Frame & Reference Podcast - 181: "Renner" Cinematographer Sean Emer

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

This week I'm pleased to have Sean Emer on the show to talk about his work on the new Frankie Muniez-led Sci Fi film Renner!Enjoy!F&R Online ► https://www.frameandrefpod.comSupport F&R ► https://www.patreon.com/FrameAndRefPodWatch this Podcast ► https://www.YouTube.com/@FrameAndReferenceProduced by Kenny McMillanWebsite ► https://www.kennymcmillan.comInstagram ► https://www.instagram.com/kwmcmillan

Hello, and welcome to this, episode 181 of Frame and Reference. You're about to drop into a conversation between me, Kenny McMillan, and my guest, Sean Eamer, DP of Renner. Enjoy. yeah have you been uh watching anything cool recently uh man i've been so behind on watching stuff uh just just with uh this dearth of work that has come up recently um i've heard very good things about the new severance uh yeah that's on my list for next week um but honestly all the watch time that we get right now uh my my wife and i were just watching we're trying to go through all of the star trek uh shows you know from from the original series and

we're going to try and get through everything up until now. So we just finally finished the original series and we're into the next generation. So anytime we have free time, we're just like, oh, yeah, Picard, let's go. Yeah, I've got TNG on the old, like, remade Blu-ray. Hell, yeah. Because they, they, like, went back and re-scaned. It's probably the version you're watching, I would assume. I think we're just watching whatever they have on Prime, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's actually the, like, redone one. But they went back and they rescanned all the negatives because that was all shot. film yeah and then they had to redo all the visual effects they didn't try to make it like too cool like they didn't update them they just redid them so they like blend better so it's it's it's like the spiritual successor it's well it's more that like there's a lot of footage that they had to like like the mats would slip and stuff so they kind of just had to like polish it i don't I don't know if they fully like... So it's like, it's the same blaster colors and beam effects, but now not broken.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you get to my personal favorites, obviously next generation, but when you get to Deep Space 9, I've heard that that's like the good one. It starts to fucking go. Yeah, yeah, it gets dark, right? It gets a little dark, but also it's when they start doing narratives across a season. so like a full like episode I kind of yeah instead which I love the classic you know uh day by it because you know the procedural you know kind of law and order in space yeah that's um

when you get to the newer ones uh strange new worlds is excellent I've heard I've I've I've heard that it's terrible from all of my Star Trek fans and I've heard that it's really good from everybody else so so I guess is strange new worlds are you thinking of Discovery. No, I've only heard from anybody that discovery is bad. Yes. But I've heard Strange New Worlds is good. But like my like Trekkie fans who are like Picard number one, you know, like none of them, you know, we'll look at anything that was made after, you know, 97 or whichever. But yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's just seeing the difference in style between the original series and next gen is super cool. Yeah. Well, and it's fascinating to go watch all those like, behind the scenes and stuff and see just how much like i think there's a few american cinematographers but there's there is so much grip just outside a frame of it like it's wild how much work because you just see it looks so natural you're like oh they probably just have like the way we would shoot it today you know it's probably all just in the ceiling yeah just put

a bunch of light mats up there no yeah they're they're like the everything that's screen side is just oppressive it's insane the amount of of work from both a crew and an equipment perspective that is required for like the quote unquote classic studio style of cinematography where you know like marks are set for the actors and they step onto their mark and at that mark everything is you know exactly right and it's just like such a different way from how we operate now yeah do you find you learn a lot from watching like older shows like that because obviously you can't take everything from them but yeah some some styles are just too because i know with renner you know you were trying to lean a little more classical but like when you're watching something like star trek uh do you find yourself taking notes at all i do uh the second time i watch it i do nine times out of 10 when i sit down and to take my notes and i watch it i end up just watching the movie yeah i have that problem just showing it uh which is a good thing right because you know it it has to be able to do that to me uh for it to be work worth um paying attention to you so so i

have to go through it a couple times and then I'll do my notes and it's more helpful than I think a lot of people think it is you know you see people going online or in film schools or whatever and they're trying to like ask for these diagrams and you're like how did they like this shot and you know how do I make it look like this and I'm like well it's right there you make it look like that by you know look at your monitor with your image then look at that what looks different change something you know and you rinse and repeat And the difference between a professional DP and somebody who's just coming up is how quickly they can do that, right? It's easy enough, especially with like hard lighting, you know, like the old studio lighting, it's easy enough in any given scene to see where all their sources are because they don't hide them, they don't motivate them.

There's no VFX hiding them. You know, you don't have to wonder like, hey, why is the camera not in the mirror, you know? It's right there. It's sort of like, it's like open source filmmaking in a way, especially in close-ups. You just look at their eyes and it's like, there's the fill light, there's the key, there's the bumper, you know, like, all of that. So from that side, it was super easy for that end of study for Renner because Robert, the director, had asked. Okay, so when I first start talking to a director about a movie and I'm reading the script, obviously I'm watching something in my head, right, when I'm reading the script. And I just want to make sure

broad strokes that what I'm watching is similar, at least, to what they were watching when they wrote it or when they read it. So I ask him, like, give me a few movies to watch so that I'm like in that mindset. And then I'll go through it. And then we can start talking about the nitty-gritty colors and things like that. And he gave me, for this futuristic sci-fi, you know, kind of movie, he said The Apartment, the Billy Wilder, 1960 movie with Jack Lemon,

you know, and Shirley MacLaine, black and white, studio lighting, you know, there's no ceiling. You'll never see a ceiling in your life. It's, and like hard slashes on the walls, and everybody's got a hair light and a fill light and everything. And I was like, cool, let's go. Right?

Like, that'll be fun. And then the second, movie he gave me to watch was the 2002 horror movie Megan about the AI very popular movie and I was like

what at the height of my film school essay writing pretension I'm not sure that I could have written a thesis on the similarities between those two movies but that's how you get a good you know when people talk about

oh like expert steal or whatever I'm always like not from one source. You got to pick at least three. Usually three is the best move. And then the further apart they are the better. Because if you steal from what? The Matrix and Dark City and shit. What's his name?

