shows that I've been shooting, except when I'm in North America on these TV shows,

I'm doing Percy Jackson at the moment, then the old man, a couple of seasons of that. And, you know, the union makes it difficult for you to operate, so you tend to take a back step. But I was always a big proponent of the Easy Week, the easy rig allowed me to do things with the camera that I defy any operator to be able to do with a camera just sitting on the shoulder.

And the conversation about whether to wear an easy rig in the Zodiac with a 3D camera attached was a very short conversation. Right. Because it's like if that camera goes overboard and I'm attached to it, I'm going to the bottom of the trench. Right.

So it's, yeah, that was, yeah, a very, very short conversation that we're not using an easy rig. I'm not using an easy rig in this thing. So I'm going to love this thing on my shoulder. So, yeah, it was, that was, that was a tough show. Yeah. You know, we were, you know, we spent,

we spent about a month and a half test diving in, off the New Britain trench off the Rabao in New Guinea. And it was, that's the tropics there, man. and it was 35 degrees, whatever that is, like 90-something, every day 100% humidity operating on board, you know, a boat that's kind of listing all the time and in Zodiacs. And it was very physical, very physical. It lost a bit of water on that one. I was going to say also like how, like what was, what's the ultimate anti-sickness remedy that

you found? Well, yeah, the ultimate is just time, right? it's getting your sea legs right so um it's a funny story though because um you know you can you can take things like i think it's revenue yeah you know um which by finally enough my director on the old man ben seminar one of my directors of episode five this is my favorite who were told you he was telling me that he takes um his kids on roller coasters and i went oh man i can't do that anymore you know you reach an age where You just start to feel sick.

And he goes, dude, Dremamine. He goes, I was like you until someone told me that Dremant. And now I can take, I take Drememine and I can go roller coasters all day long. It's not a problem. So, but yeah, it's just getting your sea legs. But the funny thing was on that expedition, we shot, as it said, for about a month and a half. I think it was test diving on the map. on the new britain trench which is 8 000 meters deep

three eight to what's that 24th it creates 24th 24000 feet deep um it was and the mariana being 10 000 meters which is 20 close to 29 and a half thousand feet um we test dove there and then the the mermaid sapphire the expedition ship had to steam to guam and and where we stationed for the the Mariana Trench, which is about how could they steam out of aquarium? And so the main crew went on the Mermaid's Sathai, and I stuck around in New Guinea with Jim and a couple of my crew, there was about eight of us, I guess, and we decided let's do some diving, some real water diving, and we'll do some shooting on the reefs here in New Guinea.

we can we can shoot gym you know kind of free diving and do a bunch of stuff and um and we'll get the lear jet over to guam it's like yep okay yeah i'll i'll be that that sounds like fun meanwhile the mermaid sapphire spent i think was about four or five days i think was the steaming time to get to guam in the worst seas like i heard the stories i heard of that trip where everyone was just literally in their cabins and they couldn't come in. Everyone was seasick. You know what I mean? Like sea legs, there are certain things that sea lanes can give you, right? But what they don't give you is for most people, the ability to get through really big seas on a big ship that's kind of rolling. And, oh, mate, it sounded like a horror, a horror movie on board. I was so happy

I didn't do that. Yes. Meanwhile, you're on the PJ just sipping champagne, like, oh, this is nice. that's your art yeah happy days yeah the uh i did want to know because this is something that kind of talked about with nathan about was like what was the uh sort of there's there's a few directors that people say like that's a film school just working for them and and and jim cameron seems to be one of them and i was wondering if there's anything because i saw in an interview you were talking about applying a um cinematic mindset to documentary and i imagine he must have taught you something about uh filmmaking in general that was that was valuable yeah i mean every day was um was a was was was film school with jim i mean he's so experienced

uh and he's so clever and he's got listen jim cameron um is the person who has the most less brain and right brain combination that i'd ever met you know he can in a conversation he can be talking to an astrophysicist about physics and then talk to an artist about a painting and then speak to a finance guy about the numbers. And do you know what I mean? His ability to have a foot in all these different camps and speak to the specialist in their lingualese, their own language is just incredible.

And I think that's why he's such an amazing filmmaker because he's both artist or he's artist, he's scientist, he's entrepreneur, you know, he's just got that ability to fire on all those cylinders. Whereas for most of us, where, you know, we're kind of really right brain or we're really left brain. And so his ability to step through all those camps and then bring a really, a real variety of people together, you know, on this expedition. we had divers, we had oceanographers, we had biologists, we had life support people, submariners, yeah, biomechanics, the whole gamut.

And that's what Jim does on a film, you know, I was lucky enough to spend some time on Avatar with my director of Saint and Alastairson. It was kind of like Jim was, we had a week-long interview. before he agreed to us shooting that underwater 3D film, I told you about Satan, which is neat. But he has that ability on, or he does that on a big movie like Avatar where there's so much science involved with the storytelling, you know, and he's got all these different people and he brings them together

and leads people through this, the madness of, you know, making a movie or the madness of being on an expedition because that's kind of what it is. It's, you know, filmmaking in one sense is just problem solving or the more complex it is, like 3D, you know, you're lurching from one crisis to another solving the next problem, you know. So, and at the same time, bringing all this creativity to the process. Well, and I think problem solving is almost the more fun thing than me. making, you know, I don't know if this is just like the masculine urge to be helpful and solve problems. But like personally, I'm like, I can set up the shot. But it's more fun when

there's something, you know, when, you know, when people say that like constraint is where creativity is born. Yeah. Like when you're faced with a problem, that is certainly a form of constraint. And that's kind of where you can, if it's not too big of an issue, it's, that's where like, I tend to have fun. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. I mean, we're talking about the deep, deep sea challenge a lot but but on that expedition right and this is going to the heart of what you're saying Cameron said like if this was a what would normally happen back in the 90s and the 80s the 70s the polo and moonshot and all that you know this would be a government run expedition and it would take us 10 years to do what we want to do we have to achieve this in

three in three months so what I need all of you scientists and biomechanics and engineers engineers and what not to do. I need you all to think like a film crew. And what a film crew does, a film crew solves problems really quickly. And I always say this is that there's what I love about filmmaking so much. We could have a major location falls through. It's five o'clock in the afternoon and our major location falls through. I know by 7 a.m. the next morning, the locations people will find us a new location and we will reach by 830 you know and i always say like if there's a if there's a nation failing somewhere in the world you know send in a film crew right months they'll have it sorted out you know maybe the director will become of the

you know the dictator yeah that it'll be back on track and that's what happens you have these people with all these different skills coming together um to create this one thing and you never know what this one thing's going to be but it's going to function and it's going to operate and it's going to be uh in one form or another and it's going to exist whether it's good or bad still it took all those people to create it and it was done really quickly so well that also goes to speak about you know right now obviously there's a significant downturn in filmmaking especially here in l.a you know uh in california in general is our incentive or tax incentives don't seem to be that great for production and stuff.

