Frame & Reference Podcast - 172: "Nickel Boys" Cinematographer Jomo Fray

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Today I'm joined by the lovely Jomo Fray to talk about his work on the incredible film Nickel Boys. Enjoy! F&R Online ► https://www.frameandrefpod.com Support F&R ► https://www.patreon.com/FrameAndRefPod Watch this Podcast ► https://www.YouTube.com/@FrameAndReference Produced by Kenny McMillan Website ► https://www.kennymcmillan.com Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/kwmcmillan

Hello, and welcome to this episode 172 of Frayman Reference. You're about to drop in on a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Joe Mo Frey, DP of Nickel Boys. Enjoy. It just sucks that Panavision has, uh, like a death grip on great tech, you know, because like I was just talking, I was talking to, um, Sal Totino yesterday. Uh, that's where, that's where I went after I saw you. I was like, I got to go. I had to come, I live on the west side. So I had to drive all the way back. Oh, wow. Um, but we were talking about these new Chinese lenses that have been coming out everywhere and like, Lao has sent me these nanomorphic. Yeah. And

They really want to test them. Oh, you can borrow. I mean, I've got these now, so. Oh, my God. Feel free. But the thing that I've noticed about them and like it seems to be a lot of these new modern lenses is like these are perfect in the sense that, you know, yes, it's anamorphic. You can see that. But there's just no real character to it.

And in the same way that like those Sigma primes are really nice for. Totally. You know, when you need like that really. sharp. Like, I don't think Sigma's are clinical. I don't really Yeah. Clinical feels I mean, I've looked in a microscope. That's clinical. There's no sensibility

to it. But these are very like sharp, clean anamorphics, which could certainly be, I'm about to shoot a documentary with these but it's for an NBA player. So it's like it doesn't need to be crazy, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what I want to really use them to see what would happen if they got detuned or putting them with something like a 416 and making film kind of do the image degradation. So then it's like, okay, there's sharpness actually is like what you kind of want. I should do on cellular and then kind of pushing or pulling or like bringing some funk into the emulsion. And they're small size. Yeah. I kind of want like, you know, there's always with the 416 or if you're shooting on 16, like trying to not make it kind of turned into 35 with like all the things you're adding on to it so yeah i mean that was curious that

was the big thing about that i found funny with like new people getting into film was them bemoaning how clean lenses are and i was like you guys have no idea that like nicon was seen as the king of all lenses because they could how do i resolve something onto film totally oh half these are seen as kind of me yeah totally i know it's genuinely i sometimes i'll like, man, it would be really, it would be really amazing and also probably very tough to start cinematography now because there are just so many genuinely powerful cameras, like pro super cameras with variable and D filters, like crazy things to be where it's like, yes, that would have been amazing to pay like $3,000 for a camera with that wide, a dynamic range and with that

many kind of crow level tools so you could scale up production wise but also i'm sure it becomes very very difficult then for a lot of young people to kind of like break through the noise because everyone kind of has now like heavy tier tools like again for like a few thousand dollars it's crazy yeah i mean i have i was just talking to dan canes right before you got on about um he was he has like a i think it was his maybe he was just promoting someone else but like an og red mysterious or MX whatever the first one you had the first one yeah the red one yeah and I was like

I have an XL2 if you want to go real vintage about it totally and I remember I my like grandparents had left me like a few bonds that I cashed in or something and for $5,000 as a teenager I bought an XL2 and there are certain things on that camera that to this

day I'm surprised don't make it into modern cameras that are cost more it the lenses had built in and these actually yeah you know global shutter whatever technically mirrorless and um just the the amount how crappy that camera is in comparison to just even even a cell phone but like you know for the same price it's crazy yeah no i totally agree i feel like xl2 it was one of the great campers of its time i used to love that guy also like i remember like like working a bunch of summer jobs to like save up to buy at xl2. I'd like right as I did the like first high definition camera came out and it was like

yeah like came to be very quickly but but the camera is incredible. Yeah. I agree with you though. I think nowadays trying to get into filmmaking, I think because you can start so hot like just pulling out, pulling any camera out and just filming something. I feel like you stop. stop asking the right questions.

And by that, I mean, why doesn't mine look like film? Totally. When you weren't shooting film, there was a lot of other questions to ask, is my lighting good? Is my production design good? Totally. Now that you have the camera, it's like, something is wrong. It's got to be someone else's fault.

I don't know. No, no, I totally feel you. I feel like it's like, you know, I almost think about, I feel really fortunate to kind of have almost like grown up on like reversal. And then like early digital cameras where they just had no. dynamic range, so they're basically digital reversal, where it's like, oh, you just have to know ratios. If you want something to look expanded, it's like really needing to light meter and even with a digital camera because it's going to clip in like a stop and a half where I feel

like I totally hear you with the difficulty of having so many of those tools when you first start is now that it's like, you know, it would be really easy to skip over things like exposure to diversity and lighting if your camera just has an intense amount of dynamic range. It's like, okay, then how are you going to know where to place your values? How would you learn the zone system if you just, I never needed to, which I do think still helps the process of learning all of those basics really slowly, I feel like, allows you to then really dynamically break the rules. Yeah.

I've actually got Ansel Adams print right there. I got from the post office. Oh, wow. The post office had a whole Ansel Adams series where those are stamps and then they had like four books. Oh my God. That's awesome. But yeah, I got the print, the negative in the camera. I think those like film is not that old.

It's 120 years, something like that. Like the lessons, it hasn't changed. The art form hasn't changed in the way that, you know, music has, for instance. Like instruments becoming digital and being able to be that. expressive, I think, is a different animal than film becoming digital. Like, the capture method is different, but the fundamentals are still the same. Well, I guess it's the same overall. Well, I think that it's still, I think film has only begun to scratch the surface of what

it's truly capable of, you know, it's like I'm reminded of painting in the sense that for a long time, the highest form of painting was photorealism. And so it was like, and that was the only thing they had access to. So it's like, you see it in the portraits of royals and monarchs. It's like these things are trying to capture an impossible to capture world. And then photography comes in. And then people are promoting the possibility that the painting will now go away completely. It'll have no purpose because a single photo, a deguer type photo, is more accurate than the best photo realistic painting.

But I think that it's actually in that moment that painting, kind of unlocked itself because then it was like, okay, well, if we don't need to try to be photorealistic, then why don't we be emotionally realistic? And then, and then you find expressionism. And then all of these things I feel like as this explosion, I think cinema is still in that space of thinking about photorealism. And I don't think it's quite clicked into that next mode yet where it's actually like, you know, we have moments of that German expressionism. There are different things in filmmaking that have like kind of had that energy. I think black and white, because it was black and white

also had that aspect to it that is always already metaphoric but like you know I'm excited for film to cross the threshold into that next space where it's like actually we can just take it as a medium that's fully just our dreams and we could just run with that

yeah I mean it's the the I'm often reminded of the David Finchert quote of like it's more about what you don't do when you can do anything like what you don't do kind of described what your thing is supposed to be.

And you're so right. Like I, people are getting back into different formats, you know, like you were saying DV or whatever black and white, for instance. I just saw Nosferatu, you know,

that's saying it's, you know, not quite four three, but it's, but the black and white looks great. It's not quite, it's not black and white. It's just very desaturated in a lot of things.

Yeah. But, um, but I just love the idea that like now, I'm, I'm with you. I think, think like now you can just do do it it you know it doesn't have to be a genre anymore now you can

just use whatever you want to make whatever you want it doesn't have to be oh you shot black and white therefore it's a noir or whatever totally no i think that that's the exciting thing about art i feel like it's and also the tie to technology is when you have a technological option that actually invalid is the option before it then the option before actually now becomes a choice It doesn't just become the default mode of capture. Like, you know, we see this in cinematography. When people were shooting 35 and 16 was a budget alternative, the moment digital comes into the picture,

and the moment digital is like kind of embraced, all of a sudden, 35 millimeter or 16 become an artistic choice. They aren't because before that moment, they were the default mode of capture. There wasn't an alternative. So that's what you did. And, you know, I think that same thing with standard definition, Same thing with Mini-D-V.