Christian Bale. Equilibrium. That's going to be a pretty saney move. That's more of an homage. That's a great trilogy you just came up with. Three equally excellent movies. movies, only one of which is really known by people. More people need to watch

Dark City and equilibrium. A hundred percent. But yeah, it's awesome to hold those two. I think part of it is you know, producers and directors get like a little bit of that stereotypical like bad rap in terms

of, you know, they're not real artists. They just walk into an office and they say it's severance meets the office. It'll be great, doll. You know, like, and there's a sort of flippancy that we just sort of associate with with mashing up movies like that but it's super effective like after I my my eyes rolled back down from the back of my head and I started thinking about those two references I was like okay all right so so you want to

shoot it in like modern zeit guys we're we're going to do soft lighting we're not going to like walk into marks in every shot and and put in a grid and all of that but you want to have a little bit of that like set play that you get in the apartment and in all of the 50s and the 60s where a lot of moving masters yeah moving masters the the blocking is part of the composition and and just like little flourishes um the way we we put it and when we sort of like clicked on it was uh you know like the font of the movie the style of it the letter is a futuristic letter but the The little serifs that we're putting on, those are going to come from, you know, the 60s. So we have our soft lighting, our saturated colors, you know, keyside kickers, all that kind of thing that we get nowadays. But then I would throw in unmotivated super hard backlights and we'd put a slash on the wall every now and then, you know, when he was feeling it. We did a few split diopter shots. He cut them out of the movie.

Todd Vaziris and Shambles. I know, I know, right? I was really proud of myself because I, I did all the calculations, you know, like, we have to make sure the doors are this far apart in the hallway so that, you know, the thing will fit. And they, they worked, but ultimately in the edit, they didn't work because they gave away stuff that we weren't supposed to give away. And you kind of got, you know, like a little bit caught up in the style of it at the time. So he made the right choice, but I will die mad about it. So how do you, that, you know, that brings up an interesting thought.

Because, like, if you think about how it can be easy to tell when a student makes a film because, like, it's it, the language is disjointed, how were you able to glue it together in such a way that it didn't feel just, you know, taking the new and the old? And, like, what were kind of the bridges that made sure it all felt cohesive? I think that what you have to do is before you start shooting, you have to. have to decide sort of like what the algorithm's going to be in your head when you're making a creative decision. What you don't want to do ever, you know, not even the context of this kind of stylistic thing, what you don't ever want to do is come up with the plan right there, which is not to say that you can't be flexible, but you should arrive at every scene and every shot with an intention and with an idea of what you're going to do. So really it's just

planning ahead of time and thinking about it. So, and it sounds like unartistic and uninspired, but a lot of times it is to do with your limitations, right? So I knew that we wanted these little, you know, flourishes of classic stuff, which if you don't listen to this interview, you might not even notice when you watch the movie, but, you know, they were fun for us. But we knew that we were shooting in a used car warehouse in North Carolina. I was not going to have Camlock power.

You know, like, I'm not going to have, there's no grid. We are going to build sets. And you got a translight. And we got a translet. Yeah, it was cool. Yeah. Oh my gosh, it was a super, it was a nerd dream for me to get to work with it. And we did quote the LED wall first because that's, you know, that's what you do.

And the cost of the LED wall was more than, you know, like my production budget. Right. Yeah. So I was like, oh, I guess we're doing a translate. Good thing we're doing a 60s kickback on some of the style. So I know that I don't have a grid. So I'm not going to do set plays where people walk through the lighting because there's no way to rig it. And we could have put in a grid, but that's crew and equipment and extra days and there's just no money for it.

We did this whole thing. I don't know the exact numbers for the budget. But the budget and the timing of the shoot, which we did in 15 days, was essentially a, right? It's a lifetime movie. It's, that's, that's the amount of resources you get for a lifetime movie. Yeah. Those speedy Christmas flicks that they make 10 of a week. Exactly.

Exactly. And, but it's Renner and an AI and, and all of this mayhem that is unleashed by it instead of, you know, a girl learning to give up on her career and move home. And that was like our thing where Robert and I were talking. We're like, we need to make sure that this is not a Lifetime movie. Not that it was going to be one, but that we never sat back the way you're tempted to. And I've worked on Lifetime movies before. They seem fun, honestly. I want to do it.

There's so much fun. I gaffed a bunch of them for a friend of mine years ago. and it was insanely fun the pay is terrible you know the stories are uninspired but uh because there's no pressure like we all know it's just going to go to lifetime and somebody's going to put it on you know while they're doing dishes and it's going to be in the other room like we're just playing well and people love them yeah if you were making movies that people no one watched like that would suck but people fucking love those things and i don't i love this once i like every December, me and my wife, he's hit that and we start watching all of the terrible Christmas ones.

Exactly. Which, which, uh, term are they going to use this time? The big city or the city? Yeah. It's, it's so good. It's so good. Um, because it's formulaic and it's familiar and it's like fast food, right? Like, you always know what you're going to get and you know that it's terrible, but it's a, but it's a step up from McDonald's, you know? It's a, it's a man now. Hell yeah. Where's the logo? Where's the logo? Yeah, yeah. Um, so, so, so we didn't want it's a like that and it wasn't it was going to be like that you know because the script obviously is not a lifetime script but we didn't want the the filmmaking in terms of the color and and uh the set design and everything to feel like we had lifetime checked out you know at any time so so we basically made up for that with just tons and tons of prep where you know robert and i he wasn't actually in los angeles for a lot of the prep he was in europe finishing another movie of his and We would just get on Zoom and talk for hours, just going through the scenes, reading them, you know, each of us on our own computer.

We'd just be silent for a few minutes as we read it. And we come back and we're like, well, what if we started it with this kind of shot or, oh, what was the scene before? If we're going to end the scene with the pushing on him, maybe we start this one with a pull out from a detail. You know, like if they're at the table, we'll pull out from broccoli or something like that. just like scene bumpers and that would sort of like get us into the style. I was like, oh yeah, then we come out and then that'll be good because then we can come across the table over here and we pitch that way. And Sonia, our production designer, gave us floor plans of her like proposed set before it had

been built and I'd like screen share, Photoshop and you know, like move, you know, this is the renter icon and the Jamie icon and what if we, what if they both went over here? Because then we can shoot here and we'll have, you know, like the big city and everything. and we went through the whole movie the entire movie like that over a bunch of marathon sessions and then we like chilled for like a week

and then we went back and we did it again and that gave us like a really good idea of the parts of the movie that we knew and the parts of the movie that we didn't know because there were plenty of scenes that even multiple times too we were kind of like yeah that would probably cover it right we weren't feeling it.