But, like, you know, I primarily work on lower budget stuff, recently been put on a couple higher budget documentaries. And it's so nice, it's so nice to have a crew, not have me have to be the like AD and DP at the same, you know, just all this random crap. We're like, there's a reason there's someone paid really well to solve this problem. Well, I solve that problem. I shouldn't have to cordon my brain off into four places.

Yeah. because it saved us a buck you know like if you don't have that buck fine but like effort should be made to get that even the smallest crew member is not frivolous a PA is not frivolous they're solving problems that would take you a very long time just to like yeah like like I said cordon off your brain and shit yeah you know I was sitting around we had we had a we're starting a new block on Percy Jackson my man off and we were having a production meeting the other day and I do this in every production meeting I look around and I go, each one of these people is a specialist in the field that they're specializing in,

but they're all bringing their A-game. No one's coming to work and going, you know, I'm going to put in 50% today. They're all trying to their utmost, and they bring a lot of experience to the game. And this is the same when you sit around in the final production meeting of episode five of season two of the old man, And you've got the production designer and the art director and the costume designer and the cinematographer director produces showrunners. They're all, everyone's there wanting to bring the best possible thing that they bring to the show. And hopefully together you create something that stands the test of time and it doesn't always happen. But it's always, well, certainly the last five or six years for me, it's,

That's invariably fun. I've done some shows that have been a bit of a nightmare, but I've been lucky to work on a couple, the last couple of years, the old man and Percy Jackson, where the people are amazing and they cool. And you have a lot of fun shooting the show and everyone's bringing their A game, you know.

I actually, this must have been at the beginning of this season of this podcast. I interviewed Pierre Gill for the first season. Yeah, yeah. And he had a lot of really, great insight but one one thing that I was actually fascinated with that first season was

basically all the stuff I thought was volume wasn't and all the stuff that I thought was real was and I was like how the fuck did you pull that off and he was like you make the you make the screen look fake and then it looks real in camera and I was like I don't what to explain that to me yeah yeah I mean it's open the gate right where I've watched those too

and I go oh that must have been shot mistakes I know that was for real and it's like that's for a no no That's trickery. Like, I mean, this is, let me segue into a little bit of the old man and where we, our Afghans sequences. That was shot up in Santa Clarita

on Blue Sky Ranch, the old movie ranch, but it shot a lot of movies and TV series. And in the season one. This is season one and season two. Oh, okay. So what happened on season one, you know, it was Friday the 13th of March 2020,

and we were shut. down because of the COVID epidemic, along with a lot of other productions around the world on that day, Friday the 13th. On Sunday, the 15th of March, we were due to fly to Morocco shoot the second part of that season on Old Man's season one. So we've got all the local, you know, state side shooting. You know, he starts on the East Coast and makes his way to the West Coast and we've done all that. Now we're going to go over there and we're going to shoot all the flashback material that's set in Morocco and the present day start, sorry, in Afghanistan, right, which was, you know, the Soviet occupation which started in 1979, Chase and Harper

in there probably around 1980, 81 operating as CIA agents. So we had to shoot all of that material and the present day stuff that was to be the storyline that was set in Morocco. But of course, COVID shot us down. And when we returned, we ended up in north of Los Angeles, in, you know, around Santa Clarita. And I went and visited the locations. You know, I went, okay, it's pretty dusty. Like the foothills look right.

So I'd spend a lot of time in traveling in northern Pakistan. And so I knew what the Karakoram range looked like and the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan is very similar. And it was like, wow, how are we going to pull this off? And Eric Henry, how the effects super who I'd been working with since the Black Sales days, who's awesome, amazing in his job. And he said, listen, I think we can do this. I'm going to shoot plates in the Sierra Nevada in California. you, and I wasn't overly for me.

I mean, I'd read back in my climbing days, I'd seen articles with photographs of the Sierra Nevada. I went, oh, yeah, okay, it's somewhat similar to the Karakoram, but not really. The Karakoram, the Indochish, very jagged. Oh, my God, when I saw the final result of what Eric had done, shooting those plates and compositing them above the foothills of San of Florida, I was like, oh my God. And, like, I'm pretty brutal with VFX and, and, you know, like,

oh, that doesn't look real. That looks real. I look at that material. I go, oh, my God. You know, he just kicked, he kicked it out of the ball. Yeah. And I'm sure a lot of people who are watching it, um, thought, wow, I wonder where they shot this stuff. You know, this, this really looks like Afghanistan, you know. Like, Lancaster. That's right. Blown pipe. But I tell you what, season two, we came back.

So it's like, okay, well, Morocco, we never went to Morocco. We know we can pull it off in Santa Clarita. But on season two, we returned to those hills of Santa Clarita. And it had a lot of rain in California. This is the beginning of last year. And oh, my God, it looked like the wrong. rolling hills of Ireland, you know, it was so green. And once again, it's the freak out of like, how are we going to pull this off?

And we did, you know, through the power of grading, gradient suite. Like five years ago, I don't think we would have been able to really do it as powerfully and to the extent that we did without BFX. But most of that was done in the color suite in post. and with Eric putting his mountains into the background and doing a little bit of work here and there, but not a lot. Yeah, I think we really pulled it off again.

So mirrors, mate, that's what it's all about, right? Yeah, I mean, I'm a sixth generation Californian, so I'm constantly having to defend this state from people who are not from here and just think we're all a bunch of losers or whatever. But I love this map. I had it framed for a while I lost it, But there's this map that I think Paramount made back in like the 20s and it was a image of California and then written on it was what each area of California can play for.

So it would be like, it would be like Afghanistan, you know, Switzerland, you know, Ireland, whatever. And it was just written on every, it was just like kind of a bare map. But I always show people that when I'm like, this, this state is so gorgeous. I mean, one of the one of the best things we've ever done is America, but specifically. Basically, California is the national parks offering to the world. You can come here and see untouched natural beauty in a way that you can't really in most countries. And like, obviously America is huge, but California's got such, it's so biodiverse that in, you know, if you spend a week here, you can see every climate, every, not culture, but every biome kind of, you can imagine. And it does end up looking like other places.

And you're like, that's why we film. And it's incredible. Every time I shoot there, you know, my partner, Lisa and I always go out, you know, we'll do a trip out to Joshua Tree or we'll go to Death Valley. I mean, I love the deserts. So we're always exploring new places, Lone Pine. And then at the end of this trip, we went, oh, let's, you know, there was a trip that I've been wanting to do for some time.