That was the best that we could do for pro-super cameras at that time. And then all of a sudden, as soon as you change over, same with CMOS to CCD sensors. It's like, all of a sudden, CCD sensors have something special to them precisely because CBO sensors make more sense. But, you know, I think that that's kind of the exciting thing about all art is that every piece of the machine can become an artistic choice once technology has kind of moved in. Moving past what's the best way and the industry standard, then every deviation of standard kind of becomes something you can creatively kind of tweak and mess with. Well, and something that I just realized is like, because I was going to say like, well, then how do you, you know, a lot of productions are applauded for not using VFX or shooting on film

because the audience, the vocal portion of the audience seems to think that those things are quote unquote better. And I'm realizing now when you're talking about industry standard is like I blame the internet for a lot of things. But I think one of them

is because everyone is so privy to how films are, you know, how the sausage is made, so to speak, in many art forms that they then have an opinion that they think is educated.

And then whoever is slightly more influential than anyone else sets the tone. No one's listening to the experts. They're listening to the critics. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

And yeah, that just lightning bolted me in the head. Now I'm like, oh, shit, how do you, how do you convince these people like, no, you're not the expert and that's fine. Let us discuss. Not last week I'm there too, but. Yeah, yeah. But no, I think that that's kind of, I, you know, that's why I think that it's like when

I think about just like clinics or internet critics on any of those things. Like that is a super important job. And that's an important job because it helps curate the film watchers, what films they should watch. And I think that same with like internet pundits. It's like that serves a purpose in kind of like curating the experience of moving through it. But ultimately as artists, as people making cinema, it's like, you know, I feel like I don't know how useful that can always be towards like what artistically you should be doing or whether the choice you made was good or bad. Like, you know, it's one of those things where I try to separate myself from that idea where it's just like, you know,

I try to make a strong choice, and a person can either like or dislike that choice. That is absolutely their prerogative. But I can never be accused of not making a choice. It was definitely, it was always a choice. But, but yeah, I think that there's sometimes a little conflation right now, because there are so many voices in the kitchen, of the difference between not liking a choice and thinking it was wrong, right? And I think it's like one of those things where we need to give.

of artists who are at the level of their craft that they're working, their respect to think that something that's happening is a true. You could not like that this episode of Game of Throat is too dark. That's totally fine. But it isn't that, you know, these men and women don't know what they're doing. It's like, they know what they're doing, but just making a choice that you do not resonate with. And that is fine, but the same way of going into, you know,

and looking at a painting and being like, ah, I guess there's usually too much blue. you should have been using green. You know, he messed it up picking the wrong pigment. It's like, no, it's blue and that's what he's going for. And although you can not like that choice, that's totally valid. Well, and I think too, because image making on the photographic or the or the video side of things is so accessible that people, again, think that they have, like, I don't think anyone looks at a painting and immediately thinks, oh, they should have done this because they can't paint. The average person can't paint.

The average person can pick up a camera, which is. is beautiful for the art form because that means more voices, you know, participate. But at the same time, if you're not interested in participating in earnest, I don't want to hear from you. I think that's fair. It's just, for instance, and the other

thing, actually, to your point about Game of Thrones, like a lot of people were just let down by either their TV, their viewing environment, or their internet. Oh, boy. You know, and you can't hold the filmmakers accountable for you having 15 megabit down

internet you know and watching with a with a big reflection on your on your tv totally totally no completely i think that that's like so much of the hardship of kind of you know being a cinematographer in a modern era is i'm just saying there's so many different viewing environments and at some very real level you can't necessarily count for all of those and the ideal hope is that you know, a transference of an idea still takes place. Even though it's like, you know, for a movie like Nickel Boys as well, it's like, you know, we go into a theater to look at our camera test because scale is an important aspect of that image. But also it's like, well, you know, like actually not everyone can afford or has the time or the

interest to integrate scale into the image. And that just becomes part of it, which again, I like to try to divorce myself and feel like There's one way to watch it. And if someone isn't watching that way, they're not getting the story. I would like to hope that, you know, it's something always comes out in however a person interacts with any piece of media. Like I feel it for new parents when, you know, I'll talk to filmmakers who had kids and they'll apologize.

I had to watch the movie at three times. And it's like, sure, of course, we would be decided for watching it in one chunk. But I don't know. If the obvious one was watching it to three chunks and not watching it at all, oh my god i'm just so happy that you watched it at all but it is a weird it is a weird world of someone who's obsessed with images and that image rendition for there to be so few ways to kind of control that through the pipeline so i feel like it has become kind of a meditative process of my own of just like kind of letting go of a bit of my own control and i'm open the same way that

you can't control if someone walks into your movie right after a breakup. If someone walks into your movie right after a death, like that is going to color their experience for good or for ill and this kind of impossible to control some of those things. And unfortunately, this image rendition feels like something you can control, but we have not been able to. So, you know, I kind of let it go a little bit. Also, there have been so many movies where I saw bad prints or bad versions of the movie.

and like fell in love with some of the color on it and then you know saw it later and I was like oh wow that was a super hazed kind of like you know screen print that I saw right yeah yeah exactly but it's like oh man I was loving kind of like the milky silky quality of it even though that's kind of wasn't the intention which isn't which is just to say you know images are inspired kind of no matter where they come from so I kind of try to let it go a little bit yeah I mean the The two arguments I've heard are, and I kind of have waffled between them throughout the years, but like are, do you make it for the highest possible quality? You know, this is sort of the David Fincher's, well, I guess not Venture, but certainly, what's his face? Tenet, Chris Nolan.

You know, he's like, the only version of this you should care about is IMAX, Dolby, Atmos, or whatever. Everything else is secondary to that. And then the counter argument being, well, we don't have that. So what about us? And then that being the argument of should you make your film to be watched on an iPad or whatever so that if someone does see it in a theater, they're actually getting a worse experience. And, you know, it's kind of the, that argument I've heard is kind of the same of like when you're mastering a record and you take it in the car and whip it around. Totally. But I think you make it for the, my opinion is you make it the best you can.

And then the car test is just to make sure that it doesn't fall apart, not that you're supposed to be mastering for the car. Yes. I think that's kind of how I think about it as well, where it's exactly that you're not. And also, like, maybe I think that every image has a set of component parts that kind of inform how that image is working. And I think it's almost like, you know, that's one, those are what, that's one of the dials. I think one of the dials onto creating an emotion and image, one of them is scale, if the image is big or if it is small relative to the viewer. That does something, you know, and I think that, like a movie like Dunkirk, like seeing that at scale, I think is part of, or a movie like there will be blood. I think that those are two movies that scale the largest Lawrence of Arabia, third one, of like the feeling of large.

versus your position as a viewer, I think, in an important part of it. Like, I remember one of the, you know, one of the first times I watched 2001 Space Odyssey, you know, sadly was on a small television. I like watching it. I was like, oh, any of that this movie is okay. And then, you know, many years later,

I had an opportunity to watch a 70-mill print of it in a theater. And it was like, oh, now I get it in a different way of, like, the smallness as humans as we relate. to a cosmic process. And this is part of that. And, like, actually, without me having the scale of that difference of when the bone goes into the air and seeing the space station, that the bone is so small, the space station is

so massive in size and scope, it's like, oh, me feeling small in the universe is actually part of what this movie is, like, trying to play at. So, me not see, like, having that relationship actually does take an element out of it that I think I did kind of need for me, which again just means that that slider scale, I think for Kubrick was up. You know, in Lawrence and Arabia, that slider scale was up.