So we knew what scenes on the day we had to take time with the actors and be like, so how do you guys see yourselves moving through this? And one of those scenes actually is one of my favorite shots in the movie was completely unplanned is when Jamie's trying to leave and Renner chases after her and is trying to get her to stay

and they're all in the hallway and they end up in this 50-50 shot with the A-frame splitting the frame in the middle. We just couldn't figure out in shot listing what we wanted to do for that. because when you're looking at a Photoshop file just looks like a rectangle and two circles in it and it's like, what is this?

They shouldn't be in the hallway, but the hallway, we know the hallway's going to look cool, so we want it to be in the hallway. But like, how are we going to shoot this? It doesn't make any sense. And then we had the actors run through it and sort of like find the blocking where they were going to stop and they were going to go

and then they were going to go again. And I just had the camera on a Dana Dolly with the wall flown away from the hallway. Because I just wanted to, like, look at options. And they were doing the movement. I was like, oh, what if I counter moved here? And like, oh, yo, you guys, hey, over here, just a little bit. Yeah.

And, you know, we just went from there. So it's all about just having that mixture, right, of, you know, preparation and knowing what you want to do stylistically and visually. And then also being open to just throw it all out and, you know, follow the story on the set. But always within the context of you know how you're getting. into your scene, how you're getting out of your scene, you're not going to cut from two shots that are too similar, so it's going to be weird, and then the editor comes looking for you at night with a knife, you know? Right. It's, yeah, it's just what it's all about. So how much time did you have for prep? Well, I got the first copy of the script in 2021, so I had known about the movie

for over a year before we started shooting, which is not to say that we spent all that time in prep you know the script went through a bunch of revisions and we were back and forth on you know like where we're going to shoot it and you know how much time do we have and all of that influences you know like the overall plan um so i would say like hard prep you know for for the movie was probably about a month not full time but about a month where we knew what the plan was and you know robert was working on his stuff and i'd do a bunch of shot listing and send it to him and he'd be like love this love this love this might fire you over this you know like me go down the list and sort of like, you know, hash it out back and forth, you know, like increasing the resolution every time. Yeah. And then we got, we went to North Carolina, and we saw the set, and we were there a week before we started shooting, or at least a few days before we started shooting. And me and Robert just walked through the set with whatever PA or his mom or whoever was available to us and just use the directors finder up to, you know, like test all the shots and make sure that, you know, the walls were going to. line up. It's like, oh, shit, we're going to see the ceiling here. Maybe we need to, you know, all that kind of thing. So, so almost every shot in the movie, I have a cheesy, you know,

cadrage picture of sitting in some folder somewhere. And then there's always, whoever you have sitting in just like, yeah, absolutely dead face. Our poor PA who was like sitting in for Renner just he had like this big like, you know, a poofy hair. We knew that Renner was going to be, you know, like almost like a military, military style crop. Squared up. Every time I was framing it, I was like, right, right, right, right. It's not like it. But that was good, especially being in the space and getting to walk it and

shot block the whole movie. That saved us so much time. And just the fact that we're not doing company moves or load outs or load ins or anything, you know, that saves us effectively a full day probably over the course of a week of production. Walk away is great. I love it. I loved it. We, it would be cool if we could have stayed there, you know, like, we finished shooting and then we, like, walk across the room and then there's, like, you know, N-64s or something, but it was, but it wasn't too bad. It was, like, a 20-minute drive. We stayed at a bunch of, like, college dorms from, like, a film school. And part of the thing was they wanted to get some of their, like, film students or something, like, as interns on it. It was, the whole experience shooting there was, like, the opposite of L.A.

Everybody there was excited, you know, that a movie was shooting. And, like, the local bar and grill catered us. They, like, gave us the good stuff. We got bacon for breakfast. It was great because our producers, like, you know, they went to bat for us. And KT, one of our producers, like, went out, made friends with the whole town and made us feel very welcome and everything. Where we could go and do karaoke on our day off to bleed off the stress. And there was, like, a hot air balloon festival down the road that we went to on our second weekend.

And it was just, it was good. We were like a family on that one, more than just a crew. I, to your point about staying there, I, last month just did a gig for my friend's cocktail group. And they have a hotel that the bar is like a part of. And so we were filming in the hotel. Well, we all stayed in the hotel. And that bar is so good. Like, it's like a world renown that I just, I never left the hotel for a week.

It was awesome. I would roll out of bed at like, you know, whatever, eight o'clock. They're all business people, so it's like nine to five. Like, it was so chill. That's amazing. Yeah, and the walkways. Those are the jobs to keep you going, right? Yeah, and they paid well.

Like, it was a dream. They were like, are you like, is this fond for you? Yeah, no, 100%. I did want to know about Rob because I was, you know, I was given a flick through his social media. And he looks about our age, but incredibly accomplished. How, I'm not asking for his, like, biography or whatever, but, you know, kind of like, what was his path to meeting you and how did you guys link up? He, he's super driven. He's a guy who just, like, wills things into existence, you know?

He basically decided he wanted to be a filmmaker and filmmakers make films, so therefore I will make films, you know. He started in, like, politics, right? It's not like at the U.N. at the beginning. Did he? Like, the first photos on his Instagram were him at the U.N. and then doing something, a movie about Syria. Yeah, Robert is, he runs a company, social impact entertainment. I don't know if he's like the CEO.