And we did a road trip out to Arizona and into Utah. And my God, Utah. I mean, I've done a lot of traveling in my time, Western Asia, Southeast Asia, all through the Middle East. I've seen a lot of countries. But Utah, I've never seen a place so diverse in its national parts. And every one of those natural parts is like a nine. Yeah.

Why the hell did they give it to the moment? Right. Yeah, they don't go out. They stand. Not with the book after, I think, I don't know. But I was like, my God, this space is insane. Like, we had such an incredible trip. But those southwestern deserts, of course, which California makes up a big part of it is so incredible.

You know, some amazing landscape and so different, you know, just, wow, out of this world. Yeah, I love that part of the States. Yeah. And you get to go for free. Like, it's not, you know, I feel like, especially as capitalistic as we are, we're just like, actually that, go ahead. Yeah. See what life is actually about, you know. And I've snowboarded my whole life.

And Colorado specifically, I run college ski trips up there. And it's, you know, you get to the top of a place like steamboat, which kind of butts into, what's it called? I keep trying to say Mormon now, Montana. And you can just see, like, covered in snow, too, just all these trees for, I mean, literally, you can't see a city in any direction or in town or anything. And it's just, it's a very, especially when it's covered in snow, you get that quiet. Yeah. It's a very, like, I live next to a freeway here in Los Angeles.

And it's, it's a very auditorially different experience. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's, you know, two places I've said, my God, this is a loud, a loud city. Because you really get a sense of what a city's like soundwise when you're shooting. You know, it's like, hey, turn up, like quiet on set, turn out, up, you know, and it's like no on set's talking. And then you're like, oh, my God, that's noise. What's LA? You see, it's noisy about the other places London.

Yeah. Like, holy shit, quiet on set. That doesn't exist when either of those two cities, you know, but it's, but it is really diverse. But it, but it's also, you know, it can be challenging, you know, some ways shooting up in Santa Clarita and making that Afghanistan was much much easier than shooting downtown on a street and making that Hong Kong which we had to do for episode seven so we and that's just a little anecdote I'll go into it that the so in episode I think it's episode six that we that they go to the UK and I continue that

with Amy, Amy, um, uh, Zoe, Amy's character, Zoe. Yeah. In the play. And then Harper goes to Hong Kong. And, um, so we're looking around downtown LA, uh, for what could be Hong Kong. And of course, down in Chinatown, there's this one street that I think a lot of people have, um, uh, have shot on. It's like, right, we're going to read, we're going to address this, this street.

And then we're going to have the Hong Kong sky rise that BF. are going to put in right how are we going to shoot it and my showrunner john steinberg had these references that one of our producers zoe neary had taken in hongong and she'd been there when it'd been raining and and all the photos really blue and soft light and john's like i really want it to look like this okay cool and we banded around some ideas what about at night you know we're going to have all the lanterns and we have the high rise coming up and no no i really want to to be during the day and I want it to be overcast because in the back of my mind

and the production designers mind was like this is Los Angeles, California and it's always sunny how are we going to pull this up and okay well easy we'll scrim the street okay so we hear back from the guy who looks after that location to go you can scream the street

and you cannot touch the buildings Oh, well, it might be on the rooftops, right, to put a string here and put one over to this building and then you put a scrim over the top. And by that way, I can scrim the whole street. That's the easy way to do it. Obie we can't touch the buildings. Okay, what do we do now? Okay, we've got to create a truss where we've got these stands in this laneway. They're not touching the built.

They go up and we put box truss across and right down the street, scrimmed. over the top of that and then we've got to dress these stands up okay so the cost of that is astronomical that's a lot of speed rail that's right there's not only the cost but we only get a day beforehand to dress this

so this has to be built and dressed out and scrimmed in a day impossible right just not possible okay writer how well oh here's an idea so on Percy Jackson season one I

was introduced to grip clouds and grip clouds are effectively these oblong balloons and you fill them full of helium and they're white so you can put them up against the sun and the light will be diffused or you can put a solid or a big black piece of material on one side and you can use it as negative right you kind of float these things in and around the set and they're really amazing, quite incredible devices, but helium. Helium is really expensive at the moment. And there was a shortage like a couple years. I remember so many DPs complaining like we can't do them because there's no physical way to get the helium. Yeah, like San, so you can get helium at the moment, but for some reason, you know, there's a shortage on it. And so it's really

expensive. And so, but it's like, okay, this is a cheaper. And it's a doable. You know, we can, we can do this the day before book or briefly they actually come in sorry on the day because they inflate and then they go up pretty quickly um and so what i had to do i think it was about a 120 foot um stretch of laneway and so i needed that there were 20 buys and so i'd had six of these things and so then what did i say we're filmmakers we lurched from one crisis just doing that guy. So then on the day, we had this agreement with the dude, sorry, I'm not going to say the dude, because that's Jeff.

There's only one dude. It was responsible for this location. And he said, well, you can only put two of them up at a time. And they cannot touch the sides of the buildings, right? That's cool. We've got strings. You know, we'll dress the strings out or we'll take them out later in VFX. But what, like two, but we had an agreement that we, we don't.

we could put six up no no you can you can only put two and that's so in situations like that i'm normally as a dp you have to be very political right right you've got to be able to play politics above above you with the director and the the producers invariably to get what you want um which is invariably for the best of the show what you think is the best thing for the show But you've got to pull politics and you've got to play politics below you as well because you've got to have a crew that works for you and you know, you want them to do their best work. And so it's all it's all politics.

But when it comes to something like this on a fairness level, I've got this kind of fairness meter, you know, I think things are really unfair or a little kind of corrupt or fucked or fucked up. You know, my politics kind of goes out. Right, right. I'm like, I'm not the bright person to negotiate with this guy. If I get involved in this, arbitrary constraints can really get fucked. Yeah, that's right.

So I'm like, I need to step away. But my key grip, Sean Patrick Crowell, he is, man, he could, he could, I'll be careful what I say here, he could talk to into doing something, the kind of things that he used to be able to say you can't say anymore. Like he can talk anyone into doing anything. He's got, he's got a face,

a gorgeous face and smiles and he melts your heart. And he's talked me into some things on set, you know, that no other key grip on the planet would talk me into, you know, he's got velvet in his mouth. And it's like, Sean, I've got a job for you, bro.

So you need to sweep talk this guy with our locations manager So, you know, I've got to get as many of these balloons up as I possibly can. And if there's anyone that can do it, it's you, go to work. Nice. So I think in the end, he taught this guy into putting four balloons up. He never let us have the six, that we had the four. And so then I had to bring in umbrellas and other things to iris, what I call iris down the back of the frame.