Like, it's meant to feel small in the space of the environments. But, you know, not everything needs that. And for the projects that do need that, I think that it's about, you know, it's almost like, again, like painting. I would always encourage a painter to like paint to the canvas that makes sense for the work. Pollock needs a large canvas. Exactly, exactly.

Like, don't make it for how it'll be rendered and recaptured and disseminated. Make it for the canvas it's meant to be on. Pollack needed a big canvas. Salvador Dali needed a small canvas. Like, that is just, and it is the same for all of their work, but it's piece to piece of, I think, is at least how I think about it. And I feel like I've always gotten confused

when people kind of pose that same question. I'm like, yeah, but how will people see it on an iPad? I don't know the same way they see anything on an iPad. Like, let's make sure it doesn't look terrible on it. But if some of the concepts of the themes we're talking about involves scale as an important part of it, then like, I don't know if it makes sense to necessarily build or something down the pipeline rather than for the ideal experience that the movie's talking about, you know, the piece is talking about. This is why I'm a big proponent of re-releasing old films now. I mean obviously we had like the you know dollar theaters or whatever but I think that like doing these like AMC remaster you know like I say we keep doing that if theaters are worried about you know people not coming first of all let's not leave movies in the theater for a week you know the movie being in the theater is part of the advertising strategy in my like fucking get over it like let it be there for a month and then two re-release some of our old favorite films like seeing 2001 but also this. makes me think of one of my first thoughts of watching Nickel Boys yesterday was, oh, I didn't

know it's POV. I try to, anytime I get a screener, I try to just not look anything up and just go in blind. I did not know the whole film was POV. And so immediately my first thought, because again, I'm watching it analytically, unfortunately, because I had to ask you questions about it. But I've learned that in the first 30 minutes, all my analytic questions are gone and then I can just pay attention, which for this film is important. But panning speed. Like, like, to these questions of when you see, like, the screen we watched on yesterday, obviously, wasn't terrifically big. But I imagine if you're, if you're seeing it in a, in a AMC and not a new house, if you were to be whipping around, that might make the audience dizzy. Watching it on an iPad, you probably have more room to move quicker. So I was wondering what your guys is kind of, I know, I know you, you did a lot of thinking about how does a head? move on a body and stuff like that. But I was wondering if you could walk me through that.

Yeah. No, it really, you know, it's a funny thing. And also lens selection. Sorry. Yeah, of course. Oh, of course. It's a funny thing with Nicol Boys because, you know, even though the movie is point of view, which, you know, even Ramele and I, when we started kind of talking about the movie,

stopped kind of using that term. And we started saying what we were looking for was a sentient image, was an image that felt connected to a body in a real present tense kind of way. And so it was less that we're focused on how does a person see, but what does it feel to see? How does it feel to see? And what does memory feel like? You know, which again was kind of this like a little bit of a balancing act there where it's

like, you know, we wanted to be recognizable because when you're thinking about a sentient perspective or when you're thinking about point of view, you're talking about kind of like the question of iPhones and iPhone photography. You're talking about a perspective that every single viewer is hyperliterate in. All of us have spent our entire lives within our own points of view. And we know intrinsically when you look down how you see how much of your chest you see, if you see your legs, like you just know those things at an intuitive level. So it became a funny thing with Nickel Boys of trying to create an image that, you know, reflected the feeling of sight in that way. So then it became a situation where

you were just always battling the uncanny. So, like, literally if something was, like, an inch to the left or an inch to the right, or moved too quickly or pan too fast, or the reaction was either too slow or too fast, genuinely sometimes the difference of a shot working or not could be a quarter of a second, or it could be, you know, the camera placed an inch below

or an inch above a certain point. So it was one of those things where we, like, had to meticulously plan it and kind of, like, do a lot of camera testing. And ideally, the movie has a very almost, lyrical, free-flowing visual aesthetic to it, but the actual making of that thing was kind of a meticulous process of every single pan till our movement through space was pre-planned with Rommel and I to hopefully try to pull you into a perspective that has an immersive

quality to it, but, you know, which also kind of gets to the question of the lenses for the film where, again, we're trying to capture the feeling of sight. So then it was a interesting aspect of the film was kind of like asking ourselves to think about, well, what what are certain times in your life and what do they look like and what do they feel like for us? And especially for some of the stuff in the early points of the movie with young Elwood, it was a funny thing we realized, oh, being young isn't just about being dork or when you're thinking about perspective. It's actually that you are small relative to the size of everything else around you. So all of a sudden, like, if a grandmother is, like, having a sheet above you,

that sheet needs to feel like it can envelop the whole world. Like, there is this adult's need almost feel like giants to you from that perspective. And there's a natural sense of wonderment to the world. You're seeing the world at that perspective as your relative size to everyone else. So kind of a big thing for us was when we ended up going with the Panavision VAs, because when I tested them, they had a sense of volume to them, which isn't the same necessarily as saying that they have a three-dimensional quality, but they have a sense of volume. Look, I feel like you really, with those lenders, you feel relative space. You feel the foreground's real space and length distinction to the midground, to the background. And there was an aspect about that that really

felt like sight for Rubella and I, and it felt like you could really feel, big or how small a space was, which really became an important aspect for us. And also, you know, doing things like shooting on telephoto lenses, shooting the entire movie, and 4-3 was, again, to kind of create the feeling of selective focus in our brain. Like, of course, as humans, we have an incredibly wide field of view. But when we're looking at something, it isn't that that thing's in focus. Our eyes don't necessarily work like irises and optics, but it's that your brain is processing all the information, and it is deciding to focus on this one piece of information. So you're perceiving it as it's in focus and everything else is kind of out of focus.

So we were trying to mimic that sense of selective focus by using depth of field and using kind of telephoto lenses to ideally kind of bring you into the experience of just sharing time with these boys and not just being inside their bodies, but sharing their thought process of literally seeing them create meaning when it's going from one thing, to another thing, okay, what's the connection between the two things they saw? Okay, like that kind of informs inside of you a third idea and then that third idea, you know, it's like one of those things where I sometimes think about it. It's like everyone knows that feeling when they're maybe in a sketchy situation. And if you sat down and told someone like why it felt

uncomfortable, it would be a married of very small kind of perceptive subtext of like, you know, they're kind of moving erratically. They're not making eye contact with me. their hand keeps going in their pocket like it's it's a lot of these like kind of small things that then you build together to form a sense of meaning of oh this space is dangerous for me um uh and i think that that's when we were thinking about nickel boys fundamentally we're thinking about two young black boys kind of navigating the jim crow south where quite literally where your gaze goes or where it doesn't go can mean the difference between life and death so it's really ideally building that camera language to kind of pull you in to not just their sight, but their very thought processes they navigate their own space kind of with you concurrently. Yeah. And one thing that I heard you mentioned at a different interview was it didn't even occur to me because it's it's shot so well, but fundamentally every shot is a oneer.

Yeah. And it's like that's the one editing is the thing that tells the audience to take a breath. And so this entire film, you're just kind of locked up, even though at certain points you do cut between the two main POVs, but it does the, like, I didn't even necessarily internalize that it was all a one, or I just felt that, which I think, um, you know, as, as you've described your cinematography's empathetic or experiential storytelling, that must have been, uh, a boon for you to do it quite literally in this film. No, completely. It really felt like I've been thinking about a lot of these things. I'm like, you know, there's a way in which sometimes I almost

feel like I'm more influenced by like Uda Hogan and Stanislavski, like acting theory, than I am sometimes about photographic theory of like how actors are able to kind of maintain that kind of vulnerability. And I think that for my entire career, it's always been this thought of like, how do you transfer some of those thoughts that actors are kind of having philosophies for? And how do you channel that into the camera? How do you think about the camera, not as a tool, but as an organ, as an extension of maybe your capacity or completely.

passion, your capacity for empathy. But this project, as you're saying, kind of was such an incredible opportunity because it kind of made me have to put my money where my mouth is on that of like, no, no, no. Like, it isn't just that you're trying to create a vulnerable connection through the camera. Like, you truly have to be a scene partner now with the actor.