He's somehow involved on the upper ends with it. And they're, you know, from an activist perspective, they try and do good work at all times, which I respect, and that's great. And it was through SIE, I think, that I had originally met him. Um, some movie, you know, years and years and years ago, uh, that, uh, I had worked on. And, uh, the producer, uh, one of the producers on Renner had worked on. And, uh, he, he was just, you know, like, uh, like a friend and, and, you know, we would see him at parties and things like that. And then we got more involved with him, uh, in 2021, I think was my first feature that I worked on, uh, with Rob.

that was those who walk away uh which was like a a oneer you know like a fake one take uh movie oh yeah a horror movie uh i was a gaffer on that one and man that was that was a ton of fun trying to do uh you know like uh horror lighting cues and and everything on that when in a single take you know these 20 minute takes with you know monsters and props and everything um and i think after after that the the amount of like uh technical work that I had done on there sort of like stuck in his mind so when he came around

to Renner and another short film that we had worked on in between he had thought of me because he wanted all these inset lights and everything in the set for Renner so he sent me the script and

we were off to the races from there yeah had he seen the short you did with Sam what was his name Sam Tahan Sam Tahan I don't think he had seen it. No, that was, when did we shoot that? I think we shot that in 2022, right? I think it would have been in 2022, yeah. You would think I would know my own IMDB, right? Bro, any time between 18 and now is one year. That's just one continuous. It's all the same

fever dream, man. Oh my gosh. I've become what I've always hated. I'm searching. myself on IMDB. Oh, bro, sometimes you have to. See what that star meter's at. Yeah, for, oh gosh, movie 43 is still up here. That's terrible. It was my first job in L.A. Was on movie 43?

Yeah, I was a PA on the Terrence Howard section of movie 43. Like, literally, I didn't even have a bed yet. I was sleeping on the floor of the apartment I rented. It was like my third day of my first week in L.A. and like an old friend from film school was like, hey, I need PAs for a Hollywood movie. I think she said Hollywood movie. And I was like, yeah. Fuck yeah.

I made it. It was like an ASEDP on that and everything. I was like on cloud nine thinking I was hot shit. And then we sell the movie. So you put it on your own, because you can add anything. You can say you know an avatar. They just added on it. Yeah.

They must have. I certainly didn't do it. What film school did you go to? I went to Hofster. Hofster University on Long Island. Oh, I was about to... So this is not... Do it. Do it.

I grew up listening to a lot of comedy albums. Oh, yeah? Famously, Bill Cosby went to Austria. And that's the only reason why I know it. I'm sure we have somebody good... Oh, yeah, you've got to have someone better than that. I think we had... It's so long now since I've graduated.

I've forgotten all the accolades. I'm supposed to connect myself to you through my alma mater. Yeah. Hey man, ASU. Actually, no, ASU had some. We had Barry Bonds. That's pretty good. Obviously, James Hardin.

Although he's, depending on what team you're a fan of, he's a, you know. Oh, I see I've been credited on a Nassiratu. That's not right. Have you? Yeah. I'll change. Just let it. I'll take it.

As what? as a grip which I did come up through lighting my my my first you know jobs

after movie 43 uh whereas a swing on a fI movies because a bunch of my friends had had or you learned at

a lot of those yeah and that's just like you will it's it's film school basically for free unless you go there then it's you know quarter million dollars

or whatever it is but it seems to work man I mean they they have careers a lot of my work comes from those DPs that I met at AFI. Almost every DP that I've interviewed on this show that went to AFI are the ones that have like stellar careers.

Not that everyone who has a stellar career went to AFI, but all the ones who went to AFI are killing it. Yeah, it's a really good technical film school because it's real DPs and real editors and and all that stuff talking about, you know, their actual work that we have seen and they have all, you know, fantastic year. I mean, I haven't, you know, been there now in, you know, 10 years or so. But when we were there, it was, it was a huge learning experience for me. And I finally found it. A test drive, the thing I did with Sampahan was 22. So it was after we did those who walk away. So, so yeah, I was much better friends with Robert at that point. So he did see it. well because i was wondering just because you know they're both sci-fi i was wondering if he was like oh we'll pick you up for sci-fi or if it was just kind of instance yeah no i i i'd like to think so i enjoyed my my work on test drive but they're very different uh stylistically the the two of them where test drive was was like a much more i don't know if you've seen it either not but yeah it's it's

like a more bleach bypassy kind of uh uh gritty look children of menish yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly in that vein. Whereas Renner was supposed to be more, it was supposed to feel like we were in a set, but not in a set. And it was supposed to feel like polished and clean and clinical and whatnot. So, you know, we didn't do any, you know, filtration or the grade wasn't, you know, super aggressive on it. And you were, uh, uh, Alexa Mini and Anginu's, right? Yeah, yeah, it was Alexa Mini and the Angineu Optimo, uh, 15. The numbers are so random. It's like 15 to 42 and 40 to 70 something. I feel like when that happens,

it's like the engineers just make whatever the most efficient thing is. And then they go in and measure it and they go, that's what it is. Yeah, the ingenue engineers made exactly one lens that's difficult to make. It's the 12 to 1 and everybody uses it. And everything else, they're just, you know, like on vacation. And they still work great. So it's a winning combo.

I do want to talk about gaffing more, but real quick, I kind of wanted to know, just because I know how it works on, like, kind of the, I don't want to say the lower end, but when you have Ari writing a, you know, a little feature about you on Instagram and stuff, how does that come about? Is it because you went through Ari rental and then they just tag you, like they, they go, all right, let's make a thing? Or it's like, what are the kind of promotional deals that happen there? I think, I mean, it's, in a little bit of a sense, it's the business, you know what I mean? You know, which is not to speak ill of Ari or any given manufacturer of equipment, because the truth is, 90% of the professional art and the culturally impactful art that's being made in the cinematography space is going to be shot with Ari or Red or Sony. so they deserve their spot but it's definitely something i think where the the movie itself sort of creates that coverage not so much uh you know the work um i think if it had looked terrible

uh it wouldn't have happened to at least that's what i told myself in the mirror right uh after after they had emailed me um but but i do think it's it's part of you know the fact that it's frankie Munez, and he's coming back, you know, and starring in this movie, and people love them. I was a huge fan of Malcolm in the middle. Oh, that's true. And I was super excited, you know, because I had, I had been creatively invested in Renner long before Frankie was cast. So I didn't, I had like these, like, fake people in my head that was going to play every part. And I don't remember what they look like anymore. But I remember when I was hearing about the casting process, and they said that they had gotten Frankie Munez. I was like, no way.