Right. So I have hot light hitting the walls and the set and through other kind of trickery awnings and things like that, we were able to disguise the fact that we had blazing sun coming in and hitting the top of the four balloons that we had and other parts of the set and we're able to pull off this kind of soft light, blue, soft light, cloudy kind of feel. when we saw the balloons above, above frame, the effects. We pulled all that out, right, put in the high-rise of the Hong Kong. And funny enough, I haven't seen this, the final of this hep.

So I graded it's not out yet, I don't think, is it? It's not out, you know, and I got the presses in the first five. And I could have asked for it for my producer, but some reason I've got to do that. So I haven't seen the final result. I just don't have VFX didn't fuck it up in the end, right? They probably didn't. That was hard, right? Finding, you know, you're finding these locations sometimes.

Like the big Afghan thing is one thing, but it's often the smaller ones that become really tricky and, you know, being able to put one location together with another one and you've got, you know, several shots from this. looking out the window it's this street scene is something else which of course was what we had to do

at the police station that UK police station that Zoe goes into it was one location and the exterior was another and we have to blend the two together somehow to make it look as though it's one

to go somewhere so I actually did want to ask about the exteriors the Santa Clarita exteries because you shot that in both seasons and I was hoping that would be a nice little tie between how you shot them differently

because the show doesn't look drastically different from season one to season two but there certainly is a look and you mentioned the grade I was I've said this a million times but I had become a freelance colorist during the pandemic because that was something I was good at but then couldn't shoot

obviously as a DP so now I really having colored umpteen clips some from various cameras and stuff. It's really cool to see like kind of a exact one to one difference, you know, like ostensibly the same location shot and colored two different ways. And I was wondering if there was a difference in the way you shot it.

And obviously was there a reason to go for a different color grade beyond just trying to take care of the green? Because I personally, I do prefer the look of the exteriors and season two. But I also wanted to talk about the lighting too. But yeah, starting there, just like the methodology. Yeah, so funny enough. So season one, I guess we created the lookup table, which was based on a tobacco filter. So we would put the tobacco filter in front of land and we did some test shots and then we'd put it through our post house light on and that would create a lot that we could superimpose on not our negatives because the negative display pure, but on the monitor. and then we'd feed that into our final grade in post

if we so choose to do it, which we did. So we never had to put a colored filter in front of the lens while we were actually shooting the show for real. Now, when it came to, and then Afghanistan for season one was all flashback material, but the tobacco look was permeated the entire show. Now, when it came to season two, I had long conversations with John Steinberg about what we could do because now we're going back to Afghanistan, but it's present day. And the older Chase and the older Harper are going back. So let's have a play. Let's let's

have a play with it. And so what happened was we still shot the material on the day without tobacco lookup table but what happened after four episodes we were shut down because of the strike and I was able to go into Lydar and start playing with the color timing of some of that Afghan material and John and I talked a lot about

what could it be what could we give it an edge of look could we let's have a look at a bleach bypass let's have a look at a bleach bypass and a bleach bypass for your audience You know, I mean, essentially it drains some of the color or a lot of the color, depending on how far you go from the material. And it blocks up the bottom end of the signal. The blacks become chokier or blockier.

There's not as much detail on the blacks. Seven being a famous example of that. Yeah, that's right. Or, yeah, exactly, the great example of that. So it's, it's, so then it's like, what does a bleach bypass look like? Because what it does tends to drain the color from the sky as well. So blue skies become white skies. And what is that, what's that going to do with the hills, you know, these green hills?

Oh, okay, that kind of helps with that. But it's taking the color away. What if we do a bleach bypass, but we put the color back into the sky? So there's a little bit of blue in the sky. And we played with a bunch of things. And then in the end, we knew that we had to deal with the green. hills but we wanted a slightly different look but we didn't want a huge departure from season one so it is a slightly different look um and you know you've got the color aside you know that

it's a it's a different look um but we didn't the thing with the with the old man with everything we do it wants to be the word grounded is always hovering above what we do it's got to be grounded. It can't be tricksy. You can never feel as though. It's got to feel real world. Yeah. I can't, we don't want it to feel hyper stylized or even things like that we discussed, you know, the battle sequence, uh, the fire, the Taliban firefight in the village in episode three. Um, you know, let's have a play with reduced shutter, but let's not push it too much because we don't want to depart too much from the show. We don't want to too stylized. And that was the thing with the bleach bypass is that we kind of liked where it went,

but we kind of, we didn't want to depart too much from season one. So it kind of kind of goes halfway, I guess, you could say. And then we had a little bit of noise to the picture as well or grain. We wanted to feel grounded and we wanted it to feel gritty, but we didn't want it to feel too stylized. So the audience To feel these characters are real And they're in a real place

Yeah I mean it definitely is a gorgeous look And that kind of drew I literally just I've done like four interviews back to back to back So the audience is going to be sick And be telling the same story But it's all I got right now I just shot something in Lancaster

And very small There was only four of us But you know We are shaping LA Desert Sun And it's something that I always struggle with because interiors I got, I know how to light an interior, but large exteriors kind of escaped. And I was wondering, like, how are you shaping the light in such a way to make it look

grounded and natural, but still pretty? And you're also not doing the classic like Western, hot, you know, 49 million K, you know, light at a sweaty man. They still, were you just blessed with overcast or were you doing? Yeah, we've got a lot of overcast. It's a discussion that I've had with Dan Shots, my showrunner, and Eric Henry, and we've been doing show, as I said, we did Black Sales together. And then I did C with Dan Shots, but then we did The Old Man, the three of us,

and we did Percy Jackson. And on all these shows, not so. much black sales, but certainly the old man. And funnily enough, now Percy Jackson has this thing that it's, as I said, it's got to feel grounded. And we often get into this, into this fix or conundrum about how we do exteriors and how we photograph exteriors. And often, especially in Vancouver on Percy Jackson, where the weather is really bad. Right. that you've got to do some of the stuff on stage. And it's like what looks real, you know?

And with the old man, when we're outside with really hard light, that looks real. Okay, so our golden rule is, you know, on stage in, if we're on stage and it's got to be an exterior, then it's got to be soft light. It's got to be overcast light. Unless it's a sunset or a sunrise where I can bring in a really hard. then low light if I'm on stage we're not under

10 o'clock because it's just not going to look real you know I defy anyone to shoot on stage and have the sun in the sky and at 10 o'clock in the morning and have that look like Eudor outside

it's really difficult to pull off and offer the audience It's just, you know, it might be psychological or otherwise a disco bullshit. You know, it's really careful about what we shoot on stage. So, invariably, it's going to be overcast. The same goes when we're outside on a show like the old man, and you've got a high sun that's going to make the actors look pretty ordinary.