It's like, you know, and the scenes where when an actor, when a character is hugging another character, that's me, they're physically hugging. and that changes how you shoot an image when literally there is just that physical aptic connection with another human being, with another human being that in their mind is your grandmother and is truly hugging you deeply. And then when you're thinking about operating the camera and you're pacing yourself in the headspace of their grandson, all of a sudden it isn't just ingenue Ellis, the like revered actor.

All of a sudden, that embrace has a different tenor to it, a different quality. as an operator and also as a cinematographer, you know, you end up needing to meet that emotion, which felt really special in, yeah, being able to kind of channel some of that through the camera in a more direct fashion than I've kind of been allowed to or asked to do for anything else in my career. Yeah, because I'm glad you brought that up because I actually, I wrote down DP as actor, because I know you guys used like the mimic, you know, the, you know, the, head gear sort of camera scorpion scorpio head thing um as well as like shoulder mountain hand mount and whatever but where where are the other actor are they just standing

right behind you or like on one side of the camera or you know for the other actor to kind of do that with that connection yeah okay yeah oftentimes it would be a lot of different configurations i'd say most often if it was handheld truly they're almost cheek to cheek with you, where they were trying to get as as possible, either an eyeline, and usually it was less because of the island and more because they wanted to be close to be able to touch, to hold, to interact with their other scene partner. But towards that, it was

again being as close as possible to that center line so they can kind of be there for their other actor. Like, there was never a single shot in the movie where the person whose perspective it was wasn't also on set. and wasn't also kind of delivering eyes, it wasn't also kind of doing the performance as close to camera as possible to still form those connections, which is kind of why we decided to do the approach

as kind of all-woners, where we knew that looking into the camera, of course, invites a level of artifice for the actors. And so it became a real question for us of like, okay, well, what can we do at every aspect of the filmmaking process to try to mitigate some of the artifice that we're introducing into their process? as actors. So, you know, a lot of the lighting was done with mirrors and with, like, very large broad sources being pushed in. Our lights built into the set so that we could, you know, as few

Bobits as possible have lights or stands on set. So the actors could, you know, from action, could just run through the entire emotion, run through the entire scene and kind of just like they in that. But, you know, there were also circumstances where I would be dressed in the costume of the character so that I can look down to my own body and, like, might be doing handheld and having my hands up and having their hands underneath my armpits so that, like, if I look down there, like it really was trying to figure out a bunch of different configurations. And some of them, you know, would be more technologically created like you were already saying, where it's like, you know, using a dolly and under slinging a remote camera head and doing it in mimic mode so I can be in another room and basically doing handheld to look at my own body and seeing the actor's body in the shot. But also things where it was actually just about thinking really simply of like, okay, well, what's the simplest, almost stupidest way to do this thing sometimes were the best options where, again, it's like, okay, well, why don't you put your arms underneath my arms while I'm like looking down and like we see our hands or you're, you know, but, you know, there are also moments where there's some underwater sequences. And for that, it was like an underwater operator like operating.

And the actor with kind of like a breathing apparatus who would be sitting off to the side and then would push in and then converge with the camera as like their hand would be entering the shot. So, you know, it's a funny thing where I think that a lot of the images of this movie ideally have again that kind of like rewheeling feel to them. But oftentimes we're incredibly orchestrated. It would be like five or six people on walkie and on headset kind of like queuing in different things to happen to. make that feel natural because again like truly there's any small thing that was

off it just felt uncanny it just felt wrong and like everyone could feel it on set like the PA can look at the monitor and that like that feels weird and again that was kind of the hard part about this where it's like some of those things weren't bad things they just didn't make sense

you know like one example is there's exactly is that there's a bobit in a bus where our character would look down at a young girl like crawling between the seats and he looks down under the cheer to see her and it's like the funny things you start recognizing where it's like oh the head is a really heavy so like when it comes off of its center of gravity it actually falls really fast and then your muscles kind of tighten and you start controlling it so then you know for that shot as we're like booming down on the dolly it's like the the dolly operator actually needs to

do it slowly and then do it fast and then kind of soften again in the way that feels natural to the neck, which actually isn't about making a clean operation. It's actually making kind of what would be not a great boom down for a dolly, but like it has to kind of be perfect at doing exactly that feeling of like, okay, when the muscles would retight in and you would slow down a little bit. So again, it's like kind of queuing everyone and the focus is the focus like, when does the focus naturally go into the distance was kind of always navigating,

feeling these things that when the shot was working, it feels simple and it feels obvious. And if any aspect of the shot doesn't work, it's really hard to figure out, well, what's not exactly working? And like, let's sit on this bench and let's just look underneath the chair and, like, what are we noticing about our bodies moving through space that that feels like? And again, it's about conjuring the feeling of sight. So, like, you know, there's some wiggle room, but, you know, we're just really presumptive. We're really perceptive.

I'm just imagining you and like the director and the camera operator all often under a tent, just constant, just doing this a lot and trying to, which feels right. Totally. But that was like a lot of the shot list thing. Mel and I would have a small DSLR and we would literally like, we were meticulous with the shot list together. We would spend hours and hours and hours talking about it because we also had this DSLR and we're like, okay, let's let's do a hug.

And it's like, okay, that doesn't feel right. It's like maybe if you come from up and come down, And it's like, okay, that feels better, but all right, it's like, okay, let's come up for and let's rack out to the distance. So it isn't that you're, the person is like staring at their shoulder, but it's almost like they're feeling the embrace. And so it's like, okay, that works a little bit better. Okay. But it truly was, again, just needing to unlearn everything you think you know about cinematography and image making and kind of embracing just this other type of logic. Yeah. You know, I was the second unit DP on, um, this Bruce Willis film like the last one he did and there's a scene because you know it's second units we're just doing all these pickups and we're in an ambulance it's a you haul but we're in an

ambulance and I'm in the driver's seat and this guy's leaning out the passenger side uh window with a gun and he's like shooting at a helicopter and then he gets got right so in the movie in the like in the main unit he gets pulled back into the car and I'm sitting there with the camera and I and I And I just look over at the director. I'm like, do you want me to grab him? And he goes, yeah, actually. So I was like, okay. So he, you know, he gets shot.

And then I just reach out and grab him from behind the can. And it doesn't look terrible. But I have a tattoo that the actor didn't. And also I was wearing my COVID safe, you know, like wristband. Yeah. It's like just. And it's like it does, because we're shooting anamorphic, like it didn't look like it was a first person view. You know, it kind of did look.

But even so, like when that came up in the movie, I was like, do I. do I get a credit? Yeah, I'm saying that's a great hand acting. Yeah, hand actor is rare and hard to find. But like those things are just funny things of the process that things that on paper didn't really work sometimes do. And things on paper that really should work for whatever reason on the day kind of. And I think that was, you know, since we're doing all waters for this,

it was like, you know, Callie Riley, the first day of see. was without a doubt truly one of the best I think one of the best of the world genuinely and she had a like a laminated printout of every single scene of the movie and next to it what camera apparatus was tied

because since it was wonders whatever the camera system was or whatever modular configuration it needed to be able to last the entire scene and so because of that it was just always kind of this you know game if we would have

yeah, this is the thing we tested. We kind of built, in some cases, kind of custom built for the actors or for the scene or for the moment. And then, you know, we would put it on and, like, have the actual actor on that day with this setup, with this costume, and put it all together and be like,

oh, man, there's something about it that does it work? It should work. We tested it, and it did work. But today, it does not really look right. So then it, like, became everything that we kind of always have to have a plan, plan B and play at C of just like different apparatuses, different camera tools, different configurations that we could quickly,

you know, we had a B team. And their job was basically to have the camera in a different modular configuration so like we could quickly kind of slide into if we needed a different kind of build for the camera. Because again, it was just like you could test and meticulously get ready for it. But again, because of that uncanny effect, it, Sometimes it did, it didn't work. You just need to figure something out all the day. Well, and one thing I wanted, actually, I guess we'll rapid fire them.