Frankie, that's awesome. That's so cool. It's going to be super fun to see him play this kind of role as opposed to, you know, like how everybody remembers him. And I think it's that curiosity and that kind of attention is what maybe has brought more attention to even like the technical level, you know, like Ari calling it out and everything. Well, and also like, you know, less experienced filmmakers might hear that and go like, Oh, poo-poo or whatever.

But it's like, that's literally how you sell a film. Unless it's already, you know, you need talent. It's how you sell a film. And I know that there's, you know, that artist that has the little flame inside of all of our hearts that's all about, it's only about this story and noise and all of these business, it is nothing, you know. And that that's true in a sense. but that's only really true if you want to do your art and then just have money already somehow. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because we're artists and we're also professionals. We need to be paid if we want to continue doing this. And to get paid, you need to make money and to make money. You need to be able to sell it. And most people who go and pay to watch movies don't care about art, you know. Yeah. They care to the point that it offends them or not, but that's about it. yeah at best you get oh directed by and people will go see it but you know yeah but i also think

it's important to remember that you know there's a little bit of a cynical nature of that conversation right you know like the the movie gets attention because frankie's in it not because of you know like my cinematography or sonya's production design but that's not entirely like Frankie killed it he was a great actor in this like i was impressed and that was super fun to to see him come alive and you sort of like break out in my head of like the Malcolm type role. And it's not like he hadn't acted between those two things, but that was the last like impression I had. So for me, it was entertaining even on set to see it. And I know it'll be entertaining for people to watch it. So while that is like a selling point, and I know as an artist I'm supposed to say selling points are bad, it's, I disagree.

Because like it, you know, it's as someone who is still trying to get people to like, even to listen to this show. It's like, how do you hook people? Well, you say that, you know, um, Hoyt is on the show. Yeah. You know, the big names. Or you had Greg Frazier was the one that like really, you know, got from me and I was like, oh, frame and reference. That's cool. Right. And it's like, and then what ends up happening is those conversations are all great. But nine times out of 10, it's people that like no one's heard of, even in the cinematography space that like, yeah, buddy, uh, that are far more informative, you know, but it's also like, do you listen to be entertained or do you listen for education? I find the... I mean, it's, it's probably one and two. It's not like Greg

Frazier would not know about cinematography, but it's also because he's working on such big projects, you know, and he comes on frame and reference or any other interview, and that's like the 20th interview he's done that week, and he's just tired of talking about it. No, I don't mean to say that his interview with you was was no good or anything i haven't you know gone through the whole thing but i could see where that might happen right where there's less um uh you know like like fire in it well and so that's it's funny you say so i i've always positioned to this show as um trying to give people who are on press tours something more entertaining to do while like still get you know still trying to get the information out of them but like making it far more of a hang

and not trying to be like, well, so the interview with Jaron, we kind of rolled into it and I was talking to him about like how I hate when you listen to an interview and they go like, so tell us how you got started. And it's like, all right, so we're going to burn 15 minutes on this when someone can Google it. Yeah. And then I got like a couple comments and even one from a friend of mine who was like, bro, I don't listen. I don't do research. That's why I come to you. And I was like, oh, all right. So now I'm trying to figure out the balance between like doing the research for the people who only listen to this show and also not boring the guest and getting into that thing because you don't want them to come here and then start getting into the rhythm and then giving you the same answers that, you know, because that is just it just goes around.

Well, then it's boring for me too, you know. I'm the third, I'm the third wheel in this equation. I want to learn things. And for real. I mean, I love the technical aspects and the little nitty, you know, like behind-the-scene things. That's what always excites me. Yeah, when I'm looking at work that I respect is like, how the fuck did they do that shot? That's insane, you know?

So I love all of that, but it is, I think, important to talk about, you know, how do you get jobs? How do you get into the industry? How is it possible? Because for a lot of people who might be watching this or, you know, just online, just searching like how to become a filmmaker it's got to be daunting right like if you don't grow up in it yeah i've i find that you know because i still try to i write for pro video coalition i still try to take an educational bent to a lot of things i like educating um sometimes it's harder than others like i still get in arguments with people about how speed boosters give you the quote full frame

look and then and then people yell at me like i'm stupid and i'm like all right well Well, I can't, I can't fight against just like the same people telling you that the lens compression looks good. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Mm-hmm. Just had that conversation on YouTube yesterday. And, uh, but, um, there's a lot of misnomeras out there. Yeah. And then I'll bring in, I'll bring in people like, uh, Matthew Duclos.

Yep. And it'll be like, can you explain it? And then he will. And then they go, yeah, but this influencer told me. Anyway, the point, uh, information. Oh, for people wanting to get. get started. The thing I've learned more than anything through my own experience through others is it's like people always talk about networking. It's not networking. It's making friends. Making friends. Yeah. And just waiting. I literally said this exact thing. Just like just like an hour ago. That is. That is what it is. It's making it's making friends and being chill. Like being somebody who is not upsetting to be around. And having a skill obviously. But yeah, but you don't need you don't need to max your stuff. stats there. You know what I mean? Like, you don't have to be a level 20 fucking wizard to be hired

to do magic if you just have a good charisma, you know? Yeah. If you play D&D, you know what I mean, but it's, I, I, I have gotten hired and will continue to get hired over people more talented than I am, you know, artistically or technically because I don't yell on set and I don't, you know, like, to mean people are like fire, you know, like people, because I'm having a bad day and I make dad jokes and i keep it late and if somebody makes a mistake uh unless it's a safety mistake i don't i don't snap at them or or anything like that yeah because it's we're not we're not doing rocket surgery you know we're telling stories and we're playing pretend and we're doing that thing that we all wanted to do as kids when we play with our action figures you know on our couch and

you know like this pillow is the mountain and everything we're getting to do that for our jobs and that's not the sort of space or life where we should be demeaning people. So as long as you're good enough at your job, the image is not detracted from. Be cool. Tell jokes. Be friendly. Invite me over for board games. I'll invite you over for board games. And you know, you're the first call. Yeah, kind, quick, and qualified in that order.