You know, you bring in a half soft frost and just soften that light off. three. Okay. That's not going to look real for our show. So luckily enough on the, for a lot of the old man, we had overcast skies up at Santa Clarita, but not always. And so when we didn't, it was about about having backlight effectively or three-quarter backlight. So turning the actors around so they're getting hit from behind by the sun. And if they're hit, You know, if I couldn't do that for some reason, because the location dictated it. And I can't remember a situation where I had a really hard three-quarter front light on the actors. But it was either we spin them around and we backlight them, we cheat them, or we shoot.

I'd say, I remember there was a walk and talk with Jeff and Hamzad. Sorry, Jeff and Omar and John Lithgow, where I said, like, we've got to shoot at this time of the day. Otherwise, it's going to look like, it's not going to look great. But to put a scrim over the top of them is it's unless I can make that look like an awning or that it's the shadow of the mountain, which he did out the back of the tea house. And when Jeff and John Lithgow arrived and they meet Omar and they have that, that situation out the back of the tea house where I could make it look as though it was the shadow of the mountain. And I did that with an overhead full grid, I think it was. It's like we really steer away from that stuff.

And so it's a dance. It's a schedule. degree dance. You know, I'm, I have no problems with doing a two-hander and backlighting both people. I have no issue with me. Right, right, right. I'm putting a scrim over the top that's going to soften the sun on a show like the old man. I tend to really steer away from that. And I think there's, there's one I can think of where I may have had to do that. And I can, did we end up using that remember um it may have been half in half out with claire i'd be a day where it was it was all over the shop uh and i may have had to do that on

but we tend as a rule to stay away from that and so as a result i kind of feel the show looks very naturalistic um but i'm still looking after our actors and making it look cinematic as well so right well and that's kind of what i wanted to touch on because the average dp listening would you hear oh just backlight them and then go do that and not achieve the same result so i'm wondering were you bringing in um bounce or anything like neg or was were you really just placing in time a day uh at both all of the above so using yeah so on an overcast a day you i would tend to bring in as much neg as i could and then some of these locations you know know, it's very difficult to bring in a big telehandler or, you know, balloons by, because

there's a fiscal thing like this, you know, on Percy Jackson, there's a lot more to play with because it's a bigger budget, but on the old man, you've got to dance the numbers a little bit more. So sometimes I might be able to bring in a neg with a 12 buy. Sometimes it might be a balloon, but it's, you know, it's what I can have on Percy Jackson is not the same as what I can have on the old man and i've got to play um those numbers a little better so so you've got to be um sometimes you don't just don't have the tools that you have on a much bigger show but when it's overcast i tend to bring in neg and shape the light uh you tend to take away light rather than add light so it's so it's um and sometimes it's just difficult because you in the

locations. You just can't bring in the tools. Right. You know, so you've got to make work with, with, with, with less. So, I've been enjoying a big 12 by of highlight. I like, I like how highlight looks. Yeah. I'm sure I'll grow out of it soon because, but it's a tool that was recently introduced to me and I'm like, I'll, I'll, I'll happily put this on a lot of stuff that's supposed to look natural. Yeah. It does give it more of like a punchy kind of 90s music video look a lot of times, but sometimes that works out. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Yeah. I mean, you go through periods, don't you, where you try things, and it's like, I'm really into this, and then you discover something else, and you go with that, and you might

return later on to those things. But that's the great thing about cinematography. I think you've always got to be evolving and looking at new stuff and different ways of doing things. And I kind of feel as though if you get too stuck in a certain kind of, you know, using certain tools and you're not kind of progressing you're not progressing the story and so with the old man it's like every season you know we've done too and i'm using different units on season two as i was on season one and and the technology with lighting is is going in leaps and bounds you know so we're growing with it at the same time it's always we're going to stay grounded yeah i feel real yeah i'm enjoying seeing more vortexes instead of sky panels

but that's just a personal the LEDs are better on him you know you know we that's what we've shifted from season one sky panels to vortex's on season two yeah and now on Percy Jackson you know the the the

the AriX which is a new lot there's which is really sensational so and we've had some some new units brought the set to try out and um so it's But it's really, it's like the, you know, I always say that in the last few years, the camera technology, you know, it's making, you know, I think we're going to see a new Alexa 65 soon. Right. But, you know, we had the LF and then we had the R.H.35.

And, but I find, you know, I think we're kind of there with a hundred percent range, you know, it's things like internal ending, which I'm on the Sony Venice too at the moment, the ability to do one-stop increments. with ND is I mean that's just awesome you know yeah they make a half stop I always get down to like I want to lose the one stop of ND yeah yeah but it's now it's too much like I want a half stop yeah yeah I stop that seems to be a what's it's much different from stops two three four and five um but anyway half stop is asking too much I can run the ASA I guess but anyway the camera technology, I kind of feels so it's kind of, you know, it's, I don't know, what else do I want out of a camera, small, sure. Well, I don't know how much I'm at liberty to say, but I can tell you for a fact that on

a massive film, they're using the GFX 100s or 102 as a B cam to the Alexa 65. Yeah, wow. Or at least like a, you know, maybe not B cam, but like an alternate, you know, they're using it. They're intercutting those two. So it's like not only as camera technology plateaued on the cinema side, but like even mirrorless DSLRs, I guess they're all mirrorless now are there, at least image-wise, obviously the body.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. And then you've got the power of the grade to kind of match that stuff. Yeah. But it's lighting, which I find is just awesome, you know, the different units and the control. Less power. Yeah, like five, six years ago, you know, you'd go and turn the light or you'd put a gel

it or you know you'd you'd throw a scrim in and and now like where where you know in in as we're doing a shot we're fading up on this coming down on that and that's changing color and and it's a real dance we know you got your board up right there and in on an iPad this not even with a board they're just like yeah yeah that's it and so it's so cool yeah stuff that that we're doing and And it's so much fun. And, yeah. Yeah, I did want to ask about, I have like two questions that are kind of similar. On the old man, obviously, you're not the only DP.

There's two. Most TV shows have at least two at this point. You guys have to make sure that the stuff looks vaguely similar. So, you know, each episode doesn't get too crazy out of whack. What are the things that you and the other DP and the director talk about that you don't do? What is the show not employed to make sure that it is the look it is? It's way easy to say, like, we do this, this, this, but like, what are you like, this is not the look? Well, yeah, on season one, it was me and Sean Porter with the two DPs.