Did you just use one focal length for both? Or were you like bouncing around? We used a few. We used, I'd say the hero lens would probably be the 40 mil. Second time, probably a 35 mil. And then the third most used probably a 50. But we had, you know, certain scenes where Dance Sasaki had basically made us a 300, a 400, 500, 500, 5.

M.A. Prime to do like some really research. Yeah. Yeah. And a few macro lenses as well. So yeah, it was a mix of things, but kind of, you know, that kind of normal space is usually where we landed for a lot of it. Yeah. That makes sense. But I, one thing that I was like, there's no way, but I should ask, did each character have their own style of hand of POV? I think that they did. But I don't think it was necessarily a conscious thing that were about, okay, so for Turner, this is XYZ, but it was a situation where kind of what we would do is we would have, we had this meticulous shot list, but we never gave the actors marks. And again, we encourage them to kind of like feel the reality of this, like, because of this other aspect of artifice, truly feel able to kind of do whatever feels real for you. So, you know, rehearsal became a big thing for us.

And so it was kind of Rommel rehearsing with the actors and usually me or our camera operator, Sam Ellison, both of us kind of watching the rehearsal seeing kind of what was happening and kind of studying Brandon and Ethan, the actress who played out Wood and Turner and just seeing like, you know, how do they move their bodies through the space? Where do they make eye contact? Where their eyes drift? How are they connecting? And then, of course, it was us kind of interpreting those things in our own body and our own emotions and how we might. interact with those things, but it was really in watching their performances that I think really helped us kind of think about what we wanted to do operationalize at any given moment. So then it was, you know, how Ethan and Brandon just naturally played their character so differently. Like, you know, Elwood is just such a wide-eyed optimist. And I think he sees beauty in his world, even in moments of deep in humanity, he sees, he's drawn. to these aesthetically beautiful things in his life and his surroundings. And I think Turner is just naturally more of a realist or, you know, more cynical.

And that kind of also determines when he makes eye contact with people, when he doesn't make eye contact with people. So, you know, there's a way in which I don't think it was like, this is how they do this. And like, we only use this lens on this. Exactly. Yeah. So it wasn't necessarily like, I think something that was so literalized, but it was something that I think we would always be taking cues on Remell's direction of the performance and also

what the actors were bringing to both of those characters that felt so specific and so unique and so different and I think that that... More than gaze management. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's more, there was more cross-pollination between out of the actors. And again, which is, as you're saying, where it's like, I think as image makers, we were invited to have more of a connection to performance and performing ourselves. And also the vice versa of like when we would do body rigs or in the case of all the images of Elwood as an adult that we shot on StoryCam, that was also the actors then kind of controlling the image a lot more because it was just physically attached to their body and like talking with David Diggs, who plays adult Elwood of like, okay, let's look at the image and he's like, oh, he's like, you know, at the beginning of the scene, I feel disconnected.

And it's like, okay, then maybe it's about closing down the right side of your shoulder because it treats them out of the frame. and then when you're feeling more connection, maybe you open up the right side of your shoulder and that brings them into the composition. You're like, yeah, I like that. And so it was like kind of empowering them to make decisions from a place of the emotionality of the moment that then have, you know, compositional consequences

that we wanted and we liked it. Yeah. Well, and another thing that I appreciated somewhat related is that you guys didn't go for what could easily be a sort of vintage look. It's a very modern, clean look. And I have my guesses as to why that was the choice, but I'd

love to hear the correct answer. Oh, no correct answers, just interpretations. But I think that for me in thinking about that choice, it is that you know, as you know, Nickel Boys is based off

of real events from the Dozier School of Boys in which that school was closed down in 2011 and body started being zoomed in 2013. So there's a way in which all the things that happened in Nickel Boys are not in our far past. They quite literally were in

full operation and years ago. So I think that that was a big thing for our production designer Nora Mendus as well doing research. It's like, you know, because of the Dozier School documents, like we had a lot of pictures of the actual White House of a lot of these actual places. And in the movie,

a lot of the archival is from the real forensics that were found at the Dozier School. But, you know, along with those things, Normandis on Production Insider, was also pulling images from Rikerts today and, like, different institutions that are in operation today that have a similar tenor to them. So I think that for us, it was never about making this image anachronistic as if these events and these things and these dynamics aren't still in operation. And I, today, you know, again, which kind of goes back to why I think Ramel really was interested in this first person perspective fundamentally was that I think that sometimes with, let's call traditional third person cinema, there's a way in which you're just naturally disconnected from the image as the audience member.

Like there's a, there's a slight membrane between there. Yeah, exactly. Like you were in a theater watching, which, you know, goes back to the history of film in its connection to theater. So it is literally your position, like the 180-degree role in proscenium kind of thoughts are around this position of you are sitting back as audience watching a play take place in front of you. There is a natural physical disconnection there. And I'm not saying that movies aren't highly empathic tools. I think they absolutely are. And I think for Robelle, it was really about, in traditional third-person cinema, there's still that deep emotional connection.

But there's still a kind of a removal. For him, it was about just trying to puncture that membrane a little bit between us's viewer and image as story, which is not tear it down, but it's just to puncture it with the hope that that small incision point would just create more immersion and invite the audience to not look at, say, a close up of like, oh, how is Elwood feeling? Let me look at his face and kind of gauge how he's feeling. Without that information, we kind of do feel a bit unmoored watching the movie. And ideally what that feeling does is, okay, well, since I can't see exactly what Elwood's feeling, you know, what would I feel if this happened to me?

And I think that that's kind of just a different question. And I think it's super related to the fundamental questions of cinema. It's just trying to attack the question almost just two degrees off axis to ideally try to just like create a different thought process in your head. Because I think for me, sometimes when I see cinema with some of these like deep. barbaric and humane images. Sometimes it can kind of just be spectacle where it's just like, whoa, that's crazy that that happened.

Opposed to, I think for Nickel Boys, the idea isn't to try to conjure. It's crazy that it happened, but to make it to almost bring it into your body a little bit more and have a more intimate connection with the experience of the things that you're seeing. So I think that that was a large part around

the aesthetic, not necessarily trying to shield you, as the viewer from just the realities of this still being very present in all of our worlds. Yeah. Well, and it invites the audience to kind of learn how to be an actor in a sense, you know, internalize the script, as it were, but the thing. And I also appreciated how you would intercut footage of like the space race and stuff.

Because I think especially in America, it's far too easy to see a film like this or even a documentary about, you know, that era and think well that's the past uh you know that's the racism is over or whatever and to juxtapose those with like the space race or you know a marathon full of white people uh reminds you oh these are two things happening at the same time this is not like you know and also showing uh modern day let's say elwood just to remind this guy's still alive like he's not he's not uh you know he didn't fight in world war two totally It isn't our great, great-grandparent. Quite literally, it is, there are people who are alive today who were at the doger school.