Ooh, I like that. Kind, quick, and qualified. I'm going to kind, quick, quick. it doesn't i know it's not three cues but it's alliteration nonetheless yeah climbed yeah quine quick and quality oh i did want to go back to gaffing so uh you know a lot of dPs these days um especially these days come through camera right yeah uh it's far more accessible concepts are a lot easier um and uh lighting comes last which is unfortunate what are some of the things that you learned as a gaffer coming up through the system that kind of pushed your looks over the edge from, you know, amateur to professional?

So for me, like, it's basically what you said. A lot of DPs when they come to an image, when they think, literally think about an image for a shot, the first thing they see is the angle or the shot size or the perspective the compression, whatever it is. The first thing that I see is light and color and the quality of it. I don't really see it from a perspective yet, but I know I want it

to be a cyan edge and like a little warm underlieb. This should be soft with like shadow on the near side. That's because I came up through gaffing. And I know that that's not something that's super popular. So many DPs come from camera

and they're very, you know, like composition based. But working with those DPs, when I was a gaffer, I could see how much setting the light and lighting and environment would influence all of those things. And because the lighting is what literally gives like life, right, to the image. If you set that lighting intentionally to begin with and then frame around it, you can get like a much more polished or as polished image as if you did it the other way around. And for me, it's a lot easier to say, a table scene with a bunch of people sitting around a table, if I know how I want to light it, then that gives me tons of options

about how to shoot it where I'm not coming at it from an angle where I need this exact shot, so I must light it somehow for that, and now I'm stuck when I go to my other shots. it's it's it's kind of it's it's so hard to put into words because it's like an intuition that you develop right because cinematography composition and lighting are kind of the same thing they're like totally different tools it's like camera placement versus like your lights but they both control contrast in the image right and contrast meaning not just the brightness and the darkness but just like the lines like shit on your screen that makes it not just like a plain gray box. All of it is just about contrast, putting shapes on the screen and making things stand out

and like trying to draw your attention this way or that way. So it's not that different to come at it from a lighting perspective. To me, it just makes more sense because I have like a stronger intuition for like soft light and a hard light and what an edge is going to do and how it's going to play if somebody moves through the space. And it's easier for me to use that as like my anchor point creatively in a scene. So there's, if you watch the movie, you'll see there's a lot of scenes that are pretty aggressive in terms of like the lighting or like the color play in it because that's where

we started. And then we started like framing around it to make that like a character in the scene basically. Yeah. I mean, whenever I do way more documentary than I ever thought I would these days. But, like, when I walk into a room, my first thought is, all right, where's the window? All right, where I'm putting the key based on the window? Plop them down, you know? Because documentary is way more quick than qualified, you know?

Yeah. I think the camera approach to cinematography where you set your frame and then just, like, beat the world into submission to make it work is great if you have, you know, like $10 million, you know, for your week of shooting. But not so much otherwise. So it's much easier to create, like, good lighting in your space. and then find the shots that work with it. As long as their shots are like, you know, like on point with what you're doing. Like if you have a weak character, you're not going to like shoot them from below unless you can find a way to make them, you know, weak in that way.

But it's super fun, man. It's like I just love doing it. Every time, you know, I've done, there's not many shots that I haven't done or tried to do at least once. But there's no shots that I ever go to do where I'm bored with it, you know. every even if it's just another over the shoulder medium close-up of somebody sharing their feelings on a couch I'm like ooh what could I do this time remember that last time when I did that thing like I wonder if there's like a way and you just play with it it's it's art it's supposed to be fun not not regimented yeah do you see you know a lot of I think we're both similarly online there's a lot of conversations about oh movies these days look flat or whatever boring look at these movies from the 90s they looked better and it's there's obviously the like like sort of nostalgia bias of it all. But where do you see that argument potentially coming?

Because I still can't quite wrap my hand around. I'm like, I think you guys are just watching like one movie. You know, living in LA, you have the advantage of going to see fucking everything. It's, I think it's a lot of the nostalgia thing. And it's basically the same as when people say that the music now sucks and the music back then is better.

And it's like, well, you're only remembering the bangers from back then. You're listening to the DREC from now, and it's kind of the same thing, where we have a sort of, like, mixing of styles where budget, quick television, like, entertainment has leveled up into, like, high-level professional workflows, but that doesn't mean that the style's going up. So you're still getting like the straight to TV movies and TV shows that would never have entered the conversation in the 90s. But they're being shot on Alexis and whatnot now and they're going really fast. And, you know, they're there to make their days and, you know, like make the bell ring and everybody goes home and everything. And that combined with the fact that we have so much like VFX ability and so much grading potential now, compared to back then when you bright your printer lights and that's basically all you got unless it was, you know, a real movie.

There's a lot of polish that goes on top of these things. And a lot of times if there's not like a strong artistic direction behind it, I can see where it sort of like goes to a sort of like bleary, you know, like mono style. Yeah. Great example would be the Total Recall remake, which why they remake movies that were already good is ridiculous. Remake bad movies. ones, yeah. But if you look at the total, we call it's exactly what these people are talking about where

it is a bland style, right? Because it's uninspired, it's uninformed, that people are making a lifetime movie with the budget of a bigger one and it's every scene's just one fucking color and it's just no good. I will say though, to my point about people love like lifetime movies.

I love like C or B sci-fi movies. I'll watch all of them. Oh, they're great. You know, but those are the comfort. made by people who believe in the idea. If you make a C sci-fi movie because you want to make a C-sci-fi movie, I'm not going to like it. You need to be the guy who thinks you're making, you know, like an A-Sy-fi movie.

And then when I watch your C-level one, I'm like, oh, man, yo, this is lit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's the same thing. Yeah, yeah. But I put dread in the A, but I don't think they knew they were making it. Or they probably did, but Dread was sick. It gets like that. But that's basically the same thing I'm saying, right?