And so Sean Porter and I did most of the apps, and Amanda Sallis, came into the latest stage to do an episode. And then on season two for the old man, it was myself. I kicked it off with Dan Stoloff. I love Dan. I interviewed him for the boys. The boys, yeah. He's such a great. I love Dan.

And I love John and working with him, you know, setting up season one. But Dan Stoloff's a great guy that's like, I've never seen a guy who just so does not get rattled by Eddie. He's like, he's so chill. One cool customer, man. He'd be awesome. So he was a great partner to have on season two. And so it's interesting what you don't do. Okay, so the speed of the camera, right?

Now, episode three, the battle sequence aside, because that is a kind of own thing and complete mayhem, you know, kind of broke out on that. But the old man, the camera style, it's the old man. It never moves quickly, you know, and, you know, someone comes in the shot and we pan with them, and then they leave shot, and then we catch up to them again. That's kind of like the, you know, if there's one shot you could describe the style, that's it.

Wonderful. It moves quickly. And so on season two, we had a new A-camera operator, a new A-camera. Dolly Grip and that was because two shows overlapping with my old crew so I got Bella Trutz to come in and do a camera and I'd work with Bella on and on three movies before and Paul Sanchez was out who was our a camera operator on season one who was amazing he couldn't do it so I interviewed Bell you know I did I knew Bella.

So I said, come and do this with me. And he knocked back another show to come and do it. Now, what happened is that we got delayed and then it freed up Paul Sanchez. And so I was now with this dilemma, oh, my God, Paul was our A camera operator on season one, but Bella's knocked back this other show and already agreed to do season two. I've, you know, I've got to, Bella's got to be the guy. you know because and unfortunately we're just in that that kind of awful situation i said the poll i said paul listen um this is what's happens we've now pushed uh i'm looking for a b camera operator

i do not expect you to come to do it you're an eight guy and you're a world class and he went mate i i just love the show come to be camera that's like what a what a man do you know what i mean And Paul came and did the B camera and he shot some amazing stuff for us. I'd often cut him loose and say, listen, can you do this? You know, there were a few times that I couldn't, that I had to take a morning off or whatnot. He would fill in for me as the cinematographer and he would like for me. And he's just such an awesome guy. But yeah, what don't we do?

Well, we don't move the camera quickly. And so getting the guys into that frame of mind, it took a little while to get that going. It's like, I know you want to go, I know you want to follow the action. We don't do that. And there's another thing that certainly I don't do. And I know Dan had a slightly different style. And this is that thing of, okay, Dan, you come into the show.

This is the show, right? This is what we do. This is the kind of the look of it. but you know what like add your add your spice to it with your directors if you want to do stuff slightly differently you're going to have dan shots our show run on there he's going to keep you honest as far as the pace of the camera but if there's different things that you want to do then do that there's one thing i don't like doing on the old man and that is if i've got a character in the distance and my camera is this height because that's what keeps everything

think straight and and keeps parallax all working as the actor approaches instead of tilting up the camera. I want to rise and meet the camera. So I always want to kind of be straight on to the walls. I want to keep verticals straight. Pedestalling. Pedalstilling. Pedalstilling. Yeah, say that really quickly. Pedestalling, yeah. Play it really slowly. I can't. Petestalling. Yeah. Pettistilling, yeah. You've got it, man. Your grasp with the English language is far better than mine.

For some reason, right now, yes, but not generally. So I'd often say, listen, get my vertical strength. You know, I want to, like, you know, boom down and just go and then rise with the actor. So there's certain things that I like doing, and sometimes it doesn't always come to pass because the director may say, I need the shot of Jeff coming out of the back of that truck. I want to be low angle, right? And I want to be looking up at him.

Okay, okay, cool. I'm going to break that rule. There's a bloody good reason to break that rule right now, so we're going to do it. But there's one thing that we don't do, and that is move the camera quickly. It has to be a heavy languid style, and that is the thing that we,

we only break if there's a big firefight sequence with talpan and scans and then you're into a you know into a firefighter's actually it's hand held and all that construct and it's its own thing lives in its own its own world but that that is the one thing I would say that we don't do is move the camera quickly well and it's such a wonderful easy way to articulate that too is like he's an old man move slow that's that you know one sentence explanation and I think anyone working and be like, oh yeah, okay. Yeah. You know, because you get the reasoning.

Yeah. I think it's, it's probably harder to just be like, oh, we move slow on this one and then someone's going, but why? Why? Because why is, I think, why is always the hardest thing to, if people aren't on board with your idea, it's usually because they don't know the why. Yeah. In anything, in business, in friendship, you know, we should go to this restaurant. Why that one? And you're like, well, because my friend works there. Oh, okay. You know, versus I don't like their food, whatever it may be that's it's not it's not an easy thing to do you know i often have um

like lampops doing um effects on set and it's and and like there's something about that i've come to realize about human nature is that it's like when the ad comes to me and says oh how long is this going to take and i and i always say to the ad at the beginning you know maybe take at another 30 percent to what I say. And I know when it comes to great, you know, I'm going to double the time or when it comes to Netflix, I'm going to add this. And because everyone on a film set wants to please, they want to give you the best version of themselves or the best version of what they're about to do for you. And often that can translate into time because time is money on a set. Right. And so there's this tendency I find for people to be faster and they want to do something so you get a lamp

off that's doing an effect and I always say the first thing I say to them is okay what you think it is I want you to halve it and then what I want you to do is halve it again and that's generally where the speed is right because if it's a fast you know if it's a rain effect you know that's of it and half again you know and because it's just that human nature we want to be you know we want to be faster we want to we're anxious anxious we want to get it done and and so that was a thing with with the camera style of the old man it's it's not as easy as it looks man and i once uh i think it was season one where i said to the to shorn we're doing this long tracking shot now i said i want every shot bag of yours and i want you to put it on the dolly and i want to make it really

hard for the for the dolly grip to push the dolly away why you want to do that i said i don't know because i i heard Woody allen once did that he wanted this really slow dolly move so they just loaded the dolly's the dolly up with all these shop bags and he said that he goes he goes boss i think we can achieve that with that loaded no no no i really can do this Because I want us all to get into this mindset of it. It's slower than you think. You know, I know you say, yeah, I got it. I know it.

Well, there's one thing I know, and that's human nature. And you've got to push this thing faster than we want. Right. Let's get into the rhythm now. Let's load it up with shock bags. Let's make it hard. And this is the show, you know. And, yeah, so that's the.

that the camera moves like an old. Yeah, well, and that's also thinking like an editor, too, right? Like, you know that if it's paced too quickly in the edit, it's not going to feel right. So you've got to, like, drag everyone down to make sure it works for it post. That's right. And listen, and the flip side of that is we all know, or any of us who have seen the show, know that Jeff Bridges is not the old man. The old man is actually somewhere else.