There are people who are at the dojo school who are in their mid-20s. Like, you know, this is a present tense thing. And I think that that connection also with a lot of the archival around the space races, exactly. That where it's like, ideally it's about inviting the audience member to think about, man, that almost must have felt crazy, like, kind of like insane to be a young boy and to be watching on TV that mankind is figuring out a way to land on the moon,

to walk in outer space, to put ships past our stratosphere for new worlds, new spaces, new cosmoses, and yet I walk out of my house and I can't walk on the same sidewalk as a white, couple like just kind of like the strangeness of that and i'm sure that they didn't perceive it that way exactly like that but just to put into our bodies yeah the strangest of that where it's like you know i think that that's something that often happens where i think we often like to think

that um technological advancement is always tied hand at hand with ethical advancement and that isn't always true and i think that the feeling of experiencing that i can imagine being very surreal sometimes. So I think that that's also why some of that footage is there to, again, try to just try to wrap one's own mind around as a modern viewer, but even as a person at that time, just like, yeah, how does the human mind hold both of those two things in it at the same time, you know, which I think ultimately is one of our greatest abilities as humans, is to reconcile the irreconcilable. And I think that those pieces in the movie are almost like invitations for us to kind of sit with and think about them.

But like everything in Nickel Boys, I think that every piece of meaning has like five other kind of like equally valid interpretations. I think for a rebel, it was almost making every image almost feel like a tower card where, yes, the night of cups has a set of meanings to it. But what the night of cups might mean for you who just got out of a breakup and what the night of cups might mean for me, who just had a baby, are two different things. and yet that card can hold us projecting onto it, our stories. I think that how Nicholas Mansour, the editor, and Rommel built the edit is, I think the movie

has a very interesting, almost reflective quality to it, that it isn't about what the right interpretation is as much as it's a movie that kind of welcomes the projection of a lot of interpretations because that's part of the PLV thing of we're inviting the audience into their bodies, which also means inviting the audience with all of their memories, their feeling to kind of latch on to Elwoods and almost build out a nervous system on the body that we might have put in front of it. Yeah. Well, and it's so again, I was, I was pretty sleepy yesterday, but I remember right when it ended going like, because I'm, you know, to be honest, my favorite films were like, you know, uh, uh, the Matrix and, and, um, Willie Wonka and the chocolate

factory and men in black and shit. So I'm very much, you know, I, I like a spectacle. And at the end, the movie ends, you guys all come out and, uh, Ramelle starts talking. And I was like, oh, yeah, I'm too dumb for this movie. Like, like, he immediately came out and was talking high level concepts. And I went, yeah, I'm, because he was like, I hope people watch this twice. And I was like, I'm fucking definitely going to have to. Because the, even on first glance. I'm like, I get it. I don't think I got it. But I think that is, you know, it's one of those things where a lot of our ideas were really conceptual about it, but genuinely it is kind of a movie that I, that's also one of the funny things with the point of view. I think that the more

you watch it and let go of trying to understand it and actually just let it wash over you. And then the experience you have after it washes over you is the correct answer. Like that is what you are supposed to feel like. It is by design dense so that a person can like kind of latch on any kind of meaning feeling to it I think is the thing that makes the movie particularly special because honestly it's like

a lot of the movies that I loved and what made me want to get into cinema or like honestly a lot of the same movies that you just mentioned. And it's like one of those funny things to me that when you think about it, Jaws is actually pretty avant-garde in form. In story, it might be traditional, but like, you know, the Zolli on the beach for the blood on the beach scene, like that's, that wasn't normal.

Right. But again, it's a shot that pulls you into the emotions of the depth of his fear, of his world feeling like it's collapsing in on itself, of thinking that there might be a shark in the water at that moment. So, like, to me, it's always been cinema has an incredible ability to pull you in. to pull you past intellectual thought into just emotional transference. And I think that at the heart of the project, even though I think Ramella and I might be very high salooned in our speech, I think is fundamentally actually what we were after. Like, I don't think we wanted to create an academic document,

but more to kind of induce a similar feeling that I got watching The Blood on the Beach from Joss, where it's like, oh, my, like, or watching In the Mood for Love, Juan Carlyle. It's like, I just feel an emotion incepted into my body. And I think that Nickel Boys actually works in a similar way that it isn't about deciphering it, even though it looks like it is something that is begging for deciphering. But actually, I think it's just something that is like meant to kind of watch her, because I feel like me, I've seen it countless times when in the color, kind of in the dailies, in the edit, in the multiple edits. I've seen it so many times. And yet

there was every single time I feel like I see, like, whoa, I didn't know that this and this scene kind of rhymes with this other moment. That's really cool. I just never, I just never heard it that way. And this time that I'm watching the movie, like, you know, I always, I like to think about Nickel Boys. This is, you know, a little bit of maybe a nerdy comparison. But I like to think about Nickel Boys as it's really similar to the cave and Empire Strikes Back when Luke is going to walk into it and is putting his gun on and Yoda's like, you don't need weapons and Luke's like, yeah, okay, and he clicks it on. And Yoda essentially says what you'll find in there is what you take in with you. And I think Nickel Boys has a similar quality to it. It's a great

where it's, hey, you know, I've had a little bit of time to think about it because I'm like, why didn't this movie keep changing each time I watch it? It's the same movie and I was one of the people at the table talking about its design. But I think it's because what Ramel is so brilliant at creating in this movie and what Nick, our editor did is, I think that they truly created a reflective document where it is like the cave. What you see is what you take in with you. So to me, the experience is actually to just go into the cave and let it mirror you. And you're going to see something really interesting, both about its world, but also about

yourself. And, like, that's why I think it is, I think, a really incredible. film in that way and one that even though I know how all the things were done in the movie, I still feel like I get kind of pulled away and walk away with something different each time I interact with that kind of precisely because of that reason. Yeah. Well, and it makes me think, you know what the complete polar opposite side of the coin is? Now that you've mentioned that is Tenet.

Mm-hmm. Because I realized after watching that film like twice. Oh, you're just supposed to go on the roller coaster, right? You're not supposed to analyze this. This is purely for fun. This is not a document to be dissected. 100%. Like, that was actually what I first saw it.

My wife and I saw it. She was just like, I don't understand. I was like, yeah, but it was cool. And she's like, what do you mean? That's like not at us like, you know, I don't think you're supposed to like pause it and be like, well, wait, how does entropy work? Like, actually, I think that it's like, just believe, like, go on the right. And I think that the ride is exciting and interesting if you surrender yourself to it. But if you keep trying to experience it on your own turns, you're going to have a hard time.

There is no what is the matrix with. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that that's, Nickel Boys, I think has a similar thing. I don't think it's trying to decipher it as a document. I think it's actually, it is a ride. So, like, it's actually, that's why I think also like, you know, I usually hate when people say this. of like, oh, yeah, the movie gets better on the second viewing.

I was like, why wasn't the movie good on the first theory? But I will say there is something about Nickel Boys that, you know, it almost teaches you how to watch itself. And then almost when you know that, when you go back in another time, there's just, it almost is like another movie completely because you're just seeing different things and other things are connecting up in different ways, that it is just an experience. I think that when people say,

like, oh, it was better the second time, if I'm being charitable, is a lot of time, I think people by nature love to learn. And with a film like Nickel Boys, the first time you watch it, you're learning, you know, maybe you've never heard of this situation or whatever, you know, you're learning do the experience. The second time, if you go back in, you're learning for a new reason, but you're still learning. A lot of times if you watch a movie the second time, it can let you down because you've already seen it. And it's, you know, and then it falls. But when you make a film that begs the second one. This is also why I, you know, you said that you and Remell speak highfalutantly, but I

actually would rather that be the case than someone be a tryhard about trying to make a film like this. Like, you guys intellectualized it in a way that makes it worth watching again because there is not only some form of education, but not in an academic sense, in an emotional sense. You know, something we've said a million times on this podcast is that emotionally correct tends to supersede technically correct and making a technically correct document about the school or the camp

or whatever the fuck you want to get, the prison is one thing but I don't think it would be as it wouldn't hit the same way. You know, it wouldn't be, I wouldn't suggest necessarily you've got to go see this. You know, I'd be, it'd be like, oh, I saw this really interesting documentary.