Like this, the milieu of gray, smeary, you know, monotone movies that a lot of people complain about isn't, it's not like a disaster in cinematography or art. It's just the presence of, you know, like lower effort art being made with high quality tools. Yeah. Because we don't have low quality tools anymore. Right. You know, back in the 70s and the 80s, in the 90s, you could make low quality television and film with bad tools, bad lenses, all that stuff. It's so hard to do that now. Like most of the, if you go on Reddit on the

cinematography subreddit, so many of the people asking for asking for asking for how do I make my footage look bad? How do I make it look retro? How do I make it look like the shitty? Yeah, yeah, because we can't do it anymore. Because you can go out and buy an FX3 or, or something, you know, it costs you a few thousand dollars and you can make a movie that looks professional and polished. You have to get the right lenses and you have to learn, you know, about log and all that stuff. But it's never been more accessible to have a polished image. But if you don't also develop your style and your art and your ability to light and your ability to compose interesting frames, you're going to get a lack of style in your work.

and that's going to contribute a little bit, I think, to what people have pointed out there. Yeah. Well, and I think, too, to your point about grading, I think I've at least tried more and more to be a little more hands off. Or maybe when I'm grading, better, better way to say it is using broader strokes.

Because I think even if you've got something incredibly contrast, even in the image with hard light or whatever, if you start like I think I said this in a different interview but like keying out skin tone and having it not match you know like everything's green and then skin is perfectly on the line like it just doesn't look natural because it looks impossible yeah it's it's the same thing as so much of the CG that we see these days is is laughably fake to us not because the fidelity is bad you know there's no point in the frame that you could look at at it and say, oh, there's the bad roto line or something. It's all perfect. It's laughably fake because it's an impossible shot. This shot can never have been done.

And the artists are probably rushed. So they had to hit render at some point. And it's the, gosh, it was just that. It was like the Netflix movie and the TSA agent and all of that. It was like diehard.

It was die hard for people who want to be in the TSA. but there's there's a scene in there where there's like a car crash and sorry I think it was flight plan oh oh my wife told me carry on yeah this is the name thank you um there's a scene where there's a car crash uh and the effects that they use in it are good like it looks correct but the shot that they do with those effects is a shot that cannot physically happen in the universe right so it doesn't matter how good your effects are because the viewer is instantly knows that it's cg because there's no there isn't a way for a camera to do this so it looks fake and then we start laughing about bad effects and all the vFX artists feel bad they didn't do a bad job was bad direction if you ask me yeah that's the top does everything it's all about shot selection like that's how you get good vFX is shot selection yeah absolutely And time.

Shot, shot selections, shot design, I think limitation is a very important thing in style and filmmaking because it forces you to sort of like narrow your focus and really think about what you're trying to do. And that's why, you know, all of, when people think about Steven Spielberg, they're not thinking, you know, about his recent movies, they're thinking about Jaws and whatnot. Because back then, he had lots of limitations and he had to think about what he would. going to do like when the Bruce the the shark animatronic didn't work on jaws they had to keep making the movie and he had to like design his shots now without seeing the shark and he had to like put that into the story and like really think about it and be careful and that extra attention made the movie so much better whereas now you see this a lot of really good directors uh you know

as the budget increases and the amount of people who will say no to them vanishes I I feel like the movie start like losing a little bit of of that shape and and style that they developed in their earlier careers you know what's interesting is when I think about restriction like that I was thinking about lighting obviously and the other like last year I rewatched a series of unfortunate events and I was fascinated by it because I knew they shot film and it's Emmanuel Lebeske and I was like but the lighting now you know now that I he shot it I'm pretty sure that's crazy I'm looking it up right now

yeah yeah so I'm watching it and it's it's so bold in that he literally was just it would be like a 12 by that he would bang a bunch of light through no gels just everything is just this

massive soft unmotivated source for everything and it looks great but it's just one light he just had one source whatever just all the time and I was like this is fast and then obviously I learned it leaned into like oh this is when they started using ENR selectively and stuff um there's a great interesting yeah yeah I didn't talk about but but yeah watch that movie again it's fascinating how like we would probably look at that now and go well this is unmotivated and it looks weird but like you watch when you're watching the movie it fits perfectly motivation is is something uh you you can use to elevate stuff but it's not like a hard requirement if you want unmotivated light put in unmotivated light i mean some of some of the scariest you know nighttime forest horror scenes out there are literally people just shooting flashlights

at trees like evil dead one that's that night lighting in the forest is not motivated that is some indie filmmakers that brought some lulled totas you know out to the cabin oh no no right right sorry i triggered you um burnt so many things just just just no part of them that isn't dangerous. But you don't need motivation if the image works, right? Your motivation should be making a good image. And yeah, I'm all for it. I mean, obviously, every backlight and runner is, you know, comes from nowhere.

If we never see a light source that isn't a soft LED in the whole movie, but they've all got hard backlights. But it's just, it's part of the style. It's part of the little, you know, that you put on your image. So I'm all for it. I'm all for it. when I was the one thing that I've been stealing a lot recently I was talking to uh,

uh, uh, uh, uh, he shot the holdovers, but he also shot, um, this series.

I think it was Constellation the first time I talked to him. But he also shot the first season of house of cards. Oh, nice. And so I was like, I love the way that thing looks. You know, what was that lighting like?

And he's like, honestly, a lot of it was just replacing bulbs. And then they would get a tube, which at the time was a keynote. Yeah. And they would just dim it way the fuck. down and they would put it like just outside of frame so that there was this really chill

scratch that was almost unperceivable and that was it and i've been using that on everything and it's great yeah the the tube the tube key side kick is like my go-to for for anything if i ever have like a default look you know it's it's that it's it's key hard kick normally from uh you know a stair finnambar whatever it is it just it looks good. How do we feel about top light these days? I love it. I love it. I mean, it has a purpose, right? You know, like, I'm not going to top light, you know, a makeup commercial, maybe. But if, if I'm ever, like, trying to give that vibe, I'm absolutely there. And you can control top light to almost any emotion that you need, you know, sinister, you know, you'd have it mostly behind

you, just like a little bit coming to, like, catch the, the cheeks. You know, you have your classic, you know, interrogation lighting or dramatic decision, you know, kind of stuff where you're like a little bit raccoon, but you can do top lighting all the way out here and throw in a bounce, and now you have a pretty person who's standing under some light, you know. Was it, uh, my rule is Miss Maisel, I think David Mullen does a bunch of top lighting in scenes, but he fills them in, you know, and the, and you can see the shadows, you can see that they're toplit, but it still comes off with like that he did such a good job having that, like, 50s vibe, but it was like polished and clean, you know, like as if he brought an Alexa back

into the, the time of the story. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I think that these, you know, top light is good, top light is bad. You know, you need a three-point lighting. You don't need three-point lighting. All of these things are sort of like missing the forest for the trees. You know, you can't make artistic judgments about technical tools. You know, what I mean. Right. It's about how you use the tools. And I know we've all heard that a million times, but people you've got to understand, it really is true. It really is about how you use the tools. And a lot of times when there's criticism for a type of tool or a type of technique, it's criticism of the choice to use it or how it was used, not the tool itself or the technique

itself. Does that kind of make sense what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, well, and also no one would notice the tool unless you kind of messed up, you know. But there's also, there's sort of like that cross-section rate of people that are getting into filmmaking and are sort of entry level or just like getting into the professional level or students or whichever, and they start learning the words and start like in-grouping, right, you know, by talking about it. And a lot of in-grouping is, is about poo-pooing things. Yep. You know, like, you're, you're, I'm a real DP because I use a sikonic light meter, you know, like that kind of thing.

And I use a sikonic light meter, but I would never think that somebody's not a real DP if they don't have one. And I think that there's, a lot of that is sort of pervasive in culture now, especially with so many people learning filmmaking on YouTube and everything. There's, there's a lot of YouTube creators out there that are trying to, like, teach you how to be a filmmaker. But the truth is, if they knew how to teach you that, they'd be off making films. but instead they're there trying to get you to pay for a subscription or something and it it's I don't like the idea of like teaching people art through through negation you know like saying don't do this it should it should always be do this or oh try doing this or if that doesn't work try you know blah blah blah because it's a it's a creative not a destructive process you know what I mean yeah and another thing tangentially related to that that that I have to say is annoying is someone will, you know, the entire internet is just a circle of conversation, right? And someone will say something new, bring something new to the conversation that they researched or came up with or whatever.

And then everyone will steal it and present it as if it were fact or as if this is common knowledge and never credit that person again. You know where you don't see that is like the woodworking YouTube channel. and like the tech people those that's a lot of credit yeah the the the video film creator YouTube is just steal central and then they'll put it in a PDF and sell it to you for 40 bucks I mean hey that's art right yeah good art is is stealing and borrowing and you know sometimes people misinterpret that that advice yeah um we are pretty much coming up on time but I did want to ask about that the series that I wrote COC and I don't know which is something

Circle of Confucius? Circle of Champions, the Marvel, the Marvel gigs. Oh, the commercials. Yeah. How'd you get a hold of those? That was, it was through a friend that, okay, so I'm going to do this as quick as I can, so people don't get bored. My entry into filmmaking in Los Angeles consisted of me doing a road trip from film school to L.A. I went out with a bunch of my friends from film school.

I was a wonderful two-week trip across. the country. We landed in LA with no jobs. I worked on movie 43 and was promptly unemployed for the next two years. I lived on savings and that kind of thing. Eventually I had to get a job because working for AFI movies for free somehow wasn't paying rent. I got a job at a camera rental house called Strangeville Films. And I was her equipment manager for a couple years. And what they did there was they would do consignment gear where people could bring in their cameras or their lights, park it at Strangel and Strangel would rent it out, give a cut of the profits, you know, it's like split up between the owners. One of the people who was bringing their

lights in there was starting an ad agency and I made jokes with him and I was like friendly with him when he came in because I like the name of his company, Marching Penguin. And I would, you know, he would always be joking with me so I'd try to make sure his stuff would go out first. And we just became friends. And then when I left Strangel to pursue freelance, he heard about it and liked me and he was like, hey, you want to come, you know, shoot some ads with me? You know, I can't pay much and they're not exciting. And we shot a bunch of ads for, you know, retirement homes and things like that. And it's networking, right? You know, like, you just make friends with people. And eventually he got the opportunity as an ad agency to do those ads for the Marvel

commercials, for the Marvel COC commercials. And he came to me. And we shot all of them in the course of, I think, about a week. And it was a ton of fun. I really enjoyed that. We had a trained squirrel, which, if you're wondering, how trained a trained squirrel is, the answer is not. We weren't allowed to let the squirrel touch the ground because we were told if it touched the ground, its instincts would take over and it would run away. And they would charge us for the squirrel. Hence the backpack.

Hence the backpack. Yeah. that is actually a great sort of going back to the idea of like how do you break in that's that's a classic story yeah you know like just putting in the work taking jobs no job is bad I don't think anyone should be ashamed of any job they do no you know even outside of film just any job is is good but I unless it's for Fox News don't take that job yeah don't take that job although I will say I you know I've been thinking about that uh not to get political on a D.P. But I've been thinking about that. I'll make it more general. If I were hired to do a commercial for someone that I oppose, you know, emotionally or politically or whatever. Yeah.

Is that better because the money is going to probably end up in the hands of people who I prefer or is it not better because at the end of the end of the, because the ad's going to get. made anyway. Yeah. Like, what if I take that money and donate it to the opposing cause or whatever, you know? I did that once. I went to do a job that I thought was for Fox Entertainment, but then it turned out it was for Fox News. And I took my day rate and donated it because I was like, I can't touch that. Yeah, yeah.

That's not. It felt weird. But I'm absolutely right about that. But also, it's like if everybody that they came to for that work would just say, no, you know, screw you. then, you know, maybe they would quietly go away, but I'm not into fantasy movies. Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't think that outfit's going away, but nope. Not today.

Well, I absolutely love chat with you. I'd love to have you back on. Where can people see the movie? Because I know it's in limited release right now. Do you have like a distribution? It's in limited release right now in theaters for a little bit longer. If you want to see it in a theater, you can go to the website, run or the movie.com, and I think they have a list there. If you can't get to a theater for it, it will be released on streamers, so they do have a deal.

I don't know the release date. I'm pretty sure it's somewhere early March, you know, around that time frame. But you can follow, you know, follow the movie or follow me on Instagram and I'll make a post about it. Yeah, this episode will come out probably mid-March, so. Oh, perfect. Yeah. So that works out great then. So it'll be somewhere by then, I bet.

Yeah. Well, it was great talking to you, buddy. Yeah, it was great talking with you, man. Thanks for having me. 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 refpod.com and clicking on the Patreon button. It's always appreciated, and as always, thanks for listening. Thank you.