Right. And Jeff doesn't move slowly. when he has to move he's like a spring coil he's like a panther he's taken out more assassins yeah think about you know

and you know that well I think it was the end of that two was on season one we had that that oneer with him fighting the assassin at the best house in the house

and there was that one outside the car oh right sure yeah and and you know doing a whole bunch of tricksy stuff with with um cowboy switches and hidden cuts and but jeff doing a lot of it himself um but uh yeah he the camera may move slowly but when it comes time brad bridges doesn't move slowly he moves like a panther mate yeah i did want i did want to talk about uh him in photography but before that uh just because i had the thought. You'd mentioned, you know, the budget between Percy Jackson, obviously Disney

show higher than old man. Obviously, VFX is going to raise that up. But even something like Miss Marvel, you know, much higher budget. And I was wondering, I assume, I've asked a few DPs who've worked on Marvel stuff specifically. And I was wondering what their kind of approach is, because their stuff seems so locked down in terms of, you know, there's a consistency across Marvel products that is admirable even if you you know people do or don't like it but it is consistent and it is polished and it is them you know and I was wondering what your experience was shooting either Miss Marvel or Percy Jackson where they're doing things differently over there than you're used to yeah I mean with Marvel it's um there's often a way

of doing things like there's here's an example when I did the final um color gray on my Epsomis marble, it wasn't me and the colorist in the room. And I did it, funnily enough, I did it remotely from Bali. I was on the time, and we can, as you know, Kenny, we can do color grading remotely now. You know, I've got my iPad there, and it's going to buy it on my iPad Pro, I should say, because that's the closest thing.

We'll get to what the colorist is looking at back in the color suite. And I can talk to them. and while seeing the images. Evercast? What's that? We're using Evercast? I think it was Evercast, yeah. It was something like that.

But there were a few more people in that room and there were producers in there because what's happening with Marvel is that not only do they, are they telling a story, but they're telling a story that involves costumes that feed into comic books.

like feed into shows that have come before. They're feeding into ideas that have to be looked after and that have to be safeguarded, rightly so, because it's the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's not the old man, you know, just the show that I'm doing, or just my episode. There are all these other factors that come to pass. And what at first can seem a little chaotic,

you know when you're shooting it because there are all these other voices in the room in the end it's like oh my god this all comes together in a way that wouldn't come together on another show and and i'm not sure whether that's because of kevin fagie at the top overseeing all of this um that's permeating all these people but there's a there's a different way of doing it and it's a really fun way because what they don't have also are dick ads working on their shows. They're all really cool people, awesome people to work with, super respectful. So it's just a different way. You've got to fit in, you've got to fit hand in gloves with a whole bunch of other people

and the ideas around this universe that you don't normally have on a different show. It's just a different way of working, but it's a really fun way of working, and it's always with people who are super cool. I don't know what it is about Kevin, the people that he gets together, but they're all, you know, they're all kind of nerds, and they all love the universe, gunning 100% for this show, but it's definitely a different, that's a different way of working than it is on something, you know, a kind of a gritty drama like the old man. But then you've got

Percy Jackson, which, you know, it's a big Disney show and there's IP there. You know, there's Rick's books that are loved by so many and you've got Canon. Yep. And so it's, you know, there are certain things that you've got to adhere to but not in the same way as a Marvel show you know there's there's some stuff that you've really

got to look after and maybe that's because it originates from a visual medium you know from comic book whereas Percy Jackson just originates from text so things that you can have leeway with that you can't on a Marvel show but it's um but they're all different right and and last thing i want as a cinematographer

it's an experience that's always the same you know as as long as i'm being respectful of the words on the page um and the showrunners and the directors and the actors and as long as that respect is coming back towards me um then that's awesome and i can tell you now that that some of the best experiences I've had have been doing Miss Marvel with the people I worked with there which was extraordinary. I really

nationalities. It was like the League of Nations. Sure. I had Indian, Pakistani, actors, Pakistani director in Shamin, Obed Chinoi, American producers. Irish and English

cast as well as operators from Australia and a Gaffin from New Zealand and I mean, all the people just from everywhere Canadians, you know, you name it. Literally the United Nations and we're shooting in Thailand with a Thai crew as well.

That was just an awesome, awesome experience of people. And then on, you know, Percy Jackson, we shoot in Canada. but our actors are from all over the place and awesome crew and the cast that i loves and and then to the old man where it's really american-centric and mostly californians and awesome people i mean it's i can you know i've been lucky in the last few years to work on those three shows because you know as a cinematographer for me like in when i first started out it was all about the story and

and all about the script. And as you go on, it becomes about other things as well. And it really becomes about the people that you work with, going to work every day with just awesome individuals bringing their best to the show and just being really decent human beings. And in these last three shows I've just spoken about were all of those. Yeah. Well, that's kind of like what you're saying about, like, constantly progressing with gear.

It's like constantly progressing with your motivation. Like at first, at first, you know, you're excited about making images and then eventually you know how to make images. So it's like, what's keeping me here and it's relationships? You know, it's always a question. Yeah. To that note, I did want to ask because I have, oh, it's buried under some stuff. Jeff Bridges is, Bridges is?

There goes my English. Jeff Bridges' photo book. What are many Bridges is called? Bridge Eye, right? Yeah, Jeff Bridge Eye is a book with his wide luxe camera. And I know you were a photographer for a long time. Did he have that on set? Were you guys talking about photography at all?

All the time. Yeah. He, and I got, I went and bought Jess book and got him to sign it. Oh, wonderful. Yeah, yeah,

but he, and he sent me some photos that he's taken with me and him, or was me, him and Steve Boyam. Because he'll often have the Widerlox, and the Widerlox shoots a 180 degree panorama. And they'll often come in and go, okay, just stand there.