Totally. You know, but, but you need, that need isn't there in the way the Nickel Boys, I think, invites a need to see it. Oh, I love that. No, I totally agree. Even in like, you know, an adaptation sense with that, too, where it's like, I think that the book is fantastic and it almost feels like the movie is a supplemental piece to it, where it is truly Ramel making a separate form of art that speaks to. The VR version of the book. Exactly. Exactly. Truly. Truly. Where it's like, you know, but same. with, like, 2001, where it's like RTC Clark's book is fantastic, but, like, the movie 2001 is fascinating because it's Kubrick's interpretation of the things that kept him up at night about the book. And, like, Kubrick trying to wrap his mind around mortality and the monolith and all of these ideas that, like, are present in the book. But, like, I think that kind of

creating a supplemental other form of an art is so fun, which I think that Ramele and Jocelyn really accomplished with, this is an adaptation where it, yeah, it holds a similar quality that I really love, which is what you're speaking to, is like, it actually creates almost another form of learning, another form of interaction with these ideas and these concepts. So, like, if you read the book, I think that you'll still see something fundamentally that you could not close your eyes and imagine, oh, this is how it would be adapted. And the same with, like, watching the movie, reading the book's like, oh, this is like, not necessarily a, the movie wasn't a step-by-step all the things that happened, even though they might share a lot of

the same plot moments, how they're being shown and articulated, again, as exactly you're saying, is this emotional journey, I think, was at the core of every conversation where Mel and I had, was, again, what's that, what's the emotional arc and the story of this piece, and how can we actually release ourselves from thinking it needs to be just narrative that kind of conveys that idea and like how can we actually create an emotional art for the viewer watching it. Yeah. Well, and there's certain people, you know, again, they'll see something like that and go, but that's the past. It's like the way with every artistic choice made, the POV, the not making it all vintagey, the, you know, having everything be wonders, it, it's either your words invite, my words,

forces, the audience to, to live in that moment and internalize it in a way that many other art forms, you know, VR might be the closest one, but I think VR also would be a little to choose your own adventure about it because you can do this, you know, and I still think that forcing the gaze into certain areas, you know, like when they get pulled over, you know, he says, don't look and he looks at the ground and then immediately looks over, like that's, I, in my chair, I was like, no, look, like, you know, like, totally.

It'd be, having that was all very, just really well done, man. Thank you so much. I, uh, we got a little over, so I'll let you go here. But I did want to, I did want to ask about the rage against the machine video. Well, I guess we'll have to do that later. Hey, always doubt for it. I did my favorite band growing up. And I mean, still to stay, you know, top, top five for sure.

But just when I saw that on your website, it's like, oh, fuck yeah. Yeah. Surely a dream project. Yeah. Um, but you, you mentioned earlier, uh, a diversity of lighting. And, uh, you know, the mixing hard and soft. and stuff like that. And that's something

that I personally have been wanting to dive more into because I one of the best piece of advice that I got that I never really

followed was from it was like Annie Leibowitz's gaffer or something like that and they were like oh yeah it's usually like a big

maybe it wasn't Annie I can't remember but it was someone like that you know and they were like yeah we would use big umbrellas

and then we'd put a hard spot in the middle like a bare flash in the middle so you get the big soft with this other kick and I know you guys use the CRR

RLS systems or some custom, like flexi mirrors. But I was wondering if you could kind of walk me through the mechanics of blending that, like, because every shot looks so natural, you know, how are you able to achieve that? Yeah, no, I, you know, I'm always, I always think about it. Like, the people who, like, really got my mind going on it were Nestor Al Mendros's work and, like, Days of Heaven. But even how Nestoral Mendros and his memoirs kind of talks about using mirrors is, is, is, that feeling of the complexity to the quality of light.

And I think that that's, you know, then I'm also thinking about Harris of Vides. And like, I think Harris had a brilliance in not only the diversity of light quality, but also texture. Like, I'm always thinking about, like, it's almost like the concept of contrast. I feel like when people hear and think about contrast,

they think primarily the juxtaposition between light and darkness. But actually, I think contrast is much larger. and that it is the juxtaposition of one thing to another that allows you to see in starker relief the entire image. And I think I think about that in terms of lighting as well, where it's like, so there's a diversity in quality. So there's hard and there's soft sitting together, a diversity in texture. So there are, you know, maybe mohair next to chrome and then a diversity of exposure where like Ansel Adams and the zone system, just in theory, it's like getting that dark, dark, dark with that. white, white, white, and like trying to create the gradation between those things, I think, are just how I've always seen the world.

Whenever I look around the room, if I look around my hotel room right now, it's like the sun is coming in and hitting the wall, but then it's falling up, but then it's skipping off the ground, and then it's lighting up the back of the hotel room. And like, there's something about that that always has felt cinematic to me. I think it's also that it feels three-dimensional, and I think that's kind of, that's the trick that we try to play is we take a three-dimensional world and we cross it into a two-dimensional image, but it's still making that two-dimensional image feel like there's volume, feel like there's space, feels like there's reality. So towards kind of like getting those hits, it was,

yeah, mirrors are a really big thing for me, where I'll either take the sun and have a full mirror, a four-by mirror, and then we'll bounce it into a lot of other mirrors and send those things back. or I'll use like an 18K or a light and I'll basically surround the light with different mirrors of different qualities and kind of reflective qualities and send that back into the space so that you do have

and that's why I love the light bridge system is like you can get a hard hard hit but you can also use like a number four and have a really soft kind of spread return is yeah there's something about that that's always felt really just realistic to me. And at our key grip, Gary Kelso, kind of knew how much I loved mirrors. So we had multiple light bridge systems. And then he and his rigging grip, Moses Mott, they built me a bunch of custom mirrors.

So, like, they basically don't be a four by four kind of like bendable broken mirror. So it can create, we could push something into it and create textures on the walls. We use the disk of balls. Yeah, exactly. And we basically use the EFlex system, which is essentially a flat disco ball too for like smaller versions of that and so yeah it was really about yeah using mirrors and trying to find kind of textured lighting where even if it wasn't a mirror if it's like some you know gold or checker lemay on the floor and then shooting something into it so it just activates that is like kind of kind of a low light yeah i feel like the thing i'm always into is just um trying to create texture into into the light because there's something that feels really i don't know like

Like, I think that when I think about memory, I remember that stuff from my childhood. Weirdly, I remember some of the qualities and the textures and very rarely is it ever one thing. It's never really always hard. It's never really half soft, half hard. Like, it's kind of a mix in there. And it's, yeah, just finding ways to recreate that. I remember one time on set where Rubell locked in who Rubell is a visual artist at a photographer and an incredible photographer in his own right. at shoots primarily large format photographs

and we walked into a space and like, you know, there's wind blowing and kind of this like kind of weird shape of light pushing through trees from outside it's playing against the wall and it's like, oh my God, this is beautiful. This is like, we came at the right time of day to shoot this. And I like smiled and I turned to Bob Batesar Gaffer and I was like, Bob, tell him to pan away the first mirror. And then we patted away in the room just fell into darkness and the wind stopped going. And he's like, what happened?

And I was like, oh, all of this is all fake. This is all just like mirrors ricocheting, a billion things outside into here. And the breeze that's going is a fan underneath the windows cell that's pushing up into that. And like, you know, we're shooting a mirror through a cuckolores and then some other branches to create that on the wall. Like none of this is real, which I think was a moment that kind of like, he was like, oh, my God. Like, why would he question it again when there was no life? or stands in the room, like, yeah, this is just that we came to the infirmary around this time of day, which, again, also just speaks to our gaffer, Bob Bates's true, true, true mastery,

and Gary Kelso, our key grip, like, the two of them were just such an incredible, exciting team because I had talked about a lot of these concepts about exposure diversity and kind of exposure to, like, extra diversity and quality diversity. But the two of them together really kind of just pushed that concept and, you know, had teams where they could kind of build us custom designs of things to keep finding ways to find that in you. But yeah, it was just always about finding way to just like, you know, almost make something slightly imperfect. Weirdly adds kind of a perfect quality to it. I can't remember who it was. So you had no lights like in the set ever? Not often. Like sometimes we might have had light mats with like egg crates, but usually we

didn't. Like usually it was kind of pushing something in or building in it to the set. Yeah, because my, well, now I have two thoughts. But one of them was, uh, because I was going to ask like, did you with all the like reflections and stuff, were you considering how those random reflections would hit the talent and then kind of not have them do that or were they just, it was it just like find the light. It's all, it's all gravy. Yeah, it's mostly it's fine the light. It's all gravy.