I can't put that, look over there. and he'll hold it up here and take the shot and then he'll rewind do another one and occasionally he'll say to me, you know, we'll be in sight of Sydney and he'll go, oh, I don't have my light meter. Jill's, what should I rate this out? Okay, Jeff, but I'm going to start doing the, I'm going to pull my light meter out for a start and start doing the calculations and I hope I don't fuck it up. So, but he has that on set and he's often pulling it out. and he's actually getting

he's involved I think in crowd funding I've seen that the wide luck's two or whatever it's quite like that one's so bad yeah it's so he's yeah he's a photographer and he's been to doing it for years

and he produces great images and it's just really cool to have a fellow photographer on set and one of the one of the I guess the the proudest moments I've had as a as a cinematographer was on um on season two when we're in so it was episode seven we're shooting in this uh which is set but it's a set um that it's a coptic it's sorry it's a crete of the island of crete in church orthodox church

um that's that's dilapidated and falling down and and um and he when's this going to wear A couple weeks Like three weeks Okay, F7 will be out Yeah, so I can talk about all the Eps He's been Taken Prisoner by Pavlovich And Pavlovich is going to murder him

Or kill him And he's been poisoned Of course that's how they're captured in And he's in this church And he says to me He goes see He goes Jill's He goes I just love the way you like these sets

I just love it man because everything's man right dude right and I was like oh wow that's what a you know and he said that to me a few times and what a what a compliment to be paid by a guy who's been doing this for what 50 years

yeah it is and got an Oscar and he's worked with the best filmmakers and he's a photographer in his own right and it was such a compliment and I think I puffed out my chest I was two two inches high that they were kind of spent yeah yeah he's got he's an awesome guy he is an awesome guy but it's yeah he's got his white lots often taking photographs you know one of the great things about that book is I've said this another thing I've said a million

times on this podcast is like how much I love special features on blurays and DVDs and how that art is starting to die where now they're just ads basically and that's kind of annoying but the his wide luck's book is is kind of a behind the scenes look at a lot of stuff and you can go through and be like oh how are they lighting that back in the day you know and just like get little snippets of information that's right with a 180 degree view you've got the lighting you know you've got the lights and you've got oh it's a that's a four by frame I wonder what that is that they're using and are there's the camera and and you know they've got these cutters up and yeah you can get a sense of what

what the film set was what was happening on that film set right and because there's a DP you're you know it's um you're you're you often uh absorb things by alasmosis or you watch shows you go I wonder how they they did that and you don't always get the information in podcasts or from american cinematographer and you can you can you have to surmise a lot of the time that's a bound sure that's a bounce they're not going directly through um through diffusion you know I'm looking at the no shadow right how high is the light a lot, you know, what kind of source is it. But, you know, with someone like Jeff shooting on his wide locks, you get the information right there in that. Yeah. Well, and that's

actually, I've had an idea for like a month of interviews where I want to interview actors who have worked on like with just, you know, so like you're Jeff Bridges. Ben Affleck especially because he's directed, you know, and he, um, I know Brad Pitt's a huge, uh, cinematography nerd, but I don't know how the hell I'd get a hold of him. You know, people like that who could speak to cinematography from the actor's perspective. I think that'd be a fascinating series of interviews. Well, you know who you need to talk to is Angelina Jolie.

So I did a movie with Angie a couple of, oh, five years ago. And we spoke a lot about lighting because she's a director in her own right. Right, right. And so it was a film called Come Away. And we'd often talk about lighting. knows a lot about lighting so it was really cool working with her and um and having those conversations so it's um it's something you know like working on percy jackson it's something i do with the young actors and it's getting them to become more camera savvy to be saying

right like have an awareness of where the camera is because see this lens here this is your fame and fortune. This is where all the people that are watching the show, they're inside of this lens. So if you have an idea where the lens is, and the other thing I'm trying to teach them about is the light. What makes them look good, what makes them look edgy. So, you know, to be able to, you know, if it's a phone call and you're running two cameras, throw a look over that camera for this beat and on this beat, you might throw a look past that one. Or, you might throw a look past that one, and there's the window that's where your key light is so you know you put you to your key light a bit but just having an awareness about the craft and and i tell you what they are like sponges

they're like tell me more you know they're so keen and they're such great students these guys they're they're just they're they're awesome so it's a lot of fun for me working with young actors and and teaching them about this stuff but it's also amazing when you watch older actors who was super experienced. Right. I have an idea about camera craft. And the first time I ever really noticed that was working with Sam Neal on a film called In Her Skin. And it was just that.

There was a phone call. And I was running two cameras. And there was a window. And I was operating the A camera. And then I went back and watched the, the, um, watch it again. on the B camera and I was like, oh, my God, this guy is, he is amazing. He knows exactly where the camera is. He knows where the light is.

And that's where it really kind of, the penny dropped to me that it wasn't just about me photographing the actors. It was about working with the actors. Yeah. And it's, and it's often in my career, I've said to a very experienced actor, listen, I want you to think about this is where the camera is. Can you throw this? Because it's not all of them are a super camera savvy.

Right. Is that a left brain, right brain thing you were talking about? Yeah, that's right. Some of them are stage actors. They've come from the stage. They've done a lot of stuff there. And they're not particularly aware of what the camera is doing. And so it's that dance, right, of working with them, not just photographing, not just photographing

and capturing the moment. It's capturing the moment with the actor. and so yeah so you know sometimes it's just in the process and other times like i'm percy jackson you know i'm i've got i'm super lucky to be helping these young actors kind of discover this thing um for themselves and they're like they're like bees to honey right the bees get attracted to honey they make the honey they make the bees to pollen should be the oh yeah thank you yeah You know what I mean? Much better grass for the English language than I do.

I don't know what it is. I had a Red Bull right before this. It might be that. Honestly, there's so much more I could talk to you about. I wrote more notes than normal, but I know I've kept you over and you're already over. So we'll just have to have you back to keep talking because, yeah. It's been awesome.

I love the way you, you know, it wasn't just about the old man. It was about a whole bunch of things, right? Well, you know, I figured the whole, the whole point of the podcast is to celebrate cinematographers and their work, not necessarily the project they're here to advertise. Yeah. You know, you got to advertise to keep people happy, but not us, them, but, but, you know, there's like, even just, what did I, like, see age, even stuff. You know what? I'm the perfect person for movies like Hitman's Bodyguard and, what was the other one that I saw, the whole truth. Like, I'm the guy who goes through and just goes.

Oh, Keanu in a small film. Let's do it. And then I'm like, I love that shit. Like, I'm exactly in that realm of, I don't try to go too highfalutin. And I obviously don't like bad movies. But those fun ones in the middle are like my wheelhouse. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's some cool movies that probably not a lot of people at sea.

Yeah. Well, we'll have to get to those next time I can get a hold of you. Yeah, no worries. Anytime, mate. I'll happy to talk to you anytime. It's been fun. Awesome. Thanks.

And I'll hit you up to get a hold of Angelina and Jolie when I can start doing the actor interviews. You got it. Awesome. Take care, brother. I got it. Thanks, Kenny. Bye, bye.

Frame and Reference is an Al-Bot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can do so on Patreon by going to frame and refepod.com, where you can get all the episodes and clicking the Patreon button. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening. I don't know. I'm going to be able to be.