Like I always prefer to and it's maybe especially in this piece. to light spaces, not faces. So it really was almost about creating a 360 playground for the actors, for the director, and we would spend a lot of time building that and would just kind of let them free in that space without marks. Because I just think I have a certain feeling around light where it's like, you know, it's again,

something that Esra Al-Mendros kind of would talk about a lot, where it's like my lighting is actually the architecture of a space, like feel a space, look at a space, see how it was, designed where it's like, okay, it's a living room as south facing windows because it's expecting the family to be in the living room for most of the day, the kitchen as west facing windows because it's assuming you're cooking your largest meal at dinner around, you know, around evening time. And it's like, okay, the bedroom is east facing because you're waking up to the sun. And it's like choosing your location, choosing your space to kind of do the lighting for you because

light is tied to human activity and how humans move through space. And like, especially in like castles before there was electrical systems. Like, they just had to build castles in ways that human activity was moving at the same time that the light was naturally moving through the space. And I think that I try to think about that philosophy and all of my lighting as well, of thinking about if you create natural flows of light in space, humans usually interact with that in only one way. Like, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, I've never seen a person walk to a dark corner of a room and start crying. Like, they might sit down on the couch and there's a laugh naturally on the side of couch because humans sit at the edge of couches and they read and they interact and they talk. So then all of a sudden, if you just put light in places that humans naturally interact and the actors don't have marks, they will naturally, their human behavior will naturally take them to those places. And if it takes them away from those places and the person goes to the dark part of their living room and starts crying, that's also fascinating.

That also says something deeply cinematic and visual. So to me, it's always a kind of a win-win where it's like setting up the space in a way that honors a real flow of what light is and how light interacts with power, human lives, and then letting actors free into that space, they're always going to find beautiful light for you. They're always going to naturally find themselves on the shadow side. You know, there's almost a way where it's like setting up a situation, they will, they'll find the frame for. you and they'll find the good lighting if you build the lighting in ways that are natural to how we move. So, you know, Nickel Boys is really just taking that idea and expanding it to thinking about all of these spaces as three-dimensional and 360. And so then how do we build things into the space without giving them marks? But they will naturally want to have

certain interactions with the space, which will then kind of help our lighting each time it does. Yeah. Yeah, that made me think of two things. One, when you're saying, like, when there's just errant light and stuff, it feels more real. I can't remember who it was, but I was interviewing someone and they described it as the fucket light. So they'd set up all the nice lights and then they would just go, all right, put a fucket light over there, which was just like a weird slash that had hit a couch in a way that you would never do intentionally. And they're like, that just unlocks the like, oh, this is all supposed to be. If that thing's screwed up, then this all must be real.

Yeah, totally. And that scene in the, uh, in Furrowy does look gorgeous. Oh, thank you so much. I know. I think that that was essentially it is trying to observe real life and then bring those aspects into a cinematic space, setting traps for interesting things to happen. Yeah. The other thing I thought of was, you know, when you're talking about like the design of houses or castles or whatever, there's actually, and the way that like humans naturally interact with them, actually baseball stadiums, the rules are you're supposed to have home plate or third base, whatever. I think it's northeast.

Like legally that's what's supposed to happen. And there's only like two baseball stadiums that follow that, the Coliseum and Dodger Stadium. Oh, wow. Might be, the rest of them are all goofed up. But like the rule book does say it's because of the sun that the stadium is supposed to face a very specific direction.

Now that just learn that the other day. Makes sense. That's the only reason. That makes sense. There's so many interactions with that, that I don't think we realize how much of just naturally a lot of kind of human design is based on these sources that we couldn't control and we still can't control. And I feel like it's, you know, most of the time it's actually about just like looking at those

things and like, you know, we were talking about it earlier. I think that filmmaking is actually an art of subtraction a lot more than it's an art of addition. So I think it's actually about taking things out so that you can see the core vectors. And then it's about like, okay, actually just moving this thing two degrees and like it seems interesting that it is about you know adding on to everything that's happening it's like i think that uh or at least i think that that's how i tried to get to um kind of a more honest feeling light for this project yeah it's about layers but only a couple layers not exactly every layer not all of the layers yes uh well i've i've kept you a little over but i would love to have you back on to keep chatting

because I know we could. Yes, I would a lot more. I would love to. Yeah. Do you, are you not in L.A., right? You're in a hotel right now. No.

Yeah, I'm in a hotel in L.A. I'm normally in New York. Gotcha. All right. Well, how long, I'll cut all this out. How long are you here for?

I leave in like two days. And then I think that going to San Francisco, then going back to L.A., then going to New York, going back to L.A., then going, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Well, next time you're in L.A., let me know. I'll let you,

we can hook these up. on a C-500 that you can Oh my god Would absolutely love that Would absolutely love that I'm deeply curious about them That would what you think Yeah well they

So they sent me these they're like you know I write for pro video coalition So like we'd love a review blah blah blah And then I was being lazy about it Because I didn't have anything to shoot And you know I liked and then they sent me an email They're like actually we're holding off on releasing those So no one actually knows about these yet

Oh interesting Isn't the full frame versions because they've released the Super 35 Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are the full fun ones. They're so small. Yeah, I mean, that's insane. So there's a, what an exciting time. There's a 32, a 42, 52, 55 and an 85 right now.

And then I think they're, they might come up with another one. That's wild. I will say the only thing about them going, this makes me think that they just added one element, like a physical glass element to the Super 35 model, is on full. frame, it pin cushions. Not aggressively, but it is noticeable on the edges.

In Resolve, it's pretty easy to just pull it. It's not a very aggressive change, but you can see it. And if you, if you hate pincush, I would much prefer a bill. Yeah, totally. It's a distortion. Yeah. It's an easy fix in Resolve. And if you don't have a straight edge there, you can't really tell anyway.

But, yeah, next time you're in town. I would absolutely love that. they genuinely, again, having lenses that are cheap enough that you could kind of fuck around with them or have someone get in there and like, you know, create gaps with the elements or something is like, interesting to me. Yeah. Or in my good time being working on lower budget shit. I mean, but hey, I think some of my, I think super speed mark twos, some of the best legends

ever of all time. And despite people complaining about the Jag and Boka and like them being the easiest to rent, I still think there are some of the all-time, or standard speed, some of the all-time grades. Yeah, and, you know, my friend Matthew Duclos, who, you know, DuCloz, who, you know, DuClos lenses. Of course. He said a million times that it's not like if you, so many things can just be changed by changing out the iris for a rounded iris, not even eight, eight leaves, 12 leaves, whatever, but just a rounded eye. So if you have like, which lenses have like the three iris, but whatever, where you get those triangle. Focus.

Yeah, yeah, just round them out. Yeah, yeah, just round them out. And then boom, they're great. You don't have to do any mods or anything. Just switch out the... Oh, 100%. 100%. The glass is great.

Yeah, yep. All right. It's a good time in that sense. It is. I'm going to let you go. But yeah, please stay in touch. Awesome. Kenny. Thank you so much.

Please do. Later, buddy. Frame and Reference is an Albot production, produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can do so by going to frame and refepod.com and clicking on the Patreon. button. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